- my laptop melt-down resulted in a complete wipe and reinstall (thank the gods we had carbonite installed)
- all the experiments I needed for the poster for the upcoming conference worked about two weeks before I needed to start putting everything together--so there was a massive push to analyze the data
- then, a really bad cold knocked me on my ass for a few days a week before christmas
- which resulted in my stressing
- which resulted in stress-induced muscle spasms in my lower back--no relief except laying flat on my back in bed. It is hard to work on a poster when laying in bed.
- resulting in more stress--and the viscous cycle continued until I finally went to the doctor for some muscle relaxers
- which resulted in family Christmas festivities in a somewhat drug-induced haze and still no poster (which needed to be printed by today at the latest)
- which resulted in a marathon illustrator/photoshop session (12 hrs on the 26th and 12 hrs on the 27th) and a beautiful poster to print yesterday
- and a corrupted illustrator poster file
- which resulted in few panicky tears. 4 hrs later the amazing IT/media center people printed my poster
It has been a rough few weeks, but the poster is printed, the holidays are almost over and we fly out to places warmer for the conference on Sunday. I almost cannot wait to get back from the conference so I can put my life back to some semblance of normalcy. Oh, wait, the weekend after we get back is Mr. Dr. Zeek's surprise birthday party. Then maybe some normalcy?
