shabbat shalom 22.10.09

Hi everyone, Uff, here we go.  After months of preparation, our EBONE workshop starts next week.  My car is stuff with 60 conference kits, a case of wine and two kilos of goat cheese for it, and I'm driving down to Neve Shalom, the venue, to drop off this first batch of stuff.  Registration lists are made, and the Europeans have all reported their flight arrival times so we know when to expect them at the guest house.  My lecture is prepared, my boss's lecture is prepared, there are last minute shuffles in presentations (which really will continue until the last minute, this being Israel .)  I even went out and bought a jacket; as host of the conference, I gotta look halfway civilized.  The Sicilian ENPI proposal for a marine monitoring system got finished on time.  68 pages, total budget 1,147,000 euros (about 1.4 million dollars) and our piece of the pizza is 252,000 euros.  If we get it, this is enough to set up that biodiversity monitoring center we've talked about for years.  It will also be my last grant.  Really.  I'm getting too old and would be retiring after this grant finished.  But it would be one helluva good way to finish up.  I've set my goal to have the information service in this outfit knocked into shape before I leave, and to have it on the web and nattering to other countries around the Mediterranean would be a very classy shape to be.   To put the icing on the cake, the journal issue with my article on En Fescha oasis and our ten years of monitoring and management work finally came out this week and I can circulate the reprints.  That would normally be reason for a party but I'm just too busy to think much about it.  I'm senior author and have three co-authors.  I think in all cases this is their first professional publication.  So we really do need to celebrate once the dust settles a little bit. It wont' settle for long; 9 November I'm off to Thessalonica for our annual EBONE meeting.  Summarize 18 months of work.  Well, we were in harness from the beginning.  There is still a lot to do; we are at the halfway point.  We may not finish it all.  But I can see how to move forward in the coming year; we have to focus on getting the biodiversity data which is what this project is all about at the bottom line.  The old English vegetation scientist, Bunce, who is the engine behind this project, is coming early to the conference venue and so am I.  We plan an afternoon just plotting strategy.  Funny; when I first met him I knew this was a guy with whom I wanted to work someday.   He's a bluff old English naturalist and stubborn as a mule, but he has a lot of common sense and a low tolerance for bull.  This gets stuff done, and that is why England is the only country on earth that really did a complete inventory of their countryside habitats.  Not only once, but three times over thirty years.  He's a winning horse even now in his mid-70's, and I'm confident if we stick close, we will have something to show for it.  This is his third trip to work with us in the last three years.  I think he likes us too.  We take good care of him and his wife when they are here. Well, I know the drill.  The work is prepared beforehand, and I plan to rest this weekend.  Get my house in order.  Arrange for my pet sitter.  Pack my suitcase for the three days at Neve Shalom.  Kitties will miss me, but I'll only be an hour away in an emergency.  It will be a real pleasure getting up at a civilized 6 am rather than my usual 4:30 during the working week, and not have to hassle about keeping a house in order for a few days.   Guess that is all for now.  Wish me luck! Shabbat shalom, Linda