Conference report

So I am in Boulder and it is really pretty here. Also, it is super dry, and the air is thin, and the sun feels hotter. But maybe that's just my imagination because I know how high we are? Despite how pretty it is here, I'm not sure I'd ever feel comfortable in such a dry climate.

Our hotel is not as nice as I'd thought it would be, but it has good pillows. Conference food actually includes some fresh fruit, which is a bonus. No vegetables in sight, however.

Also, on the way to the conference I ran into some other random conference goers. I could tell because they had the same little map in their hand that I was using in order to try to navigate the 1-mile walk from the hotel to the conference building. So we got to talking and it turns out that these two women know one of my former doctoral students, and are kind of colleagues with him. So then one of the women asks my last name and when I told her, she totally did a giant double take. It was crazy. Then she said, "Oh, I've read tons of your papers! Wow, I've run in to a [our discipline] celebrity right here on the path!"

That was so weird. I guess in academia you're not going to get recognized by sight, you'll get recognized by your last name. Then we got to the actual conference and nobody else there really gave a shit who I was, so it reduced my ego back down to its proper size.