The CHIPP 2012 winter school of particle physics is over, and so is the 50th winter meeting on nuclear physics. The two events had three things in common: they were both held in renowned locations for winter sports in the Alps (Engelberg, Switzerland, and Bormio, Italy); they both ran from January 22nd to 27th; and I attended both as a lecturer.
In a sense, it sucks. It would have been so much better if these two events had been scheduled, say, a month apart: I would then have been able to make best use of the few free hours per day devoted to skiing. Instead, I was forced to run from one place to the other in the middle of the week: a five hour drive through tall mountain passes and snow. But on the other hand, who can afford to spend two full weeks away from work, just weeks past a two-week Christmas break ? Not me. S**t is piling up faster than I can shovel it: I have a horrible backlog of work to do next week!
Anyway, one of the side results of this schedule clash is that I spent nine days without blogging. Wow, that's a record for me. In seven years, I never spent that much time away from this pastime. Did you miss me ? I doubt it -nowadays there are plenty of excellent sites where you can learn or discuss the recent results of particle physics experiments. But I like to think that indeed some of you were wondering what was going on with me here.
So I am back to blogging finally. I have already something to report about quark-gluon plasma studies by CMS - it is the subject of my next article. So what am I doing here ? Nothing, really. Let me turn to writing that one. Stay tuned!
