The spoons are hitting dishes of Jello that Abby had prepared for a Jello-wrestling party that was cancelled. Apparently Jello-wrestling involves wrestling with Jello. I had a long flight home, 35 hours all told from door to door, but uneventful. Karen King sat next to me on the flight from Brussels to New York, at one point waking up to tell me a brilliant idea. For the institute, I thought? No, for getting Project Runway from the iTunes Music Store. (I had been complaining we couldn’t see it any more after Stinson Beach.) The last two days in Dakar were quite, mostly in and around the hotel. I got some good birdwatching in, documented on my Natural History blog. I was glad to be home.

My new assistant, Joy, is one to work with, and seems to be very efficient. We had a session on Monday going through my mail, which led to a discovery that nobody seemed to know about my counter-offer. This got sorted out on Tuesday. Some irritating interactions with NSF over the MSP grant, but I imagine it will all work out.

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