Denver AAS – Day 2

Posted by barb on Jun 1, 2004 in Random Thoughts |

I’ve decided that conference exhibit halls have time eddies, and our booth is caught in a large unyielding one.

Notes on the day:

  • Perhaps the big news was that Sean O’Keefe, the NASA administrator was at the meeting to give a speech. Before the speech, he came through the exhibit hall and stopped at several booths. He stopped at ours, and was introduced to Kim. They chatted for just a minute, and I stopped paying attention, which was the moment that he was about to move on, but stopped and extended his hand for me. Oops. I looked like a total idiot. Oh well.
  • I wasn’t able to go to his speech — we went to lunch to be on hand for the booth after his speech. However, the buzz was that the speech was heartening. He emphasised that NASA is still going to have a strong space sciences program; that just because the exploration push has come about that it doesn’t mean the end of the other scientific endeavors of NASA. He also did mention Constellation-X by name just after talking about the current missions and before going through a laundry list of other upcoming missions. Kim was happy that he did that, and hoped that it meant something good about our prospects.
  • I’m continually surprised by the fashion sense of scientists. I’m not exactly a fashion-conscious person, but I at least try to wear things that match and don’t make me look too bad. A few examples:
    • On days that people present posters, they generally try to dress up. That’s fairly easy for the men. However, some of the women choose to wear dresses or skirts — these are women who have probably not worn a dress or a skirt since their parents dragged them to church in high school. In fact, I think that many of them are wearing the very same skirts or dresses that they were dragged to church wearing.
    • There’s a guy I’ve named “capri boy” walking around the posters all afternoon. He’s wearing khaki colored pants that stopped just below his knee. They are like capri pants, but on a guy. Now, I’ll conceed that he is a tall man, but this was beyond “floods”, beyond the inability to find pants that were long enough.
  • At lunch, JD and I walked down to Sonic. The highlight was my strawberry squishy. Yum. I miss Sonic squishies.

After the meeting, JD, Stef, Doug and I went down to the Tattered Cover bookstore on 16th. I bought a few books, a copy of Skeptical Inquirer magazine and bookplates.

Stopped at Subway on the way back to my hotel room, where I kicked back and watched Down With Love on HBO.

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