Short day

I have to take The Inventor to his checkup this afternoon, cutting my day in half.

I attended lecture for this class I'm auditing. It's a cross-listed course, so three days a week, there is an undergraduate lecture, with an extra section set aside for graduate students (and me). It's actually quite exhilirating to be back in the classroom. At one point, I felt obliged to add a rather lengthy comment to the discussion, since it was veering in the direction of my own expertise. It was so nice to see the eye-open students nodding in recognition that these ideas were meaningful, meaty, interesting. The professor then felt inclined to introduce me to the class as one specializing in that area.

And the mind juices were flowing. I had to continue the discussion with the graduate students and professor on the way back to the department, adding things that I hadn't said in lecture. I spent much of the morning adding to my research website. I came up with several ideas for future projects that further bridge the gap between my two principal fields, and draw on a third. This is what I'm all about. I live for synthesizing ideas from seemingly disparate fields, drawing them together, and seeing it as organic and inevitable.

Now I've got about an hour left of productive time, so I best get to it.