Good to be Home

I returned home from the 5 day Drosophila Conference in San Diego yesterday afternoon. The meeting, as always, was exhausting. My brain is so full!! There is just too much information to digest!

I presented my poster on Derailed and Wnt5 at the meeting. It went really well. I spent a lot of time talking to the lab that works on Derailed and Wnt5 in the nervous system. As it turns out, there are several experiments that they haven't been able to get to work in the nervous system that I think are likely to work in the salivary glands. We agreed to collaborate on the experiments. They are sending me the contructs/flies I need and I'm going to conduct the experiments in our lab. I'm really excited beacuse these are experiments I wanted to do anyway, and this will get me to the answer sooner and justify my claim that understanding how Derailed and Wnt5 in more than one system is valuable.

My dad came down to San Diego on Saturday and we went to Old Town San Diego for Mexican food. This was the only time I left the convention center. It was nice to get out and talk about something other than science for a couple of hours. After dinner I had to get back for a workshop where our main competitor was speaking- it was scheduled form 9:30-11:30pm! And of course, with the time change, that meant I didn't get to bed until after midnight!

I managed to get 2 swims in at the hotel pool, although this wasn't as nice as it sounds. The pool wasn't heated and it was very similar to jumping into the ocean. I still swam, but it wasn't really all that enjoyable. At least it was sunny and warm out. I would have just got to the hotel gym, but they wanted $10/day to use their facilities and the pool was free.

I am really glad to be home. 5 days is a long time to be away. Chris was really sweet. He worked hard to have the house picked up (almost as clean as when I left), he did the laundry and the dishes and had a bouquet of flowers on the table for me when I got home. I decided when I saw the flowers I could forgive him for not watering my plants and seedlings, some of which I am going to have re-plant.

Chris seemed to have a good time while I'm gone, well mostly. He injured his shoulder last week playing basketball and spent 4 hours in urgent care only to find out that there wasn't really anything to be done about it other than let it heal. He did go on a hike in point reyes and got some beautiful wild flower pics. I'm sure he'll be posting them on his blog soon.