2006-11-07 - 5:58 p.m.

..logistics nightmares...

I'm a wee bit sad because today we said goodbye to our first and dearest friend in Vancouver - bandy. He is the person I credit with getting me this position. And although I'm having a hard time right now, in the end I am certain that it will be clear that this was the best thing to happen to me professionally in a long time. K and I drove over to have bagels and coffee with him this morning, and arrived at the absolute worst time. Bandy is trying to import three cats to the yUK, quite a feat. To do this one needs six months of quarantine and seven months of paperwork. And apparently his "cat broker" - the broker at the other end of the flight who is supposed to receive the cats in UK customs - had not yet faxed the AirCan office to confirm the cats' passage. Bandy had called the cat broker - who said that he HAD faxed the AirCan office, but the AirCan office had simply not acknowledged it - it's a fairly typical story from there on out...

So Bandy was not the best of bagelmates this morning, but in the end he was drinking happily in the AirCan first class lounge, and the cats were being checked onto the plane. Perhaps not happily, because he had the same experience that I had when leaving his cats with the airlines. Serious departure anxiety - you feel like you are deserting small children. So I kept telling him that they would forgive him, for as long as he holds the can opener. I expect to hear how the trip went in about a day. But I will miss him. :-(

This has also been a long week of getting things set up, but I finally entrained K to help me do everything ourselves rather than wait for the university administration. I have been waiting since August to unpack some of my files - I am not willing to wait another six weeks while they order me another file cabinet, and the work order goes through to find someone who can help me move all the furniture that they dumped into office and lab. So, I bought a dolly and asked K to help me move things on my own. When we left today, there was still more to do...but I had piece of mind that I would finally be able to unpack my boxes into their right places.

In other good news, we were also able to locate (a) my uni grant application that went lost in the mail, and (b) our Canadian permanent resident application, that was also sent for some unknown reason to our old address in NY! So two more bureaucratic detours have been navigated (leaving me still somewhat perturbed at the fact that I had to take them....one should really not have to work so hard to track the mail.) So tomorrow is Wednesday, and I might even be able to add some actual work to my strict diet of administration. (if sarcasm had a different color ink, it would have been used in that last sentence.)

Off to sit in front of a brainless movie to numb myself.