Lamont Weekly Report, July 17, 2009

The pressure resulting from the Federal Stimulus package proposal opportunities means that there is little sensation that summer has arrived, despite the gorgeous weather (which undoubtedly will come to an abrupt end as I am going sailing for a couple of weeks starting Saturday!). Thanks to the heroics of many - but especially Bonnie Bonkowski, Steve Chillrud and Pat O'Reilly we got an $8M proposal submitted to NIH for a new Exposure Assessment and Environmental
Biogeochemistry facility - one of only three submissions from CU allowed by the rules of the competition.  This is an excellent proposal - put together from scratch in less than six weeks.

We successfully entertained a prospective new member of our Advisory board on Wednesday as well as a prospective new DEES Faculty member on Thursday, but today (Friday) I took off to play at being a sailor and do all the nautical things one has to do to prepare for a mighty voyage all the way to... Nantucket. I will be on email from the boat - but the connection is sometimes painfully slow - so reduced message traffic would be greatly appreciated!  There has long been a joke in my family that the definition of a vacation day for me is one on which I spend twice as much time as usual on email because of the slower speed of the connection.

Anyway, it will be nice to get to sea, smell the salt etc etc, (but I shall be glad that I will not have to dodge typhoons - which is what Langseth is experiencing right now off Taiwan.)

Have a great weekend,

- Mike