I'm tired, I have a headache, and my butt is sore from what is now literally days of sitting on planes. You might have noted that I just got back from Burma a few days ago. That was followed by a weekend at home in bed with travellers diarrhea. I did manage to get my laundry done, and throw a few things back into my luggage and pile into another plane this morning. After the doors closed I discovered that the Toronto airport as part of their 'noise abatement' strategy, does not allow planes to take off before 6:30 am. But my flight was still scheduled for 6 am? How does that make any sense? So we sit there for a half hour until the pilot can get permission to take off. This made me even grumpier thinking about how I had to get up at 2:15 this morning so I could sit on the runway for the sake of noise abatement. Every so often I run into someone who tells me how they love what I do, and really wish they had a job like mine. And true, in the grand scheme of things, I love my job, and appreciate very much the privilege it is to do and see the things I get to do and see, but this is one of those days folks. One of those days. At least I'm going to a conference, where there will be nothing unexpected. No crazy third world schedule changes, no failures of electricity, no menacing microbes in the water, no scary unstable governments, no threat of mugging or car-jacking, no deadly mosquitoes floating around in the dead of night. The worst thing I will have to deal with will probably be too much air-conditioning.