This past weekend, I was in Galena, IL for the Molecular Biosciences Retreat. Retreat is sort of a funny name for the event, it makes me envision a bunch of scientists sitting in front of candles in the lotus position. A more realistic name might be MB Miniconference. Because what we do is go to a wonderful resort, in a beautiful location and stay in the conference rooms all day Friday and Saturday listening to talks except for when we are looking at posters. To be fair, the posters are supplemented with wine, beer, and finger food. I'm not sure how getting drunk is supposed to help us understand or remember the material on people's posters, but that's the way they do it. I usually look at a poster or two and spend the rest of the time drinking wine and talking to people. There is also play time on Sat. afternoon (several hours with no talks scheduled) and a party Sat. night.
In years past, I have presented a poster (you make a poster of all your data then stand next to it and hope people will ask you about it), but this year, I gave a talk. It was the same talk I gave at the Cold Spring Harbor conference I went to in August because I haven't gotten any new data since then (which is a whole 'nother issue that I'm not going to talk about right now). It's one thing to give a talk about your data to a group of people you are probably never going to see again and another thing to give a talk to the people you see at least once a month, if not once a week. Fortunately, it went okay, and people said it was good--very professional, they said. But I didn't win the best talk award, which may have something to do with the fact that I don't have any new data (not going to talk about that now, not going to talk about that now). Anyway, it was a good experience, but I'm glad it's over now.
I guess I'm getting to be too much of an old, bitter grad student, because I wasn't really into the retreat this year. I didn't go to the poster session/wine and cheese after-party (though, honestly, I haven't done that for a couple of years now), and I left the Sat. night party early (before they even started the dancing!) because I just wasn't into it. But, I did not sit in my hotel room and mope, oh no, because, you see, Matt, Monica, another girl, and I had our own townhouse with a fireplace and we sat around the fire for much of the weekend. In fact, I think that was the best part of the weekend, relaxing in front of the fire. I don't know why it's soothing to sit and watch bits of wood get turned into ash, but it is. It's probably some evolutionary thing--the people who found fire comforting sat next to it and kept warm and didn't die of exposure or something like that.
During play-time, I went into Galena with Matt, Monica, and a couple of other people and bought 4 bottles of wine at the Galena Winery; alpaca yarn and unspun wool from FiberWild (because apparently, it's not enough to knit things, now I want to make the yarn to knit with; pretty soon I'll be wanting a mini-lathe on which to make knitting needles); some loose tea and a silver tea strainer to go with my silver tea set (which I spent a significant amount of time polishing a couple of weekends ago, by the way); and some chocolates for John. Not bad.
Sunday, we drove back to Chicago and I took a nap, practiced spinning, and worked a little on piecing my quilt (also a subject for another post).
And now, I'm back at work and, well, I can't say I'm all that enthusiastic about it. I would much rather be sitting in front of a fireplace, knitting, with the kitty curled up on my lap. If anyone out there can think of a career that only involves the above, please let me know....
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