So, for the last nine years, most of the time when Leigh and I have traveled, it’s been because she has attended a conference, and I’ve come along for the ride. “What did you do today, honey?” I would ask, and she’d tell me she sat in a paper session on Lehrdal / Jackendoff theory or some such. “How about you?” she’d ask, and I’d breezily reply that I had climbed Mount Olympus.

Then she would stab me with a fork.

So needless to say, she was thrilled about the current situation. I won’t go into a lot of details, because no one cares, but here’s why we were in Dresden:

It’s a pretty big conference. I would estimate on the order of 2,000 or so physicists attended for talks with such exciting titles as “High Power Test Results of the SPARC C-Band Accelerating Structures,” “Development of a Low-Latency, High-precision, Intra-train Beam Feedback System Based on Cavity Beam Position Monitors,” and “Why is Women’s Football Less Popular?” (I am not making that last one up.)

The conference hall is immense:

Oh, and I was here completely on the dime of the U.S. taxpayer, since I presented two posters at the conference. So – thanks, U.S. taxpayers!