And finally we've come to the end of the insanity that's been the first third of 2008. Got back into town Thursday evening, after sneaking onto a slightly earlier flight home from Dallas.
The rest of the Vancouver part of the trip was good. Lots of interesting papers at the conference. I mostly caught presentations either on wind engineering or wood-frame design. I was amused that I kept seeing the same two groups of attendees--either engineers & academics from the wind engineering/wind tunnel communnity or engineers from the wood industry, depending on the presentation topics. I need to go paging through the CD of proceedings now to review the papers I heard presented and look at the many interesting papers I didn't have time to hear.
I made a delightful side trip down to Seattle for Dandelion Fluff II. The drive down took about 3-1/2 hours including the border crossing (about 20-25 minutes) and a stop to pick up some juice & fruit. It was great to see, sing with, and hang out with ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
cflute, pocketnaomi, acrobatty and technoshaman. dan_ad_nauseum came up from Portland for the festivities. Also got to see Steve & Jody Dixon who I hadn't seen since Steve's Interfilk GOH slot back at FilKONtario in 1996. I can now put faces with a bunch of the NW Filk List folks in person and enjoyed hearing lots of cool songs from them. It was also good to see participant again. I think of Ray every time we fly to OVFF. I'm not sure if many people know that Sheryl and I were the folks who wound up bringing Ray to OVFF several years back after he spotted us sitting in CMH with our guitars and struck up a conversation.
Stayed overnight at the Green Monster. After a lazy morning which included a matzoh-brei breakfast courtesy of acrobatty, and after playing a bunch of songs for cflute et al, I headed back north around 2pm. Between border traffic and fuel stops, I just *barely* made it back to the car rental place before it closed at 5:30pm. Walked back to the hotel, rested for a bit, then walked over to Robson Street and broke Passover just a bit early with a fettucine dinner at a place called The Spaghetti Joint.
After one more night in my fine hotel, it was off to Dallas for another three days of committee meetings. I won't bore y'all with the details, but the meetings were fairly contentious, and after the first day I was up til almost midnight with a couple of colleagues updating a presentation. The hotel, a Wyndham, left much to be desired after the Hotel Le Soleil. In addition to being under construction, my room was underwhelming. The walls were paper-thin, leading to my being woken twice half-a-hour early by the alarm clock in the room next to mine. The room seemed to be lit with 15-watt bulbs--even with every light turned on it was dim. And the food choices were two hotel restaurants (the Wyndham & a Westin) and a Denny's. The one bright spot was free wireless, even in the conference rooms.
On a lighter note, a group of folks went to a Rangers-Royals game at the Ballpark in Arlington. That would be, I believe, the 13th major league stadium (10 current and 3 former) I've attended a game at. The game was definitely not a pitcher's duel--an 11-9 Rangers win with 25 combined hits (13 for TX) and 8 combined home runs (6 by TX including a grand slam). It was a messy game, with a general lack of fielding skill, and many misplayed balls. Although some of that could be attributed to the windy conditions, there were still four errors (3 by Texas) and the Texas infielders could not turn a double play to save their lives. In fact, they failed on two consecutive at-bats--got the lead runner fine but not the batter. So two consecutive plays scored as a fielder's choice. Ah well--still an enjoyable evening.
So, with these two trips done, it now looks like I won't be on the road for anything other than a con until late in the summer. Yay!
