What Happens in The South Stays in The South

I am at Heathrow Airport right now, waiting for the first flight associated with my sabbatical this fall (though technically it doesn't really start until the fall term starts). My home base for 1 month will be Durham, North Carolina. I will be attending the opening workshop of SAMSI's 2010-2011 program on complex networks, then I will head off to Atlanta---where I'll be staying in a hotel just 1 block from where I used to live!---for Dragon*Con (My first one since 2004! Yay! Bring on the Cheesegrinder!) and a brief visit to my old stomping grounds Georgia Tech. Then I'll return to Durham to be at SAMSI before returning to Oxford. While at SAMSI, I'll be staying with Kin Chan '98, who I have only seen a few times since I graduated from Tech. I'll be back in Durham in November, January, and possibly parts of March or April.

I'll write more about Dragon*Con later, but three of the guests are former Firefly stars, so hopefully they'll be available for autographs.

Incidentally, I experienced a new indignity at the airport today. There was a brief security deal in the ticket line at American Airlines, and I was actually compelled to enumerate every piece of electronic equipment that I had with me. That took a while. :) Seriously, though, WTF?