bal-tee-more

actually, it's pronounced "bahlmohr" in the local tongue. and they call you hon. i'm glad i was told that my first night in town, otherwise i would have gotten offended a couple of times and might have gotten kicked out of bars for slapping the server.

yes. so. i was in Baltimore for the 2007 Biophysical Society meeting. good times. general impressions of baltimore: MUCH nicer than i expected. i'm sure there were bad parts of town i didn't see, but nearly any city has those. inner harbor was very nice -- cute shops, picturesque docks, clean. hampton neighborhood city-esque but nice. fells point had a lot of character. overall, felt very livable.

side note: customer service was atrociously slow. they were for the most part polite and friendly, but dear god, could they possibly take any longer to put coffee into a paper cup? and bush buttons on a screen to take my order? perhaps if they talked a bit faster that would help expedite the service-process. oh well.

went down Friday night (took the Acela Express), stayed with Bill Mill and Sam Wood, who just bought a house (!) and have a mutt-dog named Beckett. they seem very happy. Sam is still finding her groove in residency but is told that the first year is hard. Bill works at a company that sells used books on Amazon. Dan Mill and some UCONN frisbee boys stopped by en route to spring break on Tybee Island.

saturday. walked around downtown baltimore. inner harbor: very pretty. oriole park at camden yards: very cool. talks all day. met some scientists from the motility field. sunday: gave my poster! a very long day. was too nervous to eat lunch. a lot of people stopped by. mostly good responses. poster competition: nerve-wracking, didn't make second round, oh well. had dee-licious crab cakes at legal seafood. and wine.

monday: the best day of my life? ok, maybe just of my scientific career. enrique pointed allen minton out to me. i work up the nerve to go up to him later, to ask him about my results. he invites me to dinner! then, later that night, at the party in oriole park (what a venue for a party!), hanging out with enrique, josh weigner, and dave sept, they see adrian parsegian walk by. dave knows him so runs after him and brings him over. another very nice scary smart guy. i have his drink tickets. ended up going to after-party bar with french-speaking peeps: martinal and pedro (who is actually portugese but speaks fluent french -- i'm not picky. french is french is french).

tuesday: second-to-last day of conference. went out to dinner with EDLC and co., dave, mike ostap and people from his lab. enrique takes us to this cool hole-in-the-wall called friends in fells point. dee-lish. then to another hole-in-wall bar to play pool. beers so cheap! ended night in adrian's hotel room, talking science and drinking bourbon.

wednesday: lunch with laura nikstad! she's engaged (!) getting married aug 4. leaving grad school to go to a science ed master program at perdue, where her fiance is in an MFA program. good to see her. train back to new haven.

left feeling very excited about my project and good about myself as a scientist. hmmm. we'll see if it has any lasting effects...