the universe really just likes to mess with your mind sometimes

I was at a holiday party just before Christmas where a number of colleagues were guests and I met several faculty I had yet to meet. I'm having a lovely conversation with a grumpy old English professor (not really grumpy but I'm pretty sure he'd be pleased if people viewed him that way) about my sweater (the silk garden tie-dye number for those who have seen it) and trading pedigrees as academics are wont to do when he looks at me and asks "Do you want to go on the trip?"

I of course stared at him blankly in reaction to this complete non-sequitur and then proceeded to give many looks suggesting that he should continue since I hadn't the foggiest clue on what he was talking about (I'm sure the lacking a clue bit dominated most of the looks). Well it turns out that this guy has a grant from NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) to take faculty from our little college on trips. They go once a year and each trip starts out with a seminar series at Cambridge (including as many Nobel prize winners as they can dig up apparently -Hawkings has participated) and then traveling with the seminar speakers to two other locations. This year the trip will include Vienna so that we can go to the opera and ballet and then Prague just because it sounded like it would be fun (his words). Apparently nearly everyone else in the room at the time knew about it since they were primarily in the humanities (and have right of first refusal for these trips), but every year they grab a few folks from other disciplines to round out the group. The guy in charge loves nothing better than to find unsuspecting new faculty who seem like they might be fun and to invite them to come along. That would appear to be me this year.

The grant pays for everything during the two weeks except for souvenirs and he just followed up his invite with an unofficial, once-all-of-the-humanities-folks- are-signed-up-and-it-isn't-unseemly-to-invite-the-outsiders-I'll-get-the-formal-invite, written invitation to go on the trip.

Holy shit! Karma just can't possibly explain this one...