Josh and Geneil tour pretty much the entire American West

So in a spare moment today (there haven't been many of those lately) I noticed that our blog hasn't been updated in about a month. Perhaps you are wondering why we went offline, or maybe you just assumed that I finally lost my lifelong battle with painful, awkward illiteracy. But in truth we have done quite a bit of traveling in the past 3 1/2 weeks.

On March 21, we made a two-day banzai run up to Las Vegas so that I could present a paper at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting. We stayed in the Riviera, an older hotel that served as host for the conference. The hotel itself wasn't all that great--$154/night got you an average room with no breakfast, the pool was closed, and (sporadic) wireless internet access cost an extra $9.95 a day. But since Graduate Studies paid for most of my trip, I can't really complain. The paper presentation itself went all right, all things considered. There were only about 7 people in a room with seats for 100, but since I got assigned to the first conference session on the first day of the conference, and on a weekend in Vegas to boot, I guess I should be grateful that anybody at all made it over. The few who were there liked my presentation--I discussed the fall of Corregidor Island in World War II.

The same day we got home, Geneil found out that her grandmother had passed away earlier that day. She was 85, and went about as peacefully as one could hope for, but it still came as kind of a sad shock nonetheless. Since that was my finals week, I couldn't get away for the funeral, but Geneil flew up to Washington later that week and stayed for 4 days.

After finishing finals (an ordeal in and of themselves), I flew up to Salt Lake on March 30 to begin this year's recruitment trip for my graduate program. Well okay, I didn't actually fly, but I rode in an airplane that could. Sheesh. Anyway, Geneil flew into Salt Lake that same afternoon, and then we went to Provo. Between Tuesday and Friday of that week, my friend Nick (a fellow grad student) and I made 12 class presentations and held hour-long information sessions at 3 different universities in two different states. And yes, it was snowing the whole time, and driving, at least in Rexburg, Idaho, really was uphill both ways. (And the rental car had no traction whatsoever.)

We stayed with Geneil's relatives in Utah during conference weekend, and then came back here last Monday, just in time for school to start again. But it was an exciting adventure, marked by blinding snow, run-ins with Utah's migrating deer population (probably 8 inches made the difference between a close call and a terrible collision at 50 mph), and overzealous Pleasant Grove police officers (apparently they thought we were drug runners).

But now I can just relax and focus on the simple joys of my upcoming comprehensive exams, TA-ing a class, catching up on all the regular work that I missed, and looking for an employer who thinks that my master's degree actually means something. More on that front later...