Monkey Brain Musings

Good Morning! At least it's morning for me. :) I am sitting in the Dubai airport, awaiting my flight to Entebbe, after a 2 night layover in Dubai. As expected, my 14.5 hour flight to Dubai was brutal. I am not a good sleeper on the best of days, but packed into a plane with screaming babies (so much empathy for the parents of said babies!) and a seat mate lacking personal space boundaries, pretty much eliminated any chance of sleeping on the flight. I did manage to watch 8 movies, mainly because once the seat in front of me reclined, there was no space to work on my computer. I did enjoy the fact that Emerites has a starry sky on the ceiling of the plane! As expansive as the Dubai Airport is, it's incredibly efficient, so getting my luggage was a snap. I was never to happy to order room service, and take a long, hot shower, before climbing into bed. My poor, confused brain woke me a mere 4 hours later (4 am Dubai time!), but I managed a few more hours of rest before giving up a...

Did you know that nearly 700 million people get a mosquito-borne illness each year? Resulting in over one million deaths?!? Hopefully, my vaccines and malaria meds will help prevent Malaria and Yellow fever, but there is still West Nile, Dengue, Zika...it's a long list! This should help you understand why I designated this weekend as "Permethrin Weekend". :) Permethrin is a chemical that is often used to treat clothing and gear against ticks and mosquitos, and one of my travel buddies "gifted" me a bottle of the stuff for my trips. I started by treating all of my luggage, backpack, and packing cubes and then all of my clothing, additional mosquito netting, travel pillow and hats. I also have 2 bottles of 100% DEET joining me on this journey. As fun as it was freaking out my coworkers, by showing them the list of poisonous snakes in Uganda, I think it's the mozzies that pose a greater threat. Well, the gear is treated, clothing and shoes are packed, but there...