Bedtime stories

So as it turns out I won't be able to tell you everything. And that's because there just isn't time. Nor is there a fancy tool to turn my thoughts into actual posts (that would be super cool!) because then I could just blog away while riding my bike or running on the treadmill. What a multi-tasking genius that would be. Then again, if I did that there'd be so many posts that I doubt anyone would ever read this again.  So, in thinking about the things I want to reflect on from the past two weeks, I'll henceforth do my best to pick only the best ones.

Oh and new words and definitions coming soon. I'm in bed now so this is not prime word-learning time (nor do I want to get out of bed to grab my word notebook).


First: Stories from SfN (Society for Neuroscience Conference in New Orleans)

The conference center was huge. Gigantic. It took at least 10 minutes to walk from one end to the other, and even more if you wanted to go up any stairs and continue the journey. They had lectures and symposia and mini-symposia and nano-symposia and baby symposia (ok, that last one I made up)  They also had enough posters to fill a football field. Each day. Twice. Each session had posters labeled A-Z, with somewhere around 20 in each letter group. And then there was AA-ZZ, again with 20-some in each group. And then, get this, there were AAA-ZZZ, with more in each group. I literally could not get my mind around it. Tuesday afternoon was the best poster session for me. There was a whole section in the "Cognition and Behavior" theme that was titled something like "Individual differences and training effects on cognitive functions." Right up my alley!  I talked to a bunch of people, asked questions about their projects and then also got to meet a lot of the people from the University of Illinois who know my PI (principal investigator--the person I'm working for), Michelle. It was really awesome to just chat with them about a project that they have developed and run, but that I will be helping with the analysis for.

Besides all the academic stuff, there were also socials that were organized by SfN and, luckily, were in the hotel we happened to be staying in. The first night we wandered around being "social crashers" until we came upon the Alzheimer's Research social, where we found some new orleans masquerade masks and candy. We also spent some time in the "Ingestive Behaviors" social, where a lovely Australian boy struck up a conversation with us simply because we were wearing the sweet masquerade masks.
The second night, much to my surprise, was a really awesome graduate student and post-doc reception. Now, I expected some food. And some alcohol. And some music. And there were all of the above. PLUS DANCING. There was a lot of dancing. I stayed the entire two hours, sweating pretty much through my shirt and messing my hair all up, but it was so worth it. Not only is it awesome watching neuroscience geeks (myself included!) bust some moves, but I also got to swing dance, salsa and just jump around. One of the best parts of the nights was when I was salsa-ing with myself (yes, there was still a severe lack of dancing partners that actually knew ballroom), and a nearby guy says "Where are you from?"  Amidst the loud noise and inhibitory ethanol particles affecting this boy's brain (a.k.a. alcohol), I had to say "Iowa" about 6 times. Each time he said back to me, "IowA? IOwa? Eiowa?" Finally, realizing I was getting nowhere I said "the midwest." Still nothing. "Here! America!"
"OHHHHH" (that one worked) "America! From here? Excellent"
--pause--
then he says, "but how are you such a good dancer then?"
Come to find out, this boy was from Brazil. I wasn't even dancing with him, but I guess we were just dancing salsa near each other and somehow I made myself seem less American than I truly am.
In terms of Salsa, I was pretty okay with that :)

Other fun things I did in New Orleans:

Grouplove concert at the house of blues  (it's a lovely little indie band and a great music venue)
Ate alligator sausage, jambalaya, gumbo and, of course, fro-yo :)
Walked down Bourbon Street and some streets in the French Quarter. For the record I did NOT like the way too revealing strip club storefronts. More than once either a lady in lingerie or a pregnant lady attempted to entice us inside. No thank you. However, I DID like this awesome little artsy street with a small plaza, which was totally full of people selling homemade goods. The best part? Right in the middle, there were pieces of sidewalk chalk laid out and people had just gone to town and drawn whatever they wanted. I couldn't help myself, I had to write SfN in pretty handwriting and some squiggles. My friend drew a cat. And then we walked a few feet away and noticed some neurons and a beautiful synapse!! Other neuroscientists had been there! That was lovely.
Listened to some really good live jazz.
Walked along the beautiful waterfront.
Laid in my hotel bed, ate cheese and crackers and read papers for lab (that was about the extent of work that I got done the whole week- haha)
Drove through a horrendous storm on the way home (yeah, this was not so much fun as just rather eventful)

After arriving home at about 4:45 am on Thursday, I slept for 2 hours, got up and went to class and was surprisingly more alert and invested than I am many other days. And that's saying a lot because I love that class and am pretty involved every single day. All in all the day went well and it wasn't until that evening that it all hit me and I crashed ridiculously early. And then the next day I had an early meeting, went to work and then headed to Knox for homecoming :)

Homecoming was lovely because I got to see friends and professors and the cute little room in the library where I studied Saturday afternoon. It was really nice being back, but it also made me realize how happy I am being where I am now. Knox was fantastic and it served me well. I will always love visiting, but I realize now that I have used up my time as a student there. And so it feels right to be moving on.

Skip forward one week and I got to go to a fantastic concert with two of my friends from Knox. It was at the BlueMoose Lodge here in Iowa City and now that I know what a great music venue that is, I'm definitely going to try to take advantage of that more often. And then, like very youthful college girls, we watched a chick flick and fell asleep on the couch.

Forward one more weekend (this weekend!) and I got to go home, cheer for my beloved Cyclones, see my mama and kitty and my sister and brother-in-law, and randomly introduce myself to a boy whose music videos I've seen and admired on youtube (That certainly took some courage! but now I can cross it off my new year's resolution list :)

And now it's Sunday, feeling like it should be after midnight, but thankfully it's not! Falling back one hour always does me well. Then again, so does eating my mom's delicious food, sleeping in the same bed as my cozy kitty, laughing with my sister over the awesome computer games we had years ago and also seeing my church family.

Homework is pretty much done and I have a busy and early morning so I better get to sleep. Stay tuned for an exciting edition of "Words Rachel didn't know!".

Happy daylight savings time to all and to all a good night.