To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

Things I learned on my trip to a scientific conference in DC

Sun, 17 Apr 2016 04:32:26 GMT

1. Poster sessions are literally science fair for grown-ups. There's a big hall with a bunch of posters up on boards, and their makers stand by them and talk about their project to everyone who comes by. This seems like a much more sensible way to run a conference than the humanities version, where people get up on stage and read a paper they have written at the audience.

2. Many of the scientists my office supports are fun to hang out with socially.

3. I no longer have the ability to walk or stand for more than 45 minutes without SIJ/lower back pain disabling enough to require a 10-minute sit-down, and if I want to do more than two of these 45-minute sessions, I require the assistance of vicodin.

One of these things is not like the others...

Despite that, I took some nice pictures of the National Zoo (not quite a mile from the conference hotel) and the hotel itself. It was by far the swankiest place I have ever stayed, or possibly ever set foot in.

Pictures, including several of pandas Doing Stuff.

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Chicago!

Mon, 20 Oct 2014 06:19:16 GMT

Well, despite some setbacks, I had a very nice trip to Chicago to see rowdycamels and buy some skates.

( Setbacks, for the curious )

Anyway, enough about those. Good things! I had a fabulous experience at Rainbo Sports out in Glenview, despite it being a bit of an odyssey to reach from Chicago proper. But hey, at least trains and busses actually go out that far!

One of the skate shop gurus and I mutually decided to put me in the Jackson Premiere boots, which were exactly the ones my research had suggested would be best. ( Technical details about the skates and the experience )

By fortunate coincidence, Open House Chicago was this weekend, so we did as much of that as possible. On the Loyola campus, we went to the Art Deco chapel (kind of bizarrely concrete and Communist) and Art Deco skyscraper (much cooler and prettier), and downtown we went to the Fine Arts Building and the Sky-line club. The latter was somewhat disappointing--the view was okay but not great, and other than it was just a rich people's club, which was interesting for a few seconds but no more--but the Fine Arts Building was fun. It's another lovely building, Victorian this time, and going on stage was lovely, as was visiting the luthier's workshop and seeing stringed instruments in various stages of completion. The building has a bunch of artists' studios and rooms where music teachers give lessons, so those were fun to peek into as well.

We also went to the Lincoln Park Conservatory, in large part because it was cold and raining out and it's tropical in there, and got to see the greenhouses that aren't normally open to the public. Once it stopped raining, we went to the zoo, where the male lion put on a show. I'm pretty sure he just wanted to eat the small children staring at him through the glass, taunting him with their tender deliciousness.

Because I am nothing if not a ~~dealer~~ enabler, I brought along my China Beach DVDs, and we took a tour through some of the best episodes during the evenings. I'm pretty sure I have a convert, muahahaha.

We had some very good meals this weekend, too. To continue the Vietnamese theme begun with China Beach, we ordered in Vietnamese one night, and I got to try pho for the first time. WHERE HAS THIS BEEN ALL MY LIFE? Man, that's good. It was also the most interesting delivery meal I've ever had. I got a quart-sized plastic barrel of beef broth with delicious, delicious spices; a Chinese takeout box of rice noodles, beef, and two different kinds of onions; and a ziploc bag of bean sprouts, mint leaves, jalapeno slices, and a couple of lime wedges. Make your own meal! Needless to say, I had pho for three days straight and there was still some left over when I left.

I had delicious gyros from two different places, including one...Egyptian fast food place? downtown called Naf Naf Grill, which had the most amazing garlic tzatziki sauce. I think I was unconsciously trying to rebuild my iron levels after the massive blood loss with all the red meat this weekend. (ETA: Not that it worked...)

Good trip! Would do again without cough syrup-splosions, bronchitis, and hemorrhaging!

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Things

Sun, 22 Jun 2014 22:31:57 GMT

This week I started the 3-5-year journey of allergy shots. After about three months of three times a week, I can go down to once a week for a few more months, then every other week, and finally once a month by about the one-year mark.

And the shots are definitely plural, as I get four at each visit, two in each arm. (Good thing I didn't test positive for mold allergies or some of the weeds. I think that would've taken it up to eight.) Thankfully, the needles are tiny and barely pinch, though that's very dependent on the shot technique of the nurse. *eyes bruise from Friday* It's also nice that the building is less than a block from my office, so it's easy to go over on my lunch break.

The biggest annoyance is sitting in the waiting room for thirty minutes after so that I can be near medical help in case of anaphylaxis. It's not unpleasant; it can just get noisy if lots of people are there.

*

I go back to skating in a week. It's going to be my last lesson with C before she moves away. :( I guess at some point I need to approach the other coaches I have in mind and see if they're taking new students now.

A lot of the other adult skaters have started taking a drop-in beginning ballet class held by the Nashville Ballet. (There's lots of cross-fertilization between skating and ballet skills, which is the only reason I would consider it, as it's not really my favorite form of dance to do.) I'm tempted, but it gets out kind of late on Mondays, and depriving myself of sleep at the beginning of the week tends to end badly.

*

Since I have to use up my banked leave, I'm thinking about a vacation to Charleston, SC, sometime in September. My parents may or may not be coming along. The boat tour to Capers Island looks absolutely fantastic, and there's of course a plantation house with gardens (pick any Southern city and there will be a bare minimum of three plantation houses with gardens within thirty miles), and the architecture is supposed to be very cool. We were originally going to do the Outer Banks in North Carolina, but that lost its luster when I realized how much driving you have to do between the different attractions, and how much of a pain it would be to see some of them, like the wild ponies around Corolla (you have to rent a 4x4).

I hope I don't pick a week when a hurricane hits that part of the coast. That's always a possibility in the spring and fall.

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I came to Chicago on the trail of the wedding of my friend...

Sun, 29 Sep 2013 20:41:31 GMT

Chicago pictures and commentary under the cut!

( Flowers, art, a wedding, a beach, etc. )

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I have returned!

Wed, 01 May 2013 05:02:18 GMT

Returned from adventures in the Pacific Northwest! I have 680 photos on my camera card, lots of souvenirs, and my knees are still protesting at five days of wandering around a city, hiking up a mountain, and traipsing around in assorted woods and on assorted beaches, so I think it was a vacation well-spent. A full report will have to wait until I get my photos loaded onto my computer (and also for Ellen to send me the pictures she took of me in front of a windmill, getting attacked by a Dalek, and enacting a Star Trek redshirt's death, because I feel no photoblog of this trip would be complete without those), but for now, highlights:

- Traveling with rowdycamels! Getting to meet and hang out with rivendellrose!

- We won the weather lottery. It was sunny or partly cloudy for the entire time we were there, minus some car travel time and about half of the downward part of a mountain hike (though at that point, we were so glad it waited to start hailing/raining until we were out of the snowy part of said mountain that we didn't much care). I actually got a bit of a sunburn on my nose.

- Seattle and the surrounding areas have amazing food. That was the best I've ever eaten on vacation--or possibly at all--in my life. Every meal was incredible, whether it was seafood, Thai, vaguely-Mexican vegan, crumpets/pastry/fruit from the Pike Place Market, whatever. We got ourselves a cooler and did most lunches as picnics, and even those were great, although possibly some of that was because we were so hungry from hiking or long drives that many things would've tasted good.

- I got to walk through Cicely! It was awesome! And yes, I did indeed buy the t-shirt.

- I drove the entire length of Seattle in rush hour traffic and survived! I also drove in and around Pioneer Square and survived!

- Tuuuuuuuuulips. So many tulips.

- Evergreen trees everywhere.

- We did not die by falling off the side of a mountain. Although I think we came close more times than I would like to think about. There's one section of the trail up to Lake Twenty-Two that has already featured in my nightmares, and probably will continue to do so for some time. I don't think I took a picture, but imagine a very steep drop on one side, a tall, crumbly snowbank lining the other side all the way up the rest of the mountain, and a slippery, ice-crusted, nine-inch-wide "path" between the two. We should've turned back, but as was our constant refrain, "We've come this far!"

- Speaking of Lake Twenty-Two, there will definitely be pictures, but for now, the experience in a nutshell: "This isn't a trail, it's a creek/rock field/eight-foot-high snowbank!"

- While Deception Pass bridge and state park were very nice, Google found us an even better city park in Anacortes on a spit of land sticking out into the sea, where we watched the sun set over the San Juan Islands. (Admittedly, it was a very windy, very cold spit of land. Still.) Also, we got to wander among some very friendly deer.

More to come later. I don't know that I ever quite adjusted to Pacific time, largely because Seattle is so far north that it was still daylight until about 8:30, which was so bizarre for late April that I just gave up on ever figuring out what time it should be. But while I'm not sure it feels like midnight now, after the past several days, it definitely feels like BEDTIME.

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Travel planning

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 00:10:59 GMT

I'm planning to take some vacation time in early April, and I think I want to go somewhere for part of it. I'm not sure where, though, so I'm opening the floor to suggestions. Where should I go? Financial and time constraints limit me to the continental US or perhaps parts of Canada. I'm planning to take a week or maybe six days off, and I want some of those days to be spent at home doing nothing, so any trip is probably going to be limited to four or five days, including travel time.

What I most love to do on vacation is take pictures. (You may have noticed this.) I like walking around in beautiful scenery--beaches, mountains, meadows, lakes, I like pretty much all of it--though not hugely strenuous hiking and definitely not camping. I also love museums, interesting buildings, and other big city cultural and historical things. I have been equally thrilled with the Smithsonian in DC and wandering around on mountains in Arizona. I'm not much for just lazing around on a beach, though; there should be more to it than that, even if "more to it" is a historical lighthouse or something. Nightlife holds absolutely no interest for me.

Places where one needs to rent a car are fine, although I try to avoid driving in snow; public transportation is equally fine.

For some reason, Santa Fe is calling to me. It sounds nifty and pictures of it look cool, and the weather would probably be decent. In the other direction, Cape Hatteras is also on my to-see list, and this would avoid the tourist season (and I don't swim anyway, so a cold ocean doesn't matter as long as the weather is warmish). I'd like to go to the Pacific Northwest someday, but early spring might be too cold and rainy. Boston, perhaps? The idea of it makes my historian's heart go pitter-pat. Or I could go back out to California; I hear the Big Sur drive is lovely.

But most importantly: anyone want to meet up somewhere interesting? Or meet up where you live?

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The view from the other side of the country

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 22:53:20 GMT

Okay, so the thought of the HTML necessary to embed 117 clickable thumbnails of my Los Angeles photos in the text makes the baby Jesus cry, so here they all are in gallery form!

And below the cut is the narrative that goes with them.

( Friday: Beachy things )

( Saturday: Fruit, art, fire, and a movie [vague spoilers for Liberal Arts] )

( Sunday: Bones and stars )

( Monday: A brush with stardom! )

And then I came home, and promptly found that we've skipped the nice part of fall and gone straight to the need-a-jacket-and-real-shoes part. Damn. Perhaps I could go live on the beach?

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