Happy Thanksgiving and see you on the other side

So begins the week of stupid travel scheduling. We leave the house at 5:00am tomorrow morning and fly out for a family vacation. We fly back Monday with enough time for me to drop off bags at the car and say goodbye to the family before hoping on a Europe-bound red eye that arrives at 9:00am. After a shower and some food, I should be all set to sit through a 2:00 defense in a foreign language i can more or less understand and then ask questions (in English) as the external examiner. No problem.

It should be fun. I know a number of people in the area and will be staying with friends. I'll have a chance to travel locally a bit and give a talk at a prestigious institute about the work we are doing. I wish I had a bit more data from the project I chose to talk about, but I'm good with shadow puppets so I should be able to keep the audience busy.

I doubt I will have much ability to blog over the next week and a half, but for those of you in the US, have a good holiday and safe travels if you are one of the many on the roads, tracks and skies the rest of this week. Hopefully you get some down time before the final push to the end of the semester. You'll be able to find the NFL pool update over at DGT's place, where she will continue to gloat over her lead margin.