Week 105 -- Joint Math Meetings

It was a pretty good week, all told. I ran four times in San Diego. Sunday morning, it was actually raining while I ran. It started out as a light rain, got heavy for a while, and was pretty much done by the time I was. Monday, it had rained, but didn't rain while I was out. For the first day and a half, the only sun that we saw was on the logo (above.) Tuesday, it was finally clear, but kind of cool. That was the one day that I wished that I had a long sleeve shirt. But then again, a lot of the San Diegans were wearing long sleeves and long pants and gloves and hats, so I was showing my midwestern toughness by running in shorts and a T-shirt. Wednesday was the best day of the four, but I only ran four miles, because I'd pushed it the day before. Finally, I ran today in the gym, six miles. For the week, I ran 27.2 miles, just over a marathon.

The conference was fine. I went to a lot of talks, ranging in length from 10 minutes to 50 minutes. (The more important you are in the grand scheme of things, the longer your talk. I gave a talk that was 15 minutes, well towards the low end of importance.) Of course, there wasn't any relationship between length and quality, but I mostly managed to avoid long bad talks. The other thing that I have found shows little relationship is how good I expect the talk to be and how good it is. Some of the best talks that I went to were ones that I just dropped in on, not expecting much. Some of the ones that I was really looking forward to were pretty bad.

There seemed to be a lot of canceled talks at this meeting. Maybe I was just unlucky in my choice of talks that I tried to go to.

I came back with a list of 25 things to follow up on. If past experience is any guide, some I will follow up on, and some I won't. At least a few will have long-term effects on my teaching, which is the whole point.

I am glad to be home. I missed my family. These things always seem like a good idea when I schedule them, but not so great when I spend five days away. Not that I'm sorry that I went. But I'm glad to be back.