Thanks for Not Moving to Bolivia

Thanks to Peggy Kolm for her nice review of my blog-book in Nature this week. It's great to have such comments from someone whose own women-in-science work I admire so much. And she's right about my writing for many different audiences, though she did neglect to mention cats in that list.

Anyway, the fact that I am getting increased blog traffic as a result of the review almost makes me wish I were posting something a little less strange today, but this is what I am thinking about:

On this Thanksgiving Day, I am taking time to reflect on the fact that I am thankful that this has never happened to me:

"In 1960, with sales [of Slinkys] down, Mr. James joined what his wife considered a religious cult and moved to Bolivia, leaving her with six children and the company. "
- from the obituary of the widow of the inventor of the Slinky

Well, I guess it wasn't all bad. She did awesome things with the company, which prospered (but even so..).

Perhaps I should try harder to find something else for which to be thankful? How about this:

I am thankful that the departmental accountant who left work without warning very early Tuesday, not to return until Monday, and who neglected to do a very essential thing that absolutely had to be done before the end of the month (i.e. Sunday), checked his email from home Wednesday morning and finished the task.

I got all my paperwork done on time, but he did nothing with it before leaving the office Tuesday without warning or even a message to say he hadn't done anything with my forms. I was just a little bit stressed out about this for 15.5 hours, but that's OK, the problem was solved in time.

The accountant, who fortunately had not moved to Bolivia and joined a cult but had instead started his holiday early, and I just exchanged pleasant Happy Thanksgiving emails, and all is well again. Life would be boring without a bit of accounting peril now and then, would it not?