Home is where the kettle is

Cuba was awesome. I highly recommend it to those of you who are able to visit (sorry, American blog buddies!) I'm sure I'll bore you all to tears with my planned series of upcoming posts and photos*, but I'll try to intersperse them with other random ramblings intelligent insights.

First, though, I have to deal with a logjam of digital information that is threatening to unleash a flood of epic proportions upon my poor jetlagged** head:

>250 work emails to read / file / answer / delete
>350 grant opportunity announcements and work-related Google alerts to pick through
>400 "proper" blog posts to read (not including LOLcats etc)
>1000 journal article alerts to browse (in Google Reader - I recently switched all my TOC alerts from email to RSS, which makes things sooooo much easier to manage).

I hate feeling like I'm missing out on anything, so if there have been any major announcements, developments, or fights in our little corner of the blogosphere, I'd appreciate a wee linkie to take me to the action! I'll do my best to catch up on everyone's news over the next couple of weeks or so, but until then:

• why is it so fucking dark and cold?
• why did the local sandwich shop not have a band playing when I went to get my lunch?
• why did no-one try to sell me cigars or lead me to their brother's restaurant on the walk there and back?
• why have I not had a single drink yet today? It's, like, after five!

Mind you, I've been back for only 27 hours and I've already done lots of wonderful things that weren't an option in Cuba:

• watched hockey
• arsed about on the internet
• had a really good cup of tea (actually, three)
• eaten sushi
• drunk wonderful, tasty, refreshing tapwater
• snuggled under a blankie in a cold room
• rubbed Saba's belly and Google's chin
• slagged off the government

Home. There's no place like it.

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*um. Our new "waterproof" camera did great on its first field test - we got some great shots on, in, and under the nice calm water - but it turned out only to be waterproof if you don't take it into crashing Atlantic surf that picks you up and smacks you back down into the water. It might just be a shorted-out battery. The photos on the card might be salvagable. Luckily, we'd taken our old camera (literally held together with duct tape and an elastic band) with us, with the aim of giving it away to a school or university, so we used that for the second week (dodgy Cuban batteries allowing - I'd forgotten to recharge the ones in it). But the awesome photos we took on the most beautiful beach either of us has ever seen, and in gloriously photogenic Habana, might not be recoverable. Boooooooooooo.

**Doesn't it seem like three hours shouldn't be enough to bother you? And yet, every time I visit the East coast, it gets me.