Lounging

I’m lounging around. In Cincinnatti Ohio. Why? Well, it has been a long day, and I’m tired. I spent the whole day yesterday traveling to get here, changing planed in Chicago, eventually getting to my hotel at 10:00 pm, having arisen at 6:00am. I spent the flying time thinking about physics and writing the talk I was invited to give here as part of the regional SPOCK meeting at the University of Cincinnatti. The letters stand for something, but I can’t recall what it is right now. It does not mean, as the title might suggest, that several emotionally-challenged and otherwise tv-cliche-handicapped individuals were meeting to discuss arcane matters in a room somewhere. It was a meeting of several people from the region’s string theory community to discuss…. Ok, ok, Ok…stop giggling!

I got up at 7:00am -really 4:00am my time- transferred all my pages of notes to the iPad, and got ready, leaving to do the short (I assumed) walk to the physics department in the wind and rain. I enjoyed that bit… I had however mis-estimated how long it would take me to get to the Physics department building, largely due to me not really knowing at the start how far the hotel actually was from the main parts of campus… bit of an error…and always embarrassing to be late for my own talk…then not being able to find my way into the building initially (side doors are locked on Saturdays, of course), but I made it there… About ten minutes late. On the plus side, since I was the first speaker I did not miss any of the first talk…. And I learned that the iPad works well in the rain when you are trying to read the map you stored on it…

The talk was fun to give, since the audience had had their coffee and bagels and were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and so were keen to engage in lively discussion of nearly every point. This meant I got slowed down a lot, so that the pedagigical introductory material I’d prepared for the non-experts took up 90% of the allotted time.. Happily, it is a relaxed meeting and time is very flexible and so I was able to grab some extra time to quickly show the highlights of some exciting new research results I’ll probably tell you about here in the next week or two.

Anyhow, with very interesting discussions over lunch, and listening to two more talks in the afternoon -also interesting- I find myself quite the tired traveller. I’m now lounging, after some down time in my hotel room, in the lounge of the hotel nursing a glass of Guinness after finishing off a tasty dinner. I’m doing my usual observing of people from a nice vantage point in a cozy corner of the room, …and I’m blogging some random thoughts, catching up with you, so what else could I wish for?

Soon, to bed, to awake to catch my 6:00am shuttle to return to Los Angeles. Out and back so fast I don’t think anyone will notice I was gone. Excellent.

-cvj