My, What A Busy Week!: 2012 edition

I've never been very good at taking vacations. For my whole adult life, a minimum of one of the following statements has been true: I'm a student, with the flexible schedule that goes with that; I work at a job where I can make my own hours; I live and/or work in a place that I would have considered a vacation destination when I was younger. So, step zero in convincing myself to take a vacation has always been to convince myself that I am not somehow already on vacation. Once that's accomplished, step one has always been to convince myself that I deserve one.

I moved back to Bloomington a week ago after spending the summer in California at Mozilla Research. All summer, my work obligations and my research obligations have been fighting with each other for my attention. In May and June, I needed to implement suffix inference for integer literals and start figuring out what the deal was with traits and typeclasses in Rust, but I also needed to work on my POPL submission. In July, I needed to work on implementing traits, but I also needed to work on the tech report that accompanied my POPL submission, and I had to fit both of those things in around OPLSS. In August, I needed to bring my project to some semblance of a close and give a talk about it at Mozilla, but I also needed to prepare and give a research talk at Berkeley. I did all those things, and as it turns out, working one's ass off for three months is an effective way to convince oneself that one is, in fact, not currently on vacation, and furthermore, that one deserves a vacation when it's all over. So I declared myself on vacation last week. It was awesome. As a result, this edition of My, What A Busy Week! Week is pretty much the least busy one ever. Enjoy!

Monday: Courtesy of Christine lyceum_arabica and her car, we arrive at home in Bloomington shortly after midnight, with a large pile of luggage and two very unhappy cats who have just endured a twelve-hour day of being carried, driven, and flown across the country. Christine and Mark tristmasjedi and their cats are all staying with us for the next couple of weeks, bringing the human/feline population of the household up to four and four from its baseline two and two. If, at any point in the next two weeks, humanity finds itself at war with an alien force prone to cat allergies, I fully expect the feds to show up and haul away our couch for use as a chemical weapon. I write up the current state of default methods in Rust and promise to work on it more later in the week, but don't feel in any particular hurry. Vacation!

Tuesday: I pay Christine's favor forward and take Jamie to the airport. I book myself a ticket for ICFP and start dreaming about what Chris chrisamaphone and I will do with the extra couple of days we've given ourselves -- I've never been to northern Europe before. I cheer Alex oniugnip on as he starts teaching