I usually host a birthday party at my place on a Friday or Saturday close to March 26, and this year was no exception. We also have a grad student in the department whose birthday is also March 26, so I share the date and the party with him. But not the birthday pie. I get pecan pie. He can have the cake. The party was a blast, even though (because?) none of the other faculty showed up. They all had good individual excuses, but it was disappointing. Oh well, I had fun anyway. Thank you to everyone who showed up! I'll leave it at that and not embarrass the 2-3 people -- you know who you are -- who might have cause to be embarrassed if I posted details. We'll do it again next year.
The worst drawback to the party was the fact that I had to get up early, 5:30AM, to catch a flight out of town to attend a National Science Foundation (NSF) review panel and help 8 other people hand out a few million dollars to conduct astronomical research. I let people stay until 3:30AM, because we were having fun. I'd already decided to have fun at the party, and be miserable the next day.
So I got up, got packed, and got to the airport.
And waited.
There was bad weather in Denver, and they delayed our flight for 90 minutes. That made it impossible to make my connection to Washington DC. They checked about later flights. EVERY SINGLE FLIGHT to all three DC area airports WAS OVERBOOKED FOR THE REST OF THE DAY! I blame springbreak. So I had the option of flying to Denver and try to get on stand-by, risking getting stuck in Denver and missing my meeting and not being able to get home, or just going home.
I went home.
I'd been through this two years ago with a previous NSF review panel, when my Laramie flight had been cancelled due to weather. I'd managed to get onto a redeye flight out of Denver, and had tried to drive there, and ended up crashing on the interstate at close to 70 mph. I was unhurt. Probably had something to do with hitting the guardrail once with my rear corner and bouncing back across the highway so the energy was dissipated in a couple of impacts. Lucky me. I went ahead and teleconned from my office then, and it hadn't been so bad, so I did that again.
Still had to wake up at 5:30AM the next two days and hiking into the office for some very long days on the phone for east coast morning start times. Better than crashing your car, I guess. But it's the curse of Wyoming that sometimes you just can't travel when or where you want to, and you have to accept that and learn to live with it.
Posted by Mike at March 30, 2006 10:24 AM