Too long

Not a post inspired by any great happenings, merely by the lack of posting.

Got back from Boston yesterday evening, having attended another gathering of 10,000+ chemists. As time goes on, I'm noticing that the motivation to attend these things doesn't come so much from presenting new research findings (the few I have) or listening to other people's research findings (the few they have) but rather from seeing familiar faces. I guess networking can happen after all, even for us quiet types.

Boston's transit system ("the T") works well--always refreshing to note when travelling outside of California.

Boston's convention center, like most, looks to have been built over decrepit land and/or buildings as an urban renewal project. However, it is still close enough to civilization that we could walk out of it and have a remarkably good lunch for not more if not less than what the convention center's typically mediocre food court was charging. This is in contrast to the Chicago convention center, which is truly surrounded by urban wasteland.

The weather in Boston was probably even better than it was in California. I brought a sweater and felt silly for it.

Watching environmental-cataclysm movies on the plane while flying back to California probably wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea. Still, to watch "The Day After Tomorrow" and then look out the window to see the scars from miles-thick ice etched into the colossal granites of the west, to see it tinted orange by the sunshine filtering through smoke, to see a forgotten wildfire burning lazily across the acres and miles of sagebrush...felt curiously profound.

That fire north of Santa Barbara has burned an area larger than Rhode Island.