![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Life without Gwen
Aug. 23rd, 2012 06:58 pmTuesday afternoon when I dropped Gwen off at daycare, I gave her a couple extra hugs and kisses before leaving knowing I won't see her again until Sunday morning. I went straight from work to the train station where I took the overnight train to Copenhagen, arriving just in time to drop my things off at the room I arranged via AirBnB (thanks, Dad, for the tip-off), and head over to catch the morning session of AiML, during which I furiously prepared my slides for my talk in the afternoon. Thankfully, it was only a short-presentation, so I had 15 minutes (including discussion), which necessitated ~10 slides, and as I'd already presented the paper in much longer fashion, it was only a matter of picking out which material was the most important, and thus I didn't actually have to create any new slides.
Even though I'm not a big fan of short talks, I was happy with how mine went; there's something incredibly satisfying about having a full audience during your talk only to see many people getting up and leaving (the short talks were in parallel sessions, necessitating people moving between rooms) after yours is finished: It means that given the choice between my paper and the one going opposite to me, many people chose to attend mine. As usual, I got a number of interesting questions and remarks directly after, and today I've still been fielding further follow-ups. I love presenting on medieval topics to AiML, since they're always so receptive there!
The conference is running on a sane time schedule, starting around 9:30 and ending around 17:00 (except for tonight where the end of the talks was followed by the AiML business meeting, which I stayed for and was glad I did so); yesterday I headed back towards the train station (my room is directly behind it, very convenient), tried to find a grocery store nearby to pick up something for supper, failed, and ended up getting Chinese take-out, because I didn't really feel up to putting in too much more effort in finding something. I was back in my room by 19:00, in bed with my book not much after that, and though I'd originally dreamt of 12+ hours of uninterrupted sleep, instead I read as late as I wanted, and then slept as late as I wanted -- waking up 1.5 hours before my alarm was set to go off, and then turning over and falling back asleep. Bliss.
Tonight, I wandered a bit further afield in hopes of finding some place that struck my fancy for dinner -- one thing I dislike about traveling alone is that often, navigating restaurant customs in a foreign lanuage by yourself just isn't worth it, so meals often get the short shrift -- and then turned down a street and suddenly recognized it from my stay here in Nov.'11: Mikkeller's brewpub. So I headed in, and asked for a recommendation of something not too bitter, and relatively new, and was suggest Mikkeller/Bridge House's Dark Harvest, which was actually a bit more bitter than I would've liked but still enjoyable. I sat down with my proceedings volume and read one of the papers that was presented yesterday -- finding out some quite interesting connections to a paper of mine from last year which I'll have to talk to the author about tomorrow -- and then went back to the bar to ask for something somewhat on the sweeter end. This time I was suggested Cantillon's Rosé de Gambrinus, as being something that was both sweet and sour. Well, I wouldn't actually call it all that sweet, but it is definitely sour and extremely delightful. I also ordered the cheese platter (recognizing that beer, no matter how good, does not a meal make), which came with a honey mustard; normally I don't really like sweet mustards, but the combination of that with the sour beer was phenomenal. I managed to make it about half-way through another paper in the proceedings before recognizing that I'd had too much beer to plow through that much logic. Soon after I returned back to my room, where it is not now even 21:00, and I'm about to head off to bed, to read, and then to sleep.
Oh, I was going to write something about how the business meeting went, but I don't really feel like it now. Suffice it to say, the chair of the steering committee came to the meeting with three items on the agenda, and at the beginning of the meeting I suggested a fourth which was warmly received and well discussed, and I have hopes that at next AiML, we will be seeing both more women invited speakers, more women on the programming committee, and more history of logic. Whoo!
Even though I'm not a big fan of short talks, I was happy with how mine went; there's something incredibly satisfying about having a full audience during your talk only to see many people getting up and leaving (the short talks were in parallel sessions, necessitating people moving between rooms) after yours is finished: It means that given the choice between my paper and the one going opposite to me, many people chose to attend mine. As usual, I got a number of interesting questions and remarks directly after, and today I've still been fielding further follow-ups. I love presenting on medieval topics to AiML, since they're always so receptive there!
The conference is running on a sane time schedule, starting around 9:30 and ending around 17:00 (except for tonight where the end of the talks was followed by the AiML business meeting, which I stayed for and was glad I did so); yesterday I headed back towards the train station (my room is directly behind it, very convenient), tried to find a grocery store nearby to pick up something for supper, failed, and ended up getting Chinese take-out, because I didn't really feel up to putting in too much more effort in finding something. I was back in my room by 19:00, in bed with my book not much after that, and though I'd originally dreamt of 12+ hours of uninterrupted sleep, instead I read as late as I wanted, and then slept as late as I wanted -- waking up 1.5 hours before my alarm was set to go off, and then turning over and falling back asleep. Bliss.
Tonight, I wandered a bit further afield in hopes of finding some place that struck my fancy for dinner -- one thing I dislike about traveling alone is that often, navigating restaurant customs in a foreign lanuage by yourself just isn't worth it, so meals often get the short shrift -- and then turned down a street and suddenly recognized it from my stay here in Nov.'11: Mikkeller's brewpub. So I headed in, and asked for a recommendation of something not too bitter, and relatively new, and was suggest Mikkeller/Bridge House's Dark Harvest, which was actually a bit more bitter than I would've liked but still enjoyable. I sat down with my proceedings volume and read one of the papers that was presented yesterday -- finding out some quite interesting connections to a paper of mine from last year which I'll have to talk to the author about tomorrow -- and then went back to the bar to ask for something somewhat on the sweeter end. This time I was suggested Cantillon's Rosé de Gambrinus, as being something that was both sweet and sour. Well, I wouldn't actually call it all that sweet, but it is definitely sour and extremely delightful. I also ordered the cheese platter (recognizing that beer, no matter how good, does not a meal make), which came with a honey mustard; normally I don't really like sweet mustards, but the combination of that with the sour beer was phenomenal. I managed to make it about half-way through another paper in the proceedings before recognizing that I'd had too much beer to plow through that much logic. Soon after I returned back to my room, where it is not now even 21:00, and I'm about to head off to bed, to read, and then to sleep.
Oh, I was going to write something about how the business meeting went, but I don't really feel like it now. Suffice it to say, the chair of the steering committee came to the meeting with three items on the agenda, and at the beginning of the meeting I suggested a fourth which was warmly received and well discussed, and I have hopes that at next AiML, we will be seeing both more women invited speakers, more women on the programming committee, and more history of logic. Whoo!
