Corpus Christi

so, i'm here in corpus christi, and it's halfway through the trip. i miss max like crazy, but it's not as bad as i had anticipated. mostly because we've been hella busy since we got here.

also: i did not bring enough clothes. just two pairs of jeans, nice pants for my talk, one shirt for each day plus one extra shirt. and that is not enough. because i did not anticipate that one of my pairs of jeans would get beer splattered all over them. but i'll tell you about that in a mintue.

it took us 11 hours or so to get here. which means the DISL crew was actually traveling for almost 12 hours, since they picked me up in mobile. the drive wasn't so bad. there were 12 of us split between a 15 passenger van and a suburban. those of us in the van stopped in houston, and nate's parents graciously bought 7 hungry grad students pizza (really good pizza) at a place called star pizza. so that probably made the trip longer than necessary, but it was totally worth it. plus, we got to meet nate's parents.

my talk was yesterday, and i totally nailed it. so Yay! me. dr. v. said, "that was your best talk ever." it made me happy. not that i thought it wasn't going to be awesome. i pretty much told everyone i saw to come to my talk because it was going to be the best one of the meeting. plus, the one in the other session (there are two simultaneous sessions of talks) was lame. you could tell by the title. i know, i'm so modest.

there are 14 grad students/interns/postdocs from DISL here, plus dr. v. one of our postdocs just moved here, and charlie flew in early, so only 12 of us drove down. of those 14, there are 3 matts. so i have started using their last names instead of their first names. but i'll just use initials here.

anyway, to celebrate my life-changing, earth-shattering, completely amazing talk, marissa, charlie, matt k. and i skipped out on the last session of afternoon talks and decided to have a drink at the hotel bar instead. matt k. bought drinks for everyone because his advisor is giving him per diem, and we have to pay for everything. it was nice of him to think of us. and nice of us to help him take full advantage of his $55 a day. ;)

then we went to the poster session and looked at the posters (you have the option to do an oral presentation like i did or present a poster outlining your research at meetings like this) before matt j. took a bunch of us to a sweet mexican place for dinner, where we had good cheap food and good STRONG margaritas. well, not matt j., because he was driving. all the matts were there. only matt k. had a margarita, but i didn't question his manhood. pat did it for me, and it was a pretty funny conversation.

after mexican, matt j. dropped us off at an irish bar near our hotel, where i got an appletini. but i sort of spilled some of it. twice. umm, i can't really drink from a martini glass when i'm not sober, apparently. so i asked for my second appletini not in a martini glass. and the bartender didn't even laugh at me. because he saw how clumsy i was, i guess. oh, and nate bought me a hard cider, which was pretty good too. and i didn't fall off of any bar stools. and i was the only one of our entire group to get carded. WTF? i am 26 years old. marissa just turned 22. i am older than half of our group. but the bartender only carded me. i order an appletini (actually, i asked if they had mike's first, but no one around believes in serving mike's apparently), and he says, "do you have i.d. sweetie?" but he doesn't ask anyone else for i.d. boo. everyone else said it was a good thing.

then marissa made matt k. drop his beer. so the glass shattered. and splattered all over my foot. and my jeans. so now they smell like ass, and they will have to be my smelly bar jeans for this trip. but anyway, matt grabbed a broom and swept up the glass, and really i'm surprised we didn't get kicked out of the bar after that. but we didn't.

later i went to the bathroom and noticed blood on my big toe, and i was like, "wtf? i'm bleeding!" but i didn't feel it. and when we got back to the hotel i noticed that my other foot was bleeding too. but i didn't feel that either. they were teeny tiny little cuts.

so that's what's been going on here. max is still breaking out in hives, and chad is having to give him his medicine even though we're supposed to be taking him off of it. oh well. i miss them both, and i'm sort of ready to go home.