Next Week in Rome.

I’m off to Rome on Sunday, right after my half-marathon. I’m in the middle of my 15 minutes of fame for a paper I wrote, and the European Union’s outfit on Peer Review is flying me to Rome for a week, to give a 20 minute talk. Of course, there’s a whole conference I’ll be attending, and that’s going to be fun, but I’ll have plenty of time to sightsee and run.

And work. I have a big talk to give, and then in a few weeks I have a pair of big talks to give at another conference in Canada. The fall travel season is crazy this year. But I’m excited to get all those new stamps in my passport. And sometime after November I’ll need to schedule an hour with a tattoo artist to update my arm with Argentina and Hong Kong (and probably Macau).

I found an AA meeting in English about a mile from my hotel. There’s an American church that hosts them, and there are enough options that I ought to be able to make at least one. I’ve been to AA meetings in Bermuda, New Zealand, England, Norway. I’ve enjoyed them. I’m not worried about my sobriety on this trip, but being at a conference in Rome with a bunch of academics? There will be wine, and possible pressure to drink. Nothing I haven’t encountered before, but also worth taking seriously.

I always have an out. And my out on this trip is: I have to get up early and run, I’m training for a marathon. So I’ll be able to excuse myself from any situation where I feel uncomfortable and go back to my hotel. I have a lot of work to do while I’m there, and I have a lot of work left to do before I go. But all in all, I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully on Friday or Saturday I’ll have time to go out to Tivoli and see the gardens and castles.

Mostly, I’ll be sitting in coffee shops building an agent-based model of vaccine penetration for my talk in October.