Closing Shop (July 20, 2006)

Yet again, I find myself in an airport. That’s right! This blog entry comes to you from sunny Charlotte, NC. Though I wouldn’t know what Charlotte is like, since I never leave the airport. Ah, vicariously living through airports.

Sara has been harassing me. She says, “Why haven’t you updated your blog? Without my daily dose of Bradley, my day is incomplete.” This was followed by “I am nothing without you.” She really said that. Really.

Anyway, it’s been a pretty hectic couple of weeks. After returning from Cambridge, I stayed in Pittsburgh for 3 days and celebrated the 4th of July in relaxation. Then, it was back to Nashville for another week of meetings, pictures (for the faculty directory), and research. Yep, you heard me correctly, I actually had time to sit down, do some stats, programming, experiments, writing. Quite satisfying.

After Nashville, I returned to Pittsburgh for a week. Research continues, (Yeah!) but most of my spare time has been spent cleaning out the house, and attending going away happy-hours, dinners, and parties (mostly for Sara - her employer and co-workers love her).

And along with cleaning out the house comes... a yard sale! So, our duplex-buddies Joe and Amy held the sale with us this past weekend. Lucky for us, the weather held and we were able to make some sweet moola with Uncle Rico (obligatory Napolean Dynomite reference). But as fast as the money comes in, so too does it go out. Hmm... where does it go? Could it be the new bike rack we bought? Could it be the going away bash we sponsored?

Or maybe it’s the house we’re buying today! And thus we come to the climax of the long rambling story. Sara and are flying down to Nashville to close on our new house. By this afternoon we’ll be homeowners.

Yet, as with any traveling experience that has included me in the past month - nothing is without its trials and tribulations. To summarize, this morning we had a direct flight from Pittsburgh to Nashville. Hip Hip Hooray! However, Sara and I checked into the airport at 7:45am for an 8:30 flight. It would have been fine - and in fact, lately, this has been my check in time of late for most flights. Except this time we were checking bags (dropping off some clothes, pots, pans, and such), and US Air said this was too late for checking luggage. Soooo, they rebooked us for an 8:35 flight through Charlotte! No kidding, a 5 minute difference resulted in an extra 2.5 hours of travel!

Needless to say, this has not made us the happiest of campers this morning. So what do you do when you’re not happy - get goofy (see above picture - we are tentatively captioning it “Whoa, someone farted and it wasn’t us”).