Since I got here early this morning, I can spend a few minutes in uninterrupted blogging. This is probably the first time in many weeks that I have actually gotten to campus early enough to get a close parking spot. I was pulling into the stadium parking lot this morning when I was actually stopped by the guy at the guard booth. He was an elderly gentleman and he told me that this parking lot was closed today because of freshman move-in day or something like that. I said okay and asked if I could just pull in and make a u-turn.

He says, "Sure, but before you do that, let me guess where you were born."

"What?" I ask, thinking that I must have heard wrong.

"Let me guess where you're from."

"Okay um. Sure." And then he proceeded to guess the following locations in the following order:

"Houston?" No.
"Dallas?" No.

Then he thinks about it and says, "San Juan, Puerto Rico???"

That's definitely a no.

Got back into Austin yesterday afternoon. I dunno why but I was soooo tired. I had slept on the plane and all but last night I went to bed at 9:30 and didn't wake up till around 8am this morning! I've been at work since about 9:00 here and haven't really gotten any work done. All I've been doing is responding to emails and taking care of stuff here and there.

But yeah, I had a good trip I must say. Sorry for the lack of pictures from my Baltimore/Philly/Virginia visit, but I didn't want to be taking pictures of everything while I was hanging out with peoples. Anyways, didn't do many activities while visiting with my college buddies. The only thing I really did was see "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" with Yogi. Other than that, I just met up with people and caught up on life. That alone was so great for me. I really enjoy the conversations that I can have with these guys. Too bad I don't still live in Baltimore with everyone again. Those were the days:)

Long day yet again… there was another poster presentation, again with the lady presenters getting all the attention. Once again, I was amused. Nothing really exciting to report. I’ve had the chance to meet these two cool guys from England. Andy is a student and he’s originally from Belgium. Matt is an assistant professor (or as they call him in England, an “tenured assistant lecturer”). Both of them are really fun and we’ve had a blast enjoying meals together as well as the rest of the conference.

Here’s a picture of all of us together at this Indian restaurant last night. We had the idea to eat at this place and show up there after the last session. Within 30 minutes of showing up, dozens of people from the conference also show up, apparently all having a craving for Indian food. Fortunately we decided a lot earlier to go and got our order in first.

Out of the five of us, three of us had beer with our dinner. See if you can guess from the picture which three did. Post your guesses in the comments. I’ll reveal the answers shortly.