Visited Ottawa for a conference at Carleton, on the exciting topic of writing policy papers, or if you're REALLY lucky "memos to cabinet". Apparently that's where the action's at. I'll have to remember not to use so much jargon or too many acronyms in my writing in future. I expect my vast reading public to hold me to that.
The conference was fun overall, despite the high blowhard/human ratio. These guys really makes me want to avoid academia, since they actually seem to have enormously inflated opinions of themselves, despite the fact that they're still only PhD candidates. Also Ottawa managed to defy the odds and have good weather in March, impressing all the out-of-towners.
After all of that it was on to J(2)'s birthday. I had never been rock climbing on fake rocks before, but its more fun than you would think. So I improved my "spotting" skills as best I could, and managed not to drop too many of the guests. Family remains in place, largely unchanged, although the new porch is nice.
