Monday, November 26, 2007

The number one uncomfortable thing about flying.

Today's number one uncomfortable thing related to air travel is: armrests. That's right. The lack of leg room is troublesome, the elimination of free snacks also a bit of an annoyance--and having lost my luggage both times I have flown in the past week certainly got under my skin. The lack of something soft on top of an armrest, however, is a much larger hindrance to sleep than the fact that I am self-conscious and worried about drooling while trying to doze with a ruler-straight back without slumping onto the unsuspecting person next me. Yes, the fact that my hands and forearms fall asleep and leave me without blood flow to my fingers was the clincher.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

I have been debating discontinuing my weblog. But, since I have not come to any conclusive decisions about this, I will keep trying to add little updates about what is going on in my life.

In brief, this week I visited the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. It is a fantastic department with a lot of exciting work going on. Being that it is my first program visit of the year, I have nothing to compare it to. But, I was pleased. I also enjoyed visiting with a friend from college, Jeremy Weber, who is working on a Ph.D. in the department, as well as my friend Pilar Jano who completed her Master's degree in the AAEC department at VT.



Later in the week, I spent a great deal of time working through a set of notes on a conference on Advancing Conservation in a Social Context that took place at WHRC the week before, for which I served as the reporteur (that's right, the note taker). I am still working on this. We are also working hard on finishing up the report for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD...here's an interesting article) for the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other things that are related to getting our stuff together for the Bali COP. But, the women (and men) that I work with still find time to have fun, as you can see below---on Thursday night we put on our Fancy Shoes and went out for Martinis in Falmouth.