The press of the past few weeks has now officially caught up to me. While I am very much looking forward to returning to my research, I am also mentally and emotionally burned out. The last meeting of the trip was on Friday, late afternoon, at the Department of Energy building in Germantown, MD. The meeting was great, both for our team and for the members of the HEP office with whom we met. Afterward, several of my colleagues dropped me off in a plaza across the street, where my sister met me.
We drove from Germantown, back toward DC, then up to Baltimore on 495. That night, we stayed at our grandmother’s place outside Baltimore. I don’t get to see her more than about once a year, and last year I didn’t see her at all. Thus began the first of a few days of respite. On Saturday, my sister and I hit the road to go to Connecticut. I stayed at my parents’ place that night, not having seen either of them since just after my mother’s heart attack last year. Trips like this bring the insanity of my schedule into focus, realizing that even though I live in the same country as my parents I see them just slightly more often than do the students who come to this country for school and leave their own parents half a world away.
Last night, I went with my sister to her home near Hartford, and then over to a friend’s house in Hartford. Today, I leave for the airport in the early afternoon for a late night return to the West coast. I’m starting to feel the exhaustion and panic of the last few weeks drain away, and when I return to home I’ll hopefully feel just a little more myself again.
