"Tetris" That In There

Dear fellow children of the 80's, remember Tetris? Of course you do. You probably still play it on your phone or computer. Though nothing can beat the memories of playing it on the original Nintendo, with Russian music celebrating your win. In fact, in college I once found myself at an Ozma concert where they played a cover of Korobeiniki (I subsequently downloaded it and added it to a number of playlists on my iPod).
A refresher for those less geeky than myself:
The point of Tetris is to position the dropping game piece so that no empty spaces are created. Once a row has been filled with squares, it will disappear. The trick, obviously, is to strategically pack all of the pieces as tightly as possible by appropriately rotating and shifting the dropping pieces.
This skill that so many of us 20-somethings learned as children has a number of practical applications. Mr. often uses it when packing a trunk of a car with a number of suitcases or grocery bags. to "Tetris" everything in there, he properly arranges the items to allow for little wasted space.

Last night I had what I felt was a Tetris moment. Only this time, instead of fitting together tangible objects, I was fitting Mr.'s interview schedule. Due to the limited time between now and the rank list due-date, many interview dates overlap. In order to maximize interviews, we want to try to schedule multiple interviews on the same weekend (one Friday, one Saturday). Of course, many programs also have social events the night prior, which can make traveling difficult. On one weekend, Mr. has a Friday interview scheduled in the Northeast with a social event the evening prior. Yesterday he accepted an interview in the Midwest for the next day (Saturday) that also has a social event the evening prior. Without knowing the start time of the Midwest social event, we estimate the gap between the end of the interview and the start of the social event is no less than 6 hours. Luckily, we found a direct flight that should take off roughly 3 hours after the end of the Northeast interview and land about an hour prior to the earliest likely start time of the Midwest social event. Unfortunately, the cost for that flight one way (there may be other Midwest interviews the following week, so we didn't want to book the return yet) would have been $600. Luckily, we were able to switch around his Thanksgiving flights to account for that and another interview trip using a multi-destination trip planner to arrange everything for far less. What a relief! Now we just have to hope nothing else changes between now and then. ...Easier said than done...

127 days until Match Day