Shell 'thing'

This lovely 'thing' (we're not sure what it's called) hangs on the back wall of my sister-in-law's house. We arrived in Nottingham this evening to spend the long weekend here with family over the Easter bank holidays.

It's been a long day for me, but it has passed very quickly because I have spent most of it hammering away at the keyboard finishing the edits to Rachel's conference paper. I started in my study in Edinburgh at about 04:30, took a break between 08:00 and 09:30 for breakfast and to pack, then squeezed in another hour and a half at my machine before we walked up to Waverley to catch the midday train south. As soon as we boarded the train, I settled down to complete the last few necessary changes to the paper. By the time we reached Newark, the deed was done.

There is a lot riding on this conference paper. If it is accepted, Rachel will be funded to travel to Pittsburgh in the autumn to present her work, and will also see her family in the US for the first time since September 2019. It's an ambitious submission. The acceptance rate for this conference series is low - when I was papers co-chair for this conference in 2015, it was 36% - and this report of the preliminary findings from a doctoral study will be competing for a place in the programme with world-leading work from much more established researchers of international reknown. Anyway, let's see what happens. Even it is rejected, most of the material will still end up in the final version of Rachel's PhD thesis.

Exercise today: walking (12,936 steps).