Thursday, November 3, 2011

things that are funny in airports at 6:00 am

The best sign I have ever seen in an airport:

"SECURITY CHECK

NO JOKES, PLEASE"


Silly things have been making me giggle the past few days.  During one of the presentations I saw, this guy said, "I don't want to throw out the bathwater with the baby..." and it just struck me as really funny.  Something about the idea of wanting to chuck a baby, but definitely not wanting to lose the bathwater...

Anyway.  Not as funny: paying $8 for some yogurt and a house coffee.  It's not even a floofy espresso drink.  Or good yogurt.  :(

Well, that's that for the ASA, I guess!  I never did get to check out San Diego any more.  I went to talks on Tuesday morning, did reading and work on Tuesday afternoon, went to dinner with some people I don't know very well (but it was very nice), and hit the hotel hot tub before bed.  Wednesday, we had our poster presentation starting at 10:00, but people were already coming by and seeming interested at 8:30, so we just set up shop early and talked and talked and talked about it for 3 hours.  Everyone had nice things to say, for the most part, so that's always a good sign, I think.  I really like poster sessions, and the ASA is still my favorite conference so far.

Here's what this poster looked like, just for fun:


They're getting better with practice, I think.  (Do you see how we made our graphs look like little French flags??)

Then Wednesday afternoon I had a long lunch with some friends from Stanford and some other phonetician friends I've picked up along the way.  It was really fun in that supremely nerdy way that only other people who have something as ridiculous as phonetics as their chosen profession probably understand.  I intended to go to more talks Wednesday afternoon, but we missed the start of them because we were fleshing out our business model for a mall store that offers individualized napping space ($5 for the first 15 minutes, extra fee for someone who will wake you up forcefully; then it's $10/5 minutes after that).

So instead of seeing more talks (which I actually wanted to see!), I worked on my bibliography and tried to get more reading done, but it was one of those days where it takes you 2 hours to get through 18 pages.  Finally an old friend/acquaintance of mine called and we went and tossed a frisbee around for just a few minutes until it got dark.  I went back to the hotel and had dinner with someone I knew from the ASA meeting in Seattle last spring, then I did some more reading, spent too much time on Facebook, and hit the hot tub again.

I could seriously get used to having a hot tub around.  What a great way to wind down before bed.

And now it's 7:00 and I'm at the San Diego airport waiting to go to Newark.  I had completely forgotten that I have a connection in Newark, which means I'll be on my first flight from 8:00 PST to 4:30 EST, change planes in Newark, and then eventually get in to Boston at 6:15 tonight.  And somewhere in there I need to clean up my talk for tomorrow (yikes!) and it would be soooo nice if I could finish this bibliography.  I'm not really holding out for that, though.

I'm a little worried that I'm going to freeze in Boston.  The highs are in the 50s this weekend, but I've been living in California for long enough that I worry I've become soft.

Well, back to reading.  Much love to all, and you'll hear from me again in Boston!

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