The week was worth it

This week may have been hard but for me, yesterday made all that work worth it. I met Ding in front of her apartment and we left for work to pick up PostDoc then headed out for the retreat. Registration started at 7:30 and talks started at 8:30 but we decided to leave around 9am. Kiwi was inoculating animals in the morning so he wouldn't be there until maybe 11am. We saw no need to get there early. It was in a building located near downtown so we didn't have far to go.

The retreat consisted of various faculty members giving 1/2 hour presentations with 10 more minutes allotted for questions. Unfortunately, the moderator didn't moderate. All he did was bring up the next person's presentation when the current person was finished. As a result, almost everyone talked too long. Some people talked twice as long as they were supposed to but no one said anything. By lunch time we were over an hour behind schedule.

Lunch was at a famous, fabulous Italian restaurant. The entire retreat was worth it because I got to eat there. I always wanted to but never actually got around to it. I'll have to come back with Fiance sometime. But they only scheduled lunch for 1 1/2 hours. Lunch was a few block away from the building where the presentations were located. So over 50 people had to walk to the restaurant, get seated, and be served a multi-course meal. An Italian meal. I've rarely been to a good Italian restaurant that serves food like that and been completely done in that amount of time. So we were running even later after lunch. However, there was a guest speaker who was supposed to speak after lunch and he never showed up. Since he wasn't there talks were moved up but at the end of the day we still ended over an hour late.

But dinner wasn't the reason yesterday was so good. In the morning Scope Man gave his presentation and he mentioned working with Kiwi and me, doing good stuff and that people would get to hear about it in the afternoon. He is very well known and regarded so it is really nice to have him mention not just my boss, but me! Then Kiwi gave his presentation on my work in the afternoon. He did pretty good. Every now and then he would look at me when he wasn't sure about something and I would nod my head yes. He got a couple things wrong but they were minor and no one knew but me. There were several good questions afterwards and some good suggestions. In the acknowledgements he put my picture up and said that all the work was done by me. And since everyone knew what I looked like I had several people come up to me afterwards during the coffee break, then during the reception to tell me how nice the data looked. Kiwi thanked me several times for putting his presentation together. He made a comment that it was short compared to the others, but I reminded him that we made his presentation to fit the time allotted. He didn't run over like everyone else. The reception was nice, it was on the river with drinks and appetizers.

The only not so great part of the day was that I had to go to work after it was all over. I had to finish processing my PBMCs.

Than the day ended with the bus driver leaving me off in front of my apartment. The stop is actually several blocks away but since I was the last person on the bus he dropped me off on my doorstep!