Travel has become difficult. Last year, a bureaucratic snafu not only denied me a trip to a conference in Hawaii, but it happened late enough that it kept me from scheduling an alternate trip to DAMOP. I spent the last week with the flu, which forced me to cancel a long-weekend trip to visit some college buddies, and now my plan to give a talk at an AAPT conference has been shot down. The government is operating under a continuing resolution, rather than an actual budget, and apparently this means there is a moratorium on this kind of travel. Not going on work-sponsored travel would essentially mean I couldn’t talk about results from work, which was going to be half of my talk. I’d be limited to talking about things that you could pick up on the streetcorner (but don’t do that … you never really know if that information is any good). Meh. Maybe this is a conspiracy.