Q: "Bob is Missing! Are you ok? You're not sick again, are you?"

A: Only sick of much of the bickering on the FML. Ok, that was a cheap
shot. Hummm, how about, "I'm only missing about half my hair. It seems
to have left with half my mind." "Baaa!", you say? Ok, THAT is a sheep
shot!

A number of you have noted in private messages that I have not been
answering many emails, not answering private questions, and not posting
to the FML lately. It's true; I rarely even answer the phone and just
let it go to the answering machine, making minimal calls. There are
only a finite number of hours per day that I can spend answering
emails. I swear -- if I could take a pill and never sleep again, I
would do it in a microsecond. Even so, I would be hard pressed to
spend as much time as I would need to spend for email and posting.

Lately, most of my free time is being spent preparing for a forthcoming
scientific expedition. I am preparing the groundwork for a trip to New
Zealand to study the feral ferrets on the north and south islands. I
hope to leave in late March 2008, but I have been continually
frustrated (as in FRUST--F***ING--RATED!) on the exact dates because
of problems with NZ contacts. I am tearing my hair out about it. This
has seriously impacted my telling my Australian friends when I can go
there as well. I am trying to coordinate the work of several different
researchers and am spending 6 to 8 hours on the problem each day. The
work is going to be done and I expect to have the dates of the research
visit figured out soon. Yeah, well, my New Zealand contacts have
promised that before.

I am also trying to schedule a trip in 2008 back to Hungary and
possibly to Poland and perhaps maybe possibly Ukraine to study the
polecats there. Unfortunately, these plans are currently just tenuous
at present. Anyway, I am just extremely pressed for time right now,
nothing else, so don't be a doofus and read anything into it. Sometimes
a cigar is just a cigar and an absence is only someone being really
busy.

Hopefully, things will quiet down soon and I can get back to the fun
tasks of answering email and stirring up FML debates.

Bob C [log in to unmask]

[Posted in FML 5740]