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]