After nearly 5 years here at Berkeley, I finally submitted a paper last week, to the journal Neuron. With any luck the reviewers will have nothing to say and the paper will be accepted, but I would also not be surprised if they ask for some more experiments, most of which will probably be hard. Until the reviews come back, though, I’m footloose and fancy-free, and for the first time in something like 3 years I can take a real vacation.

Going this long without a break has been good for me – I’ve had to learn how to enjoy myself where I happen to be – but I’m sort of at a loss for what to do. I’d be perfectly happy hiking through the Sierra Nevada for two weeks, but I have enough frequent flyer miles to go anywhere on the planet (and they’re with United, too!), so I might as well go somewhere more exciting. I’m thinking of a trip to Recife and the Fernando de Noronha archipelago. All of this is contingent on my ability to get reasonable tickets around Brazil (and even into Fernando de Noronha, which has strict limits on the number of tourists) on such a last-minute basis. I’ll probably leave early next week if I can pull it off.

In the meanwhile I’m going to take my bug book up to the Botanical Gardens.

(cdm | Viagens)