School; Farewell Kristin; Genetics Retreat; Etc.

1/8

Preparration for my journal club talk. I could elaborate but that would bore all of us.

1/9

Did the journal club thing. There's this idea that some idiot came up with somewhere, that people are expected to defend and explain the articles as if we wrote them. I sidestepped that neatly. Turns out the article I picked was pretty crap, since I acknowledged it up front, I didn't even have to try to defend the article.

I figured there's nothing to get a bunch of sharks going like some fresh blood, but, well, apparently nobody cares about journal club.

I'm sure Kristin wanted to sneak off to Austin with as little fanfare as possible, but Dan put together a little good bye party for her. As we so often have, we gathered at Mi Luna for dinner.

Afterwards, continuing Kristin's trend toward the new and different, we eschewed the usual bars and went to Dirt. It's just south of I-10, not too far from Walter's. Their Tuesday gimmick is that for every drink you order, they flip a coin, and you can call it to get the drink free. After thinking about it, there's no real way for them to maniuplate it to their advantage (except for, say, doubling the prices, which is a distinct possibility). Cindy and I not only failed to beat the system, but lost to it, getting one drink out of four free. The bar itself was dark and uncrowded, and, well, I wasn't overly impressed, but I think I'd go back just for the coin flipping.

Dan's got some photos up on his Flickr page.

1/11

The boss, as usual, wanted all of us at the genetics retreat. As usual, I showed up late, skipped the talks, snuck in a nap in the hotel room, and showed my poster before starting a solid evening of drinking. I managed to obtain quite a few spare drink tickets, which helped, because the department cheaps out at two tickets per person.

As with the retreats, the party's the boring part; it's the after party where the real fun starts. I showed up with my cooler o' beer at the room of a couple of genetics girls. The girls were smart enough to realize that if you don't want to get in trouble with the hotel over the state of the room, you tip the maids. Of course, why put your own cash down when you're young and attractive and have men around to do it for you?

So the girls offered to wrestle if we could come up with $20, which wasn't too hard. Which was pretty nifty.

So the party was good. The girls had managed to get whoever was in the adjoining room to contribute their room, too, so for once we had plenty of space to spread out, and no noise complaints.

I met a nice girl named Katie, who not only had good tastes in music but was in a band too. Of course, neither of us being single, this wasn't as exciting as it could have been, but it was nice to have someone to converse with. It's funny how you can be in a place for four years and still meet cool new people whom you had no idea existed.

By the time the girls kicked everybody out, I was thoroughly drunk and went back to my room, which, due to a snafu in my registration (apparently the registration e-mails went to a different Robert Ward), I had my own room. Bizarrely, while I went to sleep in the bed by the window, I ended up waking up in the other window. No explanation for that one...

1/12

I slept in, went to lunch, and then we had to have the traditional superfluous lab outing. I took of as soon afterwards as possible, and then, I think, opted to take a nap and skip the seminar.

Cindy and I went up to Rudz for dinner after an aborted attempt to try out Goode's Armadillo Palace. Then we found out that Kristin was out at Poison Girl for her last night in town, so we joined up.

1/13

Cindy and I (eventually) made it over to Dan's to help Kristin pack up the moving truck. I was surprised to see how much of the stuff in the apartment was hers; it looked a little barren afterwards. The highlight of the experience was getting Dan's Yaris up on the trailer; he was driving the truck to Austin and needed to be able to drive his car back. The first time, we realized the trailer wasn't hitched properly and it started to tilt as soon as he started to drive up on it. After that, we realized that the wheelbase of the car was so narrow that it barely fit on the tracks of the trailer. I'm surprised no damage was inflicted.

My parents were in town, so I went to catch up with them at Susan and Jerry's for while.

I drove back, and then met up with Char for beer and pool.

1/14

I drove out for lunch with the parents. Later that night Cindy and I met up with Will and others at the West Alabama Woodrow's, and then we took off to Late Nite Pie for some belated dinner.