My weekend in Syracuse

[hkellick]

So, as promised, now that I'm ready to talk about it, I'll tell you about my weekend in Syrcause.
Friday.. what a day.
I got up pretty early, ran down and checked my email in the hope that Professor Atkinson had read and commented on my presentation.
Checked email... nothing. Not a thing.
So I'm suddenly panicked.
Check LJ and stuff.. read through some entries, recheck mail and FINALLY there's a letter from Professor Atkinson... he got home late last night and he'll read and comment on my presentation soon.
To borrow an expression: nerrrrrrrrrrr :P
So, I get up, watch some Buffy on F/X.. wait.. check again... watch some more Buffy.. check again.. at 9:30.. some comment show up.
Look over his suggestions and make some changes (not much) he liked the presentation apparently, printed up the presentation and the comments (preparedness! yay!) and go to school.
Now, according to him, we are supposed to leave at 10:30 or 11:00.
I get in his office at 10:20, lugging my overnight bag, my backpack and my lunch.. He's printing posters he wanted to distribute at the conference.. and it's taking FOREVER!!
Nerrrrrrrr...
So, finally at 11:00 he gets the brilliant idea to go to the school copy shop and get some colour copies. Heads over there.
10 minutes... 15.. 20... 25 minutes pass by...
finally, at 11:28, he reappears. It took forever for them to start the color copier out, so he went to Starbuck's for some coffee (one day someone will need to explain to me why increasing the price of coffee and giving it some fancy name makes for incredibly coffee demand) and waited forever in THAT line too.
So we start out half an hour late.
And I'm at the edge of my seat. I NEED to be there by 2:30 to talk.
Speeding along merrily to Syracuse... we got into Syracuse at about 1:45... OK, I'm not so worried now... he says we're about 15 minutes away.
Did you know that Syracuse is, apparently, all uphill? Downtown Syracuse is, in any case.
And did you know that SUNY ESF (State University of New York: Environmental Science and Forestry) is downtown? I dunno.. I expected it to be in a suburb or something. Silly me.
So... we're maybe two minutes away from the campus.. stopped at a right light. The light turns green and we try to go uphill and the front right tire is screeching and whirring but we AREN'T GOING UP. So we get out.. and the front right tire is FLAT! Totally Flat!
Altogether now: Nerrrrrrrrrr....
So Dr. Atkinson suggests I just walk there. It's a five minute walk. I do so and arrive on time, which is good. And Dr. Atkinson and James Craig (one of two other students going up to this conference with us) come in just in time for my talk.
So.. I'm sweating and remembering (I ALWAYS seem to remember too late) that I HATE PUBLIC SPEAKING! Go up there and present about my thesis project... actually, it went fairly well.. except that I spoke for about 9 minutes and it was expected I'd talk for 15.
It isn't that I spoke THAT quickly.. I spoke at a decent pace.. it was that I just didn't have much in the way of material.
But it's over and everyone agrees I did pretty well, so... whatever.
Listen to three more talks.. some good, some.. OK..
and then it's time to check into our hotel.. the Genessee Inn.
No problems there (phew). Check in and find out that I'm the only one of us on the 1st floor... James, Joe (Dr. Atkinson) and Jean (who hadn't arrived yet. She was still in Letchworth for the design class) were on the second floor.
No problem. The room is.. alright. Not spectacular. Not terrible.
Get back to the conference in time for the pay bar. Actually, I just stick with diet coke and diet 7up. They only had beer and wine and... nah.... I don't care for both. Chatted a bit with James and some guys from Buff State (including Tony Friona, a guy I had a class with a few years ago.)
Then the "Banquet" was served.
The entire banquet was VEGETARIAN... there was this thing that looked kinda like quishe but had zucchini and tomatoes and stuff in it and was NASTY, salad (of course), some shells in some white cheese sauce with nuts (this was good. Mostly ate this) and some fruit salad and rolls.
I wasn't thrilled with the banquet.. but.. I was full, so...
The after-dinner entertainment was pretty interesting, though.
As some of y'all know, the suffragette movement (or whatever you want to call it) started in the Mid-1800s in Central New York. Anyways, the speaker suggested that it started because the american women looked at how THEY were treated (no rights, couldn't walk anywhere alone without fear of being raped or whatnot) and how the Central New York Indian women were treated (with respect and as equals) and... decided they liked what they saw.
She named alot of names and some dates which I didn't recognize (not knowing much about the early sugragettes), but it was an interesting talk nonetheless.
Went back to the hotel just in time to see Jean and her boyfriend check in. They had arrived. We made some plans for meeting in the morning and went our respective ways. I called home to see what was going on (my uncle who had a heart attack AGAIN (he has congestic heart failure) had been in the hospital thursday, but out by friday) and my friend Dave had a birthday party next weekend I've been invited to).
Then, I spent the majority of the night watching ABC (first bloopers, then 20/20) but ended up falling asleep to CNN (It was TOO quiet and I was lonely without my babies or at least a radio to put on.)
Oh, did I mention the card I found on my pillow? It said, and this is a near-direct quote "Help Save The Environment!" Basically... unless I left this card on my pillow, they would strip and clean my sheets the next morning, using water and harming the environment.
I was much amused, but as it ended up, they had the heat on so high, I ended up never slipping into the sheets. I just slept under the top blanket and I was comfortable with that. So, I can say I did my part two nights back to help save the environment *amuse*
So, woke up really early.. turned on the boob tube and watched various morning programs and such... got up, showered, went and had a REAL breakfast at the Inn Cafe (they were serving a "continental breakfast" at the conference and I figured that meant.. what it meant.. danishes and muffins and such) and we were off again to saturday's presentations...
... almost..
James and Joe and I got to Joe's SUV to find out.. his front left tire was completely flat now.
I KID YOU NOT!
Luckily for us, Jean and (I can't think of Jean's boyfriend's name atm) had driven up seperately, so we crammed into her talk and went to the presentations without Joe.
Headed first to the Limnology presentations, some of which were really interesting.. lsome... less so.
The next round of presentations were more environmental engineering presentation, so I sat through that (Jean and James were presenting anyways.. as was Tony Friona).
Jean's presentation was pretty good.. James' even better.. the third person.. totally didn't have a clue... she was presenting about erosion and I have to wonder about some of her results (like... if you have a graph showing flowrate in a river over time.. and you see some up and down flow and some big spikes (which correspond to storms), wouldn't the "Base flow" (normal flow of the river) be somewhere around the up and down flow (instead of above it?).. fourth was Tony Friona.. who, litereally, had put his presentation together the night before and that morning.. it wasn't terrible. Then the fifth presentation came and the guy comes up and was like "I must come clean. I'm not an engineer or a scientist. I may be presenting in the wrong place." But he had a REALLY good presentation about using GIS to manage political decisions to help clean up a watershed. I was really impressed.
Next was the Lunch. By this time, Joe had finally reappeared, so Jean, James and Jean's boyfriend all went back to Buffalo and I stayed to have lunch with Joe and hope I won some money (for the best environmental engineering presentation in the first "round' (Friday). Luckily, the lunch was chicken wraps (YAY, NOT VEGETARIAN!) and I chowed down happily, sitting with some chemists from SUNY ESF (as Joe was a judge and had to sit seperately to pick the winners.)
As it turned out, they combined all the Environmental Engineering presentations (friday AND Saturday), so I never had a chance, but that's OK.. James won. I'm happy for him.
Came home with Joe.. it was a nice ride home and we had some really interesting conversation (he's Jewish and I've mentioned, once, that my family is Jewish. (I never say *I* am Jewish anymore. I try to be very careful about that.) and we had a discussion on different holidays and Israel and went to current events in Israel and abroad and.. it was just a pleasant conversation.)
Came home, tried to sleep but my bratty cats wouldn't let me get a wink. They were hungry NOW and I had to feed them NOW.
So I watched some TV, then checked LJ and wrote my post.

Today, I'm relaxing, doing laundry.. I might play Sims: Hot Date some.
That's about it for me.
Ciao, all! See y'all on Chaotic (or not) eventually

Comments

[kareila]

Is that a new userpic? :)

[lite.livejournal.com]

Yep!
Do you like it?
I do :D

[kareila]

It's appropriate. ;)

[lite.livejournal.com]

Yes, I rather think so...