Back (Relatively) Intact

Well hello there.  I am home, got in yesterday evening after an insanely long day of travel.  Is always so surreal to me to wake up in one hemisphere/continent and go to bed that night in completely different ones.

The trip went well in many ways.  Field assistants were great, weather cooperated, data was fanfuckingtastic. As much as I was kind of dreading going, due mostly to just plain travel burn-out, I think it was good for me to spend 10 days getting some serious UV (with sunscreen, of course, SPF 100!), definitely felt the Winter Blue Haze melting off of my mood. Seriously, how can one be unhappy when you wake up to this view every morning?

On the downside, I was violently ill for the first two days/nights at the field site.  I mean, I felt like I threw up everything I'd eaten for the last six months.  And my body was kind (NOT) enough to have those attacks only at night, and both nights were stormy, so I was basically staggering out into the wind and rain to puke every hour for two nights in a row, by the end I was just retching up blood.  I ended up pretty weak and dehydrated as hell, and my esophagus felt ripped to shreds, obviously, but did bounce back pretty quickly.  Lots of water and bananas to get my potassium back up, and a whole day (a rare rainless day too, it killed me) off of work. Getting sick is exactly the situation I always dread, because besides the physical stress, I always have volunteer field assistants that literally can't/don't know how to do the work without me, so if I'm down then the whole team is stalled.

  Eating and overexercise went about as they normally do there.  My body was definitely ready to go by the time the departure date came around. I tend to hit a major exhaustion point around Day 7 in the field, and that was exactly the number of days I was there, this was a relatively short jaunt down there.  Weight had decreased a few pounds upon return, but expecting it to come back quickly as I get back to normal routine here.  I'm still on Cipro (antibiotic commonly prescribed for tropical stomach ooglies), which is also messing up digestion somewhat.

And holy hell, I was in the tropics just 36 hours ago and woke up to it being 25 degrees here.  ACK, my equatorial body doth protest!

Anyway, despite the rather miserable first two days, the trip went incredibly well.  No problems with flights or transportation, weather was good enough for me to get work done in time despite sick day and it being rainy season.  I'm superthrilled with my research results.  And less than one week til I see Match again!

And G. was so happy to see me that he literally has refused to be more than 6 inches away from me since I walked in the door last night.  He was even pressed right up against the tub while I was taking a shower, lmao.  I am validated!

That's my updatage d'jour. I am WAY behind on blogs but am going to try to get caught up this weekend.  Missed y'all!