Chicago, Part 2

[telerib]

Not that it hasn't been fun and all, but I am just ready to go home.

My plane don't leave til 4pm Thursday, though.

Sunday was fun. The planetarium was very cool. I crammed in more medieval history, since they had an exhibit on the foundations of astronomy in Europe and the Middle East. The shows were nice enough; one was "Stars of the Pharaohs" in an all-digital theatre (voiceovers by John Rhys-Davies, aka Gimli) and the other was a more traditional planetarium show with some extra slides of Mars rover pictures, shown in their historical 1930s dome. I was hoping "Stars of the Pharaohs" would be up there with the Mythraic show I saw at the Rosicrucian Museum, but alas... quite normal and tame in comparison.

Saw and heard some more of the Celtic Festival. One of the callers for the audience-participation Ceili dance was a young kid, maybe 17 or 19, in a kilt. The kid was Chinese. I love America.

Also had deep-dish Chicago pizza. Perhaps because it was an all-veg pizza, or perhaps because the restaurant was not so good, but I was not too impressed. It was good, don't get me wrong - but not in that jaw-dropping, staggeringly good way that I kind of expected a Chicago deep-dish pizza to be.

Monday, the presentation went well. I had a pretty good audience - two dozen people, maybe three? The room was full. And they asked questions, which either means I really engaged their attention, or I had big gaping holes in my talk. None of the questions were really unexpected (the work does have its weaknesses, of course), so I'm hoping I don't flatter myself to lean towards the former.

Otherwise... lots of talks, lots of paying attention... like being back in college lecture from 9:30am til 5:30pm with a break for lunch. Very tiring.

Rinse and repeat for today.

Although tonight... tonight there was this meet-n-greet reception. And this staffer came up to a bunch of us and asked if we'd like a free catered dinner. Seems that a bunch of bigwigs decided to reschedule their bigwig dinner meeting from tonight to yesterday and never told anyone. So the food was there, but the bigwigs were not. Someone had to eat it, so they rounded up a bunch of young-looking people (I guess assuming we were students and thus poor?) and herded us to the food. Good food, and I got to meet some folks in the field my own age (so other grad students and young professionals who'd gotten their BS and/or MS and gotten out 3 to 6 years ago).

Clean living, that's what it is.