I’ve been traveling for over a month now, from conference to conference, with a bit of vacation thrown in at the end.

(As such, I haven’t had time to read up on the recent announcement of the detection of neutrinos and high-energy photons from a blazar, Matt Strassler has a nice piece on it.)

One thing I didn’t expect was how exhausting going to three conferences in a row would be. I didn’t give any talks this time around, so I thought I was skipping the “work” part. But sitting in a room for talk after talk, listening and taking notes, turns out to still be work! There’s effort involved in paying attention, especially in a scientific talk where the details matter. You assess the talks in your head, turning concepts around and thinking about what you might do with them. It’s the kind of thing you don’t notice for a seminar or two, but at a conference, after a while, it really builds up. After three, let’s just say I’ve really needed this vacation. I’ll be back at work next week, and maybe I’ll have a longer blog post for you folks. Until then, I ought to get some rest!