Evolution 2010

TM and I are at the Evolution meetings in Portland, OR. It's been a long time since I was with such a large group of evolutionary scientists! The talks are quite fun, and the posters are engaging. Since I love the topic of evolution in general, I can be pretty certain of liking something about almost any talk I could see here. Maybe someday if I get involved more in the education side of evolution, I'll make a poster or give a talk on "God and Evolution". Would you believe that there's a convention in the same building at the same time by the Oregon Christian Home Education group? Wonderful! If only we could get the two groups together to make sure we all understood that we don't have anything to argue about. Ah well.

TM went to the childcare facilities at the conference for a few hours this morning, and she loved it. It's wonderful when a conference of professionals helps out people with children. Thanks to my advisor for making sure childcare made it into the program :). TM and I will go to church tomorrow, then hit the meetings with a vengeance on Monday and Tuesday, and head back to Vancouver on Wednesday.

Oh, I forgot to talk about the train ride. It was beautiful, of course, and much easier than the airplane. At least on the train there aren't any seatbelts, and we could get up and walk around if we wanted. I did end up plugging in TM's DVD player, I'm sad to admit, but I was so dead tired. TM had stayed with Q during my last Portland trip, which meant her schedule changed from Mom's schedule (early to bed early to rise) to dad's schedule (late to bed…). She hadn't adjusted to mom's schedule before we had to get up at 5am to catch the train, so she was super tired on the trip, and so was I. Now I think we're back on the same schedule, yay, so it's much better. And we won't have to greet the sunrise to catch the train back, hooray.

I meant to visit some friends while I was here, but I'm just not on the ball, and I fear that none of that will happen. I'll just have to send apologies galore and hope people forgive me for staying downtown. If I had a car, I wouldn't have any excuse at all, would I?

Now I'd better get back to researching Life After My PhD. I'm looking for what to do next, and the meetings are a good place to get ideas. I already met a lady who's doing a long-distance postdoc from home, and she lives near me and has a kid TM's age! Of course we met at the childcare place. She had some great tips to help me get settled in Vancouver, hooray! Anyway, more next time...