10/24
Kristin (my room-mate), Jenny & Eric (my advisors) and I left for the ASHG conference on 10/24. Kristin was interested in the Hap-Map tutorial, and I had a poster to present "Merging Microsatellite Data II". We stayed in a Vegas Motel 6 on Monday night.
10/25
On Tuesday we drove through Zion and met up with Kristin's parents, who just happened to be vacationing in Bryce Canyon. Bryce was amazing! We hiked around a bit but mostly took a self-guided car tour. After a gourmet buffet dinner at Ruby's -where we saw a gorgeous rainbow- we finished the remaining 5hrs of the drive.
10/26
On the first day of the conference, Kristin left me in the dust on a run thru Salt Lake. It turns out that elliptical machines do not translate well to running.
My poster session went very well -- there were several people who were interested in our MicroMerge software.
10/27
We got up early for the morning talks, jogged to 24 hr fitness to squeeze in a workout, went to the afternoon session and then enjoyed a free dinner which came with a Hap Map tutorial. Hap Map was the recurring theme for this conference (along with the usual free coffee, candy, and light-up pens). We topped the night off with a trip to a local bar with one of Kristin's friends and his students.
10/28
Having had enough of the Subaru sauna, Kristin flew back to LA. We fullfilled Jenny's dream of going to Cabela's: the hunters' disneyland, and then made our way to Cedar city, where we found another motel 6.
10/29
Did some bouldering just outside of Cedar city at a place called something like 'Swelt Hills'. It was kind of chossy and didn't seem like a popular place, but it was a good area to check out if you're passing through Cedar city. We camped out in the Virgin River gorge AZ, so we spent the night in a total of 3 different states on this trip!
10/30
Eric has no rivals in competitive buffet conquering.
My official birthday was mostly spent running around to electronic stores and writing a presentation for Jenny (which worked out well since Jonathan was sedated from an upper endoscopy), so we moved my party to Sunday. I was able to coerce J into an afternoon at the climbing gym, and trips to REI and Old Navy. We topped the day off with a fancy Hawaiian-style dinner at Trader Vic's. We ordered the Scorpion drink for two. These pictures were taken with my cool, new, birthday camera.
