Travels

Ugh...I have not been as faithful with keeping up the blog as I anticipated, but alas, I have some reasonable excuses, like a cruise to the Bahamas. Yes, finally one appendix and four long years later, I finally made it to the Bahamas. I would like to thank Beth for organizing such a great trip to celebrate the 30th birthday of her and several others. This was my first cruise and despite some over-cast weather, it was great! I did not have any sea-sickness issues, although, I did not really anticipate any. We set sail from Miami on Friday afternoon and got the trip off to a great start with several drinks by the pool. While in port in Nassau I did some shopping, snorkeling and bar crawling. Beth set-up a mini bar crawl to a few local places that ended with her purist to the infamous bar she had stumbled upon during her last trip to Nassau. We also enjoyed wonderful, endless food and a great dinner waiter, Nelson, who kept us very entertained. All in all, for my first experience at sea, it was fun and relaxing.

Now, it is on to Cali. First for the Experimental Biology meeting in Anaheim. It was so wonderful to see ol' friends from UIUC, and of course bittersweet. Last night Mina and I had a great time catching up over a pitcher of margaritas and afterwards met-up with Vicki and company for a rousing evening of scientific banter. Yes, it was stimulating. Now the John (and shortly Desiree) have moved to Cali, I was able to see them both. His new promotion at Chase is going well, and she is excited to get out here after graduation and get ready for their baby!! Of course the conference was good, although there were not too many talks on the specifics of my new research.

FASEB did a great job at improving the career development section and I hope I attended enough seminars to now have some clue of what I want to be when I grow-up. I will say the Anaheim convention center/Hilton was not the best equipped. One example was the ridiculous line at Star-bucks every morning. I know this is not their first conference and it is not hard to figure out having a line solely for coffee along with a barista taking orders in-line would greatly improve the situation. Guess it was my luck I liked the coffee in the room.

Now it is on to UCSD to learn some new scientific techniques. I'll be here just a few days and have already gleaned much more insider information and tricks than I would have just trying to follow the directions. I am not sure how much time I will have to sight-see, as I have to prepare for a presentation on Tuesday when I return.