*Whew*

Last night, I gave a talk at this conference. It was only a 10 minute talk, and I was a bit nervous, not having given a talk about this research to such a large audience before. At the end I was bombarded with questions: "what about this effect?" "did you consider this effect?" "why didn't you include this?" And I think I managed to fend them off pretty well. A few people came and found me during the coffee break and asked me more questions, and one guy who happened to be staying in the same hotel as me followed up our discussion over breakfast. I actually knew to expect those questions to some extent, because I know my model is really simple, but you have to start from somewhere. And every other theorist wants you to include their own pet physical process because otherwise your model is incomplete. And maybe if I had a small army of grad students and a zillion-processor supercomputer instead if it just being me and the modest 16-processor computer cluster I've been allotted, maybe I could address those questions.

Anyway, lots of people complimented me on my talk, commented on the ferocity of the questioning and complimented again for standing my ground without getting defensive. One person told me that the number of questions is usually an indication of how interesting the talk was. Another person told me it's a good sign when the session chair has to cut off questioning.

So I'm feeling pretty good about it all. I feel like I now have good evidence that my work is provocative and interesting, not just to me but to lots of other people. Last night, I got together with some friends in their room. One of them had brought a little guitar, several of us brought alcohol, and we drank and sang and had a wonderful time, celebrating the talks that I and another friend had given.