Animals with ice creams on the Roman Wall

My blip today is the card that my father painted and sent for my birthday. For some reason it depicts a rather exotic set of Northumbrian animals eating ice creams near the Roman Wall. Hmm...

It was a day of email clearing and providing feedback on the work of PhD students and colleagues today. We have been very successful with conference submissions recently and it's beginning to dawn on me how much more work this generates when full papers need to be written, PowerPoint slides prepared, papers practised, and final journal submissions post-conference internally peer-reviewed. That's summer 2017 gone in a flash!

I also provisionally accepted an invitation to deliver an opening keynote paper at a conference at the end of 2017. It's provisional because the organisers initially proposed a date when I already have another external commitment. I bet they thought that they were giving me plenty of notice - wrong! They are going to see if they can switch dates so that they are able to secure their number 1 speaker ;-)

I have been unable to listen to the news today. It's all far too depressing.

Exercise today: sit-ups, weights and stretches (but nothing else - hardly any sleep last night)