Ohhhhh TEXAS!

This past week I went to Houston for the very first annual joint national meeting of the GSA and SSSA.  It was awesome!  I stayed with my good friends Tonia and Lauren and our friend Mandy stayed there as well.  I got there Saturday night and went to dinner, where I got confused by the cashier’s “ghetto” southern accent, or whatever it was.  Tonia thought it was funny.  Sunday we ditched the conference and went to the zoo.  Fun times and cool animals.   I can’t remember if it was that night or the night after that we played singstar and Mandy won best singstar player because she totally got into it and her dancing was hilarious.  Tonia took videos.  If she sends them to me I’ll put them on facebook or someplace. 

The meeting itself was pretty cool.  I got to see lots of people from undergrad, grad school, and work.  The first day I went to one of my undergrad professor’s talk.   He saw me and was all excited that I came.  I also had my poster presentation that day.  It went pretty well.  People asked me really easy questions and everyone said my research was really interesting.  Even Jeff Herrick, who kind of started up my study.  So that was pretty cool.  That night was the UNLV alum party, so I got to see all my friends who now work for various oil companies.  I was most excited to see Nate, because he is awesome and was probably one of my better friends at UNLV from back when I first started.

I also got to see Erica and Tim Demko and Willy and Josh and Colin and… oh yeah, and my advisor.  And lots of other people too.  A lot of the talks I went to were really interesting as well.  It was just a fabulous combination of people and ideas and research and helped to remind me why it is that I do what I do.  I really needed that.

The day I left Tonia took off work and we met Lauren for lunch at this really great sandwich place.  The bread was so good!  I wish we had one here in Albuquerque.  Afterwards, we went window shopping downtown and then went to the natural science museum, which had some of the most gorgeous minerals and a spectacular gem and jewelry collection as well.  Then we got lost on the way to the airport.  But what’s a trip without getting lost at least once?  Overall, it was really great.

On Friday I went back to work (blah) and no one was there except me, the two secretaries and our main boss (who I never even saw the whole day).  So I took a long lunch and did some other stuff and then went home.  Then a friend sent me a text message asking me if I wanted to go to the balloon fiesta (which is kind of a big deal here) so I went and saw fireworks but no balloons.  I guess because it was windy and also probably because someone had died in a balloon accident that morning.  Apparently it happens at least once every year. 

This weekend is looking to be windy and rainy, which may or may not mess up the rest of my weekend plans.  But we’ll see.  Either way, it is a long weekend and life is awesome.