Glad to be Home

Phew.
That was a long exhausting trip. Nothing overly exciting, and I guess not overly useful, but parts of the conference were interesting and it was fun to spend a few days in Chicago. I'm not sure if I said anything about going to this conference, but it was the annual meeting for AAAS, the people that paid for my internship this past summer. So they paid for my registration for the meeting, leaving me only to find a way there and a place to stay. I stayed with one of my old college roommates (Shannon) who lives north of the city, and I took the El in each day. It was very nice and very convenient, and it was great seeing Shannon for the first time in more than 2 years.
The meeting itself was pretty overwhelming. There were so many different career workshops, scientific symposia, and other seminars going on that I could hardly think straight. There were at least a few highlights: Al Gore spoke on Friday night, and he was excellent - the perfect amount of entertaining and intellectual. We ended up having to watch his speech from the overflow room though - the room he was in was packed immediately. Oh well. Another entertaining seminar I went to was about people who do science consulting for the entertainment industry. One of the guys that talked to us works for the show The Big Bang Theory, which I watch and enjoy, so it was interesting. Those are basically the highlights.
I was hoping to get a lot of career advice out of this, but that didn't happen. I won't bore you with specifics about the career workshops I did go to, but they were useless. I also tried to go to a job fair for science writing internships just out of curiosity, but when I showed up I discovered it wasn't a normal job far but was instead a series of one-on-one interviews that people had to sign up for with the media outlets they were interested in. Oh well. I've resigned myself to the idea that I don't remotely have the drive to be a science journalist. Oh well.
Other than the conference, I did a few fun things. I had lunch with my oldest friend, Scott, which was nice. I went to the Illini/Northwestern game (previous post...). I went with another AAAS fellow friend to a yarn store and bought some fun sock yarn that I'm excited to use soon. After that I walked very very far - basically from Grant Park to North Michigan Ave and back to the conference at Michigan/Wacker - and did some shopping. I rationalized buying myself a new purse since I wasn't spending any money on food (Sarah and I found enough receptions with free food to fill us up every evening; I think I had to buy lunch twice). I also shopped for maternity clothes for the first time ever - I don't need them yet but figured I'd look for deals. So at least I had a bit of time to do un-conference stuff.
Sarah and I drove back yesterday afternoon and got back just in time to have dinner with Travis while he was in town. Kevin met us at dinner, and I was SO HAPPY when he showed up with a clean-shaven face!!!!! I guess that was my Valentine's day present. I'LL TAKE IT! He had also done a good job of cleaning up the house and doing laundry, for which I was grateful.
Now its back to work....