I hate traveling, II: All I need is a disco soundtrack.

Pigeons fuck on the ledge outside my hotel window. I opened the curtain to discover that my window ledge is the pigeon equivalent of a Motel 6 on Las Vegas Boulevard. The bottom 10" of the safety glass (am I in danger of assassination?) is scratched and filthy. The ledge itself is coated with an inch of pigeon shit.

Apparently pigeons have no problem fornicating in a thick slime of their own excrement. They seem to enjoy it.

Our work here is almost done. I have been on a Committee of Visitors (COV). Every federal agency that funds research must open their records for inspection by COVs, who spend several days evaluating the review process, the quality of the funded research, the efficiency of the agency, among other things. I bet you didn't know that people actually read those final reports we hastily cabbage together at the end of a project.

The COV produces a 15-20 page report addressing a vast array of tedious bureaucratic questions using equally tedious bureaucratic language. I can't imagine how people did this job before word processors. Do I have any old salts among my readers who could tell me how this was accomplished?

I thought briefly yesterday about sending out an invitation to Beltway-area bloggers to get together IRL for the purpose of consuming alcohol, but at 4:30 this afternoon we still had only half the report written. The second half went much faster than any of us anticipated. (Members of past COVs: we are eternally grateful for those old reports.) Next time, if I ever do this again, I'll have a better idea of how my schedule will go and I won't have to spend three nights alone in my room eating Thai food out of a styrofoam box.

Tomorrow night I will be in my own bed.