It's mid-morning at the conference and I'm hanging out in between lectures. The last few days have been busy, and reasonably fun. Monday morning the conference kicked off and I drove over because I was running late. I arrived with a few minutes to spare before the opening plenary and although it was protein orientated, it was interesting. The rest of the day was pretty much the same, and at lunch I put up my poster. The talks finished around 5 pm and I decided to hike the trail up the mountain side to the “M” which is emblazoned on a ridge above the university. The hike was exhausting but the view was great and I headed back to relax in the hot tub. I arrived late to the dinner, but hadn't missed much and so indulged myself in some of the free beer. I was sitting at a table with some people discussing German and European history. Tiffany called and she'd had a pretty bad day, as she'd gotten up extremely early to try and register her car and had been hit with $800 worth of local sales tax, and then still hadn't been able to register it. We talked for a fair while and then she went to go crash since she'd been up since 5:30 am. I went back to the beer and discussion, and then started talking to an English guy who was working in Japan. We walked into town in search of the others, and ended up not finding them, but talking for a long time and having another beer and then a coffee. We got home around 11 am and I crashed out exhausted.
I had intended to arrive in time for the start of the opening talk, but I was so exhausted that it didn't happen. I was about 40 minutes late, which wasn't too big a deal as I hadn't wanted to see those particular talks all that much. The day was slightly shorter as after lunch there were only two talks and then the poster session. I stood in front of my poster and talked about my work to whoever would listen. I didn't win a poster prize even though I thought I had a good chance, I think they may be directed towards graduate students only. I was feeling exhausted from my excessive walking of the previous day, so at 5 pm I went back to m hotel and slept for an hour. I only had an hour or two to relax because the dinner was supposed to start at 7 pm. I wasn't feeling well, but I went anyway and it was ok. I felt better later in the evening, but I still went home about 10 pm and watched old episodes of “X-Files” until midnight. I couldn't sleep very well and was awake long into the night.
Today I arrived almost on time and have been at the lectures ever since.