Not in the stinging sense, but in the keeping busy sense. Although we were mainly off on our holiday recently, I've been kept busy recently with various things that required completion. First there were some minor adjustments to the poster for CoLing/ACL. Another conference that requires I change our lovingly formatted landscape poster into portrait. It's a pain because you go to all the effort of realignment, and here the template doesn't even come out right in portrait, and some people haven't even bothered. These troublemakers promptly stick their poster on top of other peoples since the boards are not big enough to accommodate them.

With the poster done I could focus on the rejoinder for my postdoc funding. Answering the reviewers points was a really good exercise. As well as being able to address any flaws in the original proposal, it gives you an opportunity to add details you didn't have space for in the original strict 10 pages. Of course, it is only a small opportunity, since you have a very strict limit of 5000 characters. That was hard. It's not that I had a hard time answering points, just that there were a lot of little queries, and I didn't want to be seen to be ignoring any. So I answered them as best I could, included all the relevant information, such as my post-submission publications, and submitted after we got back (I was working within hours of us landing in Edinburgh).

Speaking of publications, I have now officially submitted a journal paper. I was informally reviewed by some of our peers, we got a good response and the paper looks good. All credit to my co-authors who worked on it a lot while I was away.

And then to Australia. The visa process which seemed to have stalled is now back on track. Last week, on our anniversary no less, we received the confirmation that our nomination was successful and we could move on to the application proper. And so we did. Filled it in and lodged it online. There are more details for those who are interested in the other blog.

And then it's on with work. Obviously we will continue to do whatever needs to be done to get ourselves to Sydney, otherwise I shall be working away like a good little blogademic.