Finally starting to catch up

I’ve been insanely busy for the last several weeks.  I do now have a temporary admin assistant, Melinda Nayakik, who has been filing up a storm, which has been really helpful to get a handle on the office situation.  Fortunately, Susie Stine, who has tons of accounting experience and has filled in on UIC Science’s accounting side before also became available.  She’s helping Melinda learn the 2 (!) accounting systems and the paper-flow routines.  Susie has also been really  helpful as we work through moving billing to the main accounting folks.  A good thing, too, since I’ve had the first round of corporate budgets and two CRM reports to take care of.

The budget is in the hands of the higher-ups until the next round, although there are a mass of questions flying back and forth as usual.  One of the CRM reports is just waiting for a nicer background for the main map of this season’s work, assuming it is forthcoming soon, and the other has a couple of references that need to be added.

Other than that, the main thing that is urgent is the presentation for the 18th Arctic Conference in Bryn Mawr.  I leave Tuesday night (since it takes a couple of days to get anywhere that is not in Alaska), so it has to be more or less done by then.  I’ve got an outline, but I need to talk to a couple of whaling captain couples to make sure everything is correct, and I’d like some more pictures of current gear.  I was going to work on this today, and maybe go visit some folks, but I somehow wound up with a stomach bug & couldn’t go out.

I’ve been working on the travel for the Christmas holidays (in upstate NY) and one of the two conferences I’m going to early next year.  My husband & I are both giving papers at a conference in Munich in late January.  He’s going to a meeting at Abisko in Sweden in mid-January, and they’re willing to have me come too, so we’re trying to arrange it as one trip.  Less travel time, and it’ll keep the costs reasonable, I hope.  The organizers are reimbursing a good bit of it, but still, no point going crazy.  I’ve got to go to Tromsø in mid-February, so that travel needs to be figured out next.

Glenn & I may be the only folks at these meetings who actually think there’s a lot of daylight.  Nothing like meeting in the far North in the dead of winter:-).