Anticlimactic

So I managed to get the talk done, and it went fairly well. When I finished it felt like it had been only about 10 minutes, when in reality it had been at least 20.

While all the talks were really good (there's usually at least 1 obvious "dud") - the deciding committee copped out big time, deciding that my classmate who won last year and I would be "co-winners," while my two labmates who also presented would be "co-runners up." What nonsense. At least I got some money out of it I guess - although I'm pretty sure we're going to have to split the prize. It's hard to imagine there being any extra money around now. It's still enough money to buy my sister a plane ticket out here. Since Dad has yet to send her out here, even though the she's-not-old-enough-to-fly-by-herself excuse is long gone, I'm thinking I'm just going to buy the ticket and tell Dad she needs a ride to/from the airport whichever days it is.

The other upside is I'm in great shape for my talk at the conference in June. There's always more work to be done, and I'm sure I'll be working hard up until my flight leaves Tucson, but at least I don't have to worry about it. Don't tell my advisor, but I'm pretty sure I'd be just fine giving my talk over the data I have now. There's certainly more information to pull out of the data I collected in the past week than what made it into my talk.

The Queen said she mentioned to another faculty member that all my data was from the past week and s/he replied that s/he couldn't tell at all, so that's good. While I'm glad it wasn't obvious, I really, really wish The Queen wouldn't tell people stuff like that. I feel like it doesn't look good. She's got a really big mouth.

After a couple beers with some friends, I had a glass of wine and spent some quality time with my couch. It's been sorely neglected lately. And now, I'm off to bed - I'm sure my bed has missed me as much as I've missed it.