denouement

so i'm back, and i think more CA rubbed off on me than vice versa. i'm tanned, i'm mani-and pedi-cured (does anyone realize that's a rather traumatic step for me?), and i find myself making small talk with strangers. eek.

neuroscience went extremely well, better than expected - i had a huge crowd for about 3 hours around my poster, was offered a few jobs on the spot (none in the northeast, so it's rather moot but nice to hear all the same). i heard comments about my data like 'this is what the field really needs' and 'i'm going to send my postdocs over here to see what a gel should look like' - for the rest of the day, my ego was the size of an air mattress. i quickly recovered and began fretting over my next job, my resume, and which higher degree to pursue next, in typical sabominator style. but for a couple of hours, up until the post-margarita melancholia set in, i was feeling pretty satisfied with myself.

before the conference began, my best friend from high school, terr (now a san diego local), took me for some sightseeing. we went for mexican, looked at the city lights from mt soledad, strolled on the beach at midnight, and spent the next day zipping around in her fiance's 350Z, cruising to cheesy 80's tunes and being as blonde as possible with the top down. we spent a lot of time in la jolla, saw windansea surfers, and tortured the DNC volunteers outside victoria's secret with as many airhead comments as we could muster. i experienced the wonder of in-n-out 'double double animal style' - i will never crave mc donald's again.

if you want to see a few pix of our exploits

i haven't had as much fun since we were 15 and thought we were really cool.

aside from attending as many seminars and posters on abeta toxicity and mechanisms as i could bear before my brain was full, i worked on my extracurricular enjoyment as well. i spent a lot of time with fellow tech alice, sampling the food at most of the fine establishments on 5th ave, watching the world series over beer/margaritas/sangria (i'm not even a baseball fan), playing cutthroat ping-pong, nearly passing out in the hottub from dehydration, admiring all the naval behemoths in the harbor, and averaging 45 oz of coffee per day at regular intervals. i spent some time with our collaborators from other parts of the country, and hit some of the best 'local' spots like cafe 222 for pecan waffles and extraordinady desserts, where a slice of gianduija mousse and a scoop of scharfenberger ice cream totalled $14. thank you, NIH funding. compared to last year's prison sentence in new orleans, the overall conference experience in san diego kicked ass. i found myself loving the weather, the friendly people, and the excellent automobiles (a lot of old skool z's and VWs...).

but i'm home now, and thank god...the red-eye is an experience i recommend you skip, as a 3 hour layover in newark at 5 am is my new definition of purgatory. when teh honeybear picked me up at 10 am, breakfast and napping till 2 was just about the best thing i'd ever done. we spent all day being extremely lazy and comfortable, in a way which you can only appreciate when you know you've come out the other end of a job well done, and the last 10 months of hard work culminated in success, and it's totally ok to watch tv in your pajamas on a wednesday afternoon.

now it's time to write the paper :)