Travel on both ends was smooth and uneventful, so not much to say on that front. Both Albuquerque and Salt Lake City get big thumbs up for having free wi-fi in their airports though! And Southwest gets props for not charging me an arm and a leg to check a bag. I really hate lugging all my stuff through the airport...
Our hotel was pretty flipping sweet. We had a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom suite for 4 of us, so no hassle over who's showering when. And extra perk, breakfast and dinner (even if we usually didn't make it back for dinner) were included as freebies with the room rate. :)
The first sign of ridiculousness was when I woke up Monday morning and look out the window. What did I see?? SNOW. EFFING SNOW. Unless you live in the southern hemisphere, snow during the last week of May, even if it's not accumulating, is completely unacceptable!! Even if it didn't accumulate on the ground, it accumulated on ME! By time we got to the conference center (a 15 minute walk from our hotel), I had a layer of snow all over my jacket. I realize the below picture of the snow from our window isn't all that convincing, but I promise. It was snow. I may live in the desert, but I remember what it looks like still.
After the morning oral session I ran into my friend Martin - he's finishing up his degree in the lab in Scotland that I visited about a year and a half ago. Since he was at the conference alone I insisted he hang out with our group (while giving him the option not too if we were too scary - an option he declined and may have regretted later in the week!). It took him a second to recognize me at first - probably a combination of having a different haircut, wearing glasses, and being dressed up - all things he definitely never saw while I was working in the lab in Scotland. But as soon as he did he told me I looked "right sharp", which was not only super cute because of it's British-ness, but very nice because I'm pretty sure I really just looked like death on toast at that point in the week. (The use of phrases such as "right sharp" is going on my "pro" list as far as post-doc-ing in England is concerned!)
Monday night we had a group reunion dinner - everybody at the conference who's ever worked for VW or in her lab comes. It was cool to meet people who pre-date my time here - people I've heard about and whose papers I've read. As usual there were shenanigans to be had. :) One of my Chinese labmates doesn't hang out with us socially very much, and he's pretty quiet in general - although way funny when he does converse with us. My other labmate Ashley had told him before the conference that he HAD to drink with us during the conference, and he agreed that he would drink one night. Well before this occasion it seems he'd only had beer, because he received an education in the great tradition of taking shots. He had his first, and second, shot that night. VW was not only present for this "education," but condoned it. We've been seeing a whole new side of the queen lately...and I have to say we like it!
The hospitality suites were an experience unto themselves. All the big instrument companies have suites - free food, free booze (!), lots of random freebies and ridiculousness. Perkin Elmer had a stroke of genius and had a photo booth, with lots of hats and glasses and other silly accessories to use.
Bruker had the best freebies of the conference hands down. The first night we were there we noticed these awesome champagne flutes with blinking LEDs in the base. The awesomeness can not appropriately be put into words. Traditionally in the VW lab, we have champagne to celebrate defenses and successful oral exams, so logically we needed a full set of these glasses for the lab. They only had a set number of them for each night, and they ran out before we actually got there the first night. Egged on by VW herself, we found ourselves scrounging around, swiping abandoned glasses off tables. After three nights of hitting up the hospitality suites, we collected a set of 20 glasses. They're now clean and lined up on the shelf in my office, waiting for the next oral or defense.
Here's two of my labmates and me enjoying the Waters hospitality suite. Waters also had blinking glasses, but pint glasses rather than champagne flutes. (I know my hair's pulled back, but that's my new haircut btw...bangs...Not entirely sold on keeping them yet...)
Martin hung out with us in the hospitality suites a bunch, and introduced us to his friend Ross. Let's just say he's super nice and cute, and that it's really quite tragic that Manchester, England is so freaking far from Tucson, Arizona. (I may have sent one or two less than 100% sober texts the night we all went out without him - hence the alternate definition of TWIMS...)
Tuesday afternoon my former labmate and mentor, Chris, and I escaped the conference for a bit to go check out Temple Square. It's nearly impossible to get out of the square without somebody (likely a pair of girls in ankle length skirts) accosting you asking if they can tell you about the Church of Latter Day Saints. I could never be Mormon, and nothing against them, but man do they have some weird history. We saw the Lion House, where Brigham Young kept most of his wives and children. It looks like a dormitory. They had a free tour of the house he actually lived in with I guess a select wife or two and a few children. The finishings in the house were very nice, but it was just creepy and weird feeling. You could totally tell everybody on the tour really wanted to ask questions along the lines of how many wives?? and how many children??! But nobody dared ask anything at all due to the extremely scary, angry looking woman bringing up the rear of the tour. She seriously looked like she would stab you in your sleep if you so much as made a peep. At the end they have you fill out a little comment card with your contact info, and you can request that a missionary come talk to you about LDS, Jesus Christ, the Book of Mormon... Did I put my contact info? Absolutely not. I put E's boyfriend J's contact info. I'm very hopeful he'll be getting a gift from Utah in the mail...
The social highlight of the week was the outing to a dueling piano bar around the corner from the conference center. (Very similar to the Big Bang...) When we got there around 9 we were nearly the only people there, but it was still fun because we were a big enough group to be rowdy and make it fun. Things got plain ridiculous when the hospitality suites closed and a ton of people from the conference came to the bar. A bar completely packed with (mostly drunk) mass spectrometrists is one of the funnier things to experience. :) There were several Bruker top hats floating around the bar (the other excellent freebie they had), and the inventor of DART may or may not have bought some of us several drinks and then been disappointed that we couldn't go play beer pong in his hotel room after closing time because there was no way to get beer at that hour! Martin came out with us, and I think may have been a bit scarred by the experience...dueling piano bars are not known to be the most um, polite, settings! He said it was definitely an "experience" but that he enjoyed himself.
One final little anecdote - my labmate Erin was walking back to the hotel one night, past the bum park across the street (see the snow picture), carrying a carryout box with leftovers from dinner. A woman asks Erin for the food, and she willingly hands it over. She's about to take a step away, when she realized she had left her gum stuck to the inside lid.
Erin: Um, I just remembered I left my gum stuck to the lid.
Bag lady, with look of utter disgust: EW.
The lady held the box open at arm's length while Erin removed her gum from the lid. Apparently beggars can be choosers after all.
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