Well, I'm back from Washington DC. My interview at Carnegie went well, I think. Several people were very excited about my seminar talk, so that's a good sign. The bad thing is that three of the five people on the committee were gone, and you know it's always good if the important people can but a face to a name on paper. But I think I met with enough people that will give a "good word" for me to the other committee members. We'll see next month if I did well enough and impressed the right people.

Many of you know I took the red-eye in on Thursday night and the red-eye back on Friday night. I have to admit that it's not that bad, especially if you don't sleep the whole night through on a regular basis. I arrived in DC at 7AM and had a few hours to eat breakfast and get to Carnegie for my talk at 11AM. I got enough sleep on the flight to DC and had a big cup of chai tea latte so I was pretty awake for my talk. I don't think taking the red-eye flight diminished my performance any. By the way, the chai was from a DC bookstore chain named Politics and Prose, and it was weird because it wasn't sweet like Starbuck's chai latte. Instead it was really spicy. It's probably more what chai latte is supposed to taste like. Anyways, I didn't start to crash until about 4PM, which was ok because most of the major interviewing sessions were over by then. By then I was just chatting to a few of the other postdocs until "Beer Time" at 5:30 PM. At 6PM I got a ride to the nearest Metro station and headed back to the airport.

Looking back, I would probably do it again, but maybe upgrade to first class on the longer flights for better sleep. I didn't sleep well on the way home because I couldn't get comfortable, even though I was more tired. But then it didn't matter if I slept well because I was going home. I also recommend a direct nonstop flight for maximum sleep time. Or if nonstop is not available (like in my case) choose a connection that if furthest away from you or your destination. I had a number of possible connections, like Houston or Atlanta, but I decided to go through Las Vegas, even though it was going away from DC at first, because then I would have a nice four hour flight on which to sleep.