And boom — I’m back. I’ve been telling myself not to use this excuse for my disappearance (not just from this blog, but from everything), but just this One Last Time: since I last wrote, I’ve gotten married, gone on honeymoon, and returned. And while no stranger to jet lag, this last round was a doozy, and I’m only crawling out of it now. Still, no complaints here: both wedding and honeymoon were spectacular and I can’t begin to express how great people have been about giving me the space and time to do both.
That said, my future at the LHC beckons. So while I’ve managed to make good on one proposal (to my wife Kate), another is already in the pipeline. Those of you who read biographies carefully may have noticed that I never quite say that I’m part of the ATLAS collaboration. In fact, while I have been going to CERN fairly regularly for the last three years, have given ATLAS talks at major international conferences, and feel fully invested in the experiment and collaboration, it’s still not a fully fledged marriage yet (although with 1500+ collaborators, maybe I should drop this marriage analogy now…). While all signs have been quite encouraging, the Department of Energy has not fully committed to supporting all three big LHC experiments for Heavy Ion research. Thus, my bio lists that I am current working on a “proposal” to do this work at the LHC, and this is the thing taking up most of my energy and time in the last few months, and will do so for the next few. More on this later: just wanted to pipe up after my few weeks of silence!
