In chemistry, nothing is easy. Everything has failure modes. It’s possible to screw up when putting water in drums. My ham-fisted attempts at a new reaction pathway for a thorny, expensive process have thus far lead to naught. Nature has hidden some subtle requirements that are yet unknown to me. Application of known processes to new substrates may suffer failures that seem obvious afterwards, but are opaque going in.
I used to joke that if one in ten reactions lead to a good result I was doing well. It’s not always that bad, but you can have stretches where the most reasonable transformations fail in one way or other. Unfortunate side products, poor yields, wrong selectivity, yada, yada, yada. Try doing the last experiment first, they say.
Th’ Gaussling is off to the far side of the world next week for a conference. A week in Bangkok will offer some needed punctuated disequilibrium. The down side- 20 hours of confinement in an aluminum tube with wheezing strangers. I would prefer to be sedated and put in a box for transport than sit in an airline seat for that long.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
I would love to make that flight. No cellphone calls, no emails, no meetings, just time to read a (tiny) bit of that stack of technical literature on my desk. Side benefit: A stack of papers with one or more pages displaying multi-step syntheses is a great conversation inhibitor. If the obnoxious person in the seat next to you is obsessed with telling you their life story, they will lose that desire after a quick glance over to what you are reading. It works every time for me.
CBS, Monday, 2030 hrs, The Big Bang Theory. Everything you always knew about scaring THEM, writ large. Why suffer the trespasses of others when stuck on a plane? (Other than Homeland Severity, of course). Lax personal hygiene frames a statement. Never bathe at home when the hotel pays for water and energy – reduce your carbon footprint Planes can be fun.