I arrived at the new Philcon hotel in Cherry Hill around 7pm and found the Green Room where they had my registration info. There was a moment of confusion when I was calling myself a Guest and they thought that meant that I was related to an invited pro. I was informed that in their terminology, I am a Program Participant. I wandered around to find where everything was and did a quick tour through the Dealer's Room. It was rather small and filled predominantly with booksellers this year. I bumped into hughcasey who asked if I would be willing to sub for the moderator of an 8pm panel titled, "Tracing the Superman Theme: From Neitzche to Iron Man." Sure, why not? After all, I've been reading comics since 1975. It turned out that the moderator was driving in from Boston and could not quite make it to the panel. There were two other panelists, one who was another scientist/comics geek and the other who had actually read Neitzche. We had a lively discussion about how various heroes from comics, books, and film met the characteristics of the Ubermensch. It turned out much better than I could have hoped.

Then I went to my friend John Ashmead's talk on "How to Build a Time Machine" along with several other members of my SF book club. He covered the time machine in both fact and fiction, including describing several physics papers that have been published on the subject. Very interesting (and he kept his quota of puns to a minimum). Next I wandered through the Art Show (also very small) and the Meet the Pros party, which was held between the art and the gaming tables. I saw the Program Chair, who apologized to me for having been put on 10am panels on both Sat and Sun, when I had requested no panels before noon, and that was unexpectedly nice of him. I saw most of the usual suspects who go to Philcon. I stopped by the Con Suite, where there were only 2 people and at that point decided to head home.

So several of my panels have been moved, but alas not the 10am one. They did tell me that they have found someone to sub for me for the Sat morn panel, so I'm not going to stress about making it (although several of my friends have told me that they were looking forward to seeing me on it). Here's where I'll be as of the last schedule change:

Sat 10am Redrawing the Tree of Life: the New Taxonomy
Sat 3pm Super-Mega-Crossovers and the Fans Who Hate Them
Sat 5pm What Does a Scientist Do, Exactly?

Sun 10am Xtreme Neurology

The Sat 5pm panel is supposed to be part of the Children's programming track, and they asked me to make it interactive, so I've brought a model of a brain (instead of an actual brain). It does seem a bit odd that they scheduled something for children at 5pm, which is well known to be the hour of melt downs, but we'll see how it goes.

Got gas for $1.75 Full Service - the real bonus to having the con in New Jersey!

Despite the naysayers who never believed that it would finally happen, today I have cleaned off enough of my desk to set up my computer and printer back on it! I've been spending about 10 min a day sorting through papers and after 2 months, I finally struck desk. Now I can use my little back desk (where the computer had been living) for other things, and I can look out my window while I'm on the computer again. I still have plenty more stacks of papers to sort through, but I am delighted to have made progress!

Today I received the wonderful news that my promotion has been approved by the Executive Faculty!!! It still has to be signed off on by the highers up, but my Chair assures me that that will be a formality. My official title is now Research Associate Professor and I am now considered Senior Faculty. This will come with a major salary increase (that will be backdated to the beginning of the year!). It feels so gratifying to know that all the hard work is paying off.

Today began my 10 hour trek to the 12th International Symposium on Neural Regeneration, which is held at the ASILOMAR conference center in Pacific Grove, CA. I got up at the unjedly hour of 5:00am in order to drive to the airport for my 7:50am flight to San Francisco. The highlight of the trip was bumping into Jeffrey Sebelia, the winner of third season of Project Runway, who was buying breakfast at the Au Bon Pain in the Philly airport! I recognized him by his distinctive neck tattoos. Other than that, the plane ride was long but uneventful as I travelled with most of my research group. Once we arrived, we claimed out bags and my colleage Scott and I rented a car and drove 100 miles south to the conference, stopping for lunch and to by a map along the way. The facility reminds me of a summer camp on the beach. There are lots of small buildings with a dozen or so rooms. The rooms have no tv or telephones. Cell phone signal is sparse and there is wireless access only in the main building (although my room is close enough to get a faint signal). Apparently, this is intentional in order to create a more personally interactive atmosphere. There is a dining hall and we are all on a meal plan. Tonight we had dinner and then a talk followed by a social (which I ditched, being too tired). The conference has programming from 8am to 11pm each day, with these group meals scheduled inbetween posters and talks. There are about 200 people here and it looks like it could be pretty intense. On the other hand, we are in a park right next to the beach, which is beautiful, and I've already seen seabirds, deer, and a racoon. There is a sign posting advice on how to scare off a mountain lion in the event that we see one. Walking on the beach trails is a traditional conference pastime. Overall, it should be fun, but it's going to be work and not a vacation.

I feel like I am in the midst of many long term projects this year, both at work and at home. Taking yesthattom's advice about time management to heart, I have been trying to break them down into manageable portions that I can accomplish each week. That way, I can always feel like I am making progress.

So today I returned to the task of painting my bathroom. Some of you may recall my story about how hideous the original bathroom had been with three different kinds of wallpaper, a sponge painted ceiling, and wooden molding. Over the last three years, I have removed the wallpaper, covered the plaster with drywall, sanded everything down, primed and painted the ceiling white and the walls a light blue color that Benjamin Moore calls "sapphireberry." I liked it, but I didn't like the contrast that it made with the wooden molding. So I decided to paint the molding a darker blue. Actually, since I had left the painter's tape up for so long, I realized that I had grown attached to that color, so that's the color I've chosen to paint the molding! Today I primed an painted the bottom molding, and I think it looks great! I've also painted the rims of the hideous metallic green light fixtures the same color and may even get around to reinstalling them some day. The next steps are to remove the tape from the upper molding and paint that, and then take a tiny brush and work on smoothing out the transitions between the dark and light blue paint.

It felt good to accomplish this today and the cats helped by staying out of the way while the paint was drying.

My next house task is to decide whether or not I'm actually going to replace the gas forced air heater this year, and possibly get a central humidifier and air conditioning. I've obtained several quotes and I feel like I'm close to making a decision. The hardest part will be planning out how to afford it. Since I don't truly know when my potential salary increase will take effect (that will come whenever my promotion happens and the earliest would be end of January), I am trying not to count on that in my plans.

Another long term task that has been going pretty well has been my weight management program. I've been eating more mindfully, keeping a food journal and documenting my increased exercise in order to figure out how to reverse my creeping weight gain. Success! I have lost 5 pounds over the last three weeks, and I am very glad to feel like I am finally getting a handle on managing this.

I've been working from home one day a week starting this summer and that has allowed me to make progress on a number of backlogged work projects. Because of that I have been able to submit three manuscripts, get four others to the point of being submitted soon, and submit four abstracts for conference poster presentations. That's excellent productivity for the summer!

So by focusing on what I can accomplish on a daily or weekly basis, I am avoiding feeling overwhelmed with all of these long term projects. I'm proud of myself for making it happen and look forward to keeping it up through the upcoming rollercoaster ride that the Fall often is for me. Stress reduction through progress is a wonderful thing!

My cute summer medical student, baked me a loaf of zucchini bread to thank me for giving him the opportunity to work in my lab over the summer. He's thinking of applying to the MD/PhD program as a result of his experience. He and his wife and baby are all super nice people and I definitely appreciate the gesture. The only problem is that he has not been around the lab long enough to hear the story of why I no longer eat zucchini. I thanked him for the gift, but what should I do when he asks me how I enjoyed it?


[Poll #1021088]

I had to miss both mujetdebois's initiation event and a trip to see my nephews today in order to attend a birthday party for one of my bosses from work. It turned out to be more fun than I expected. It was held at an art gallery in Norristown (her husband is an artist) and it was a nice mix of work folks, artists, and family. They had a piano player doing showtunes and I ended up singing with a group of slightly inebriated guests for about an hour. I sang pretty well, and in the end had a nice time. It reminded me of how much I miss going out to piano bars. I'm gonna have to organize a trip sometime...

Why does traveling make one so tired? All I did yesterday was spend a few hours in a car and on a plane and a lot of waiting around. But after a short walk from the hotel to the Peachtree mall food court for a quick meal, I came back and crashed out for the night. I was asleep by 10:30 (which is unheard of for me). I'm now up with the dawn (another rare event). It could be that I am unconsciously resting up in anticipation of the exhaustion that is to come. Well, the conference starts at 8:00am and goes until 5:00pm today, after which I have to attend a meeting of the Association of Neuroscience Departments and Programs until 7:30pm.

I spent an hour last night creating my itinerary from the searchable database only to discover at the end that my computer does not have the software to convert it to a printable format. Sigh. I'm hoping that they will have some way to do this at the convention center, else I'll simply wander around until I see something interesting. And with several thousand posters and talks each session, plus exhibits, there is likely to be something to see.

Ok, time to go to work...

Bush used his first Presidential Veto to nix a bill to lift some restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. There were not enough votes in the House to override the veto, so policy stays as it is. That means that a very small number of pre-existing embryonic stem cells remain available for research use if supported by govt funds, which is not a scientifically viable situation. The worst part is that he vetoed it on moral grounds - what happened to separation of church and state?

I received word today that I will be awarded one of the grants that I wrote last month!!! This is a small grant from a local fund to study rehabilitation from spinal injury, but every little bit counts. I am very happy!!!