Episode LXV: Business and Pleasure

I spent about a week and a half in LA and Orange County for both business and pleasure purposes. First, I attended a science conference at UCLA, the “17th International C. elegans Meeting”! For those of you who wouldn’t think that C. elegans community would be large enough to warrant such a meeting, let me alert you to the fact that over 1,000 people were registered for the meeting. Ha!

So anyhow, I was fortunate enough to be able to give a talk, which went well, and which my family even showed up to watch! I learned later that a current Nobel laureate (also in the C. elegans field) was also in the audience during my talk.

[Apparently I was too busy that day to take a picture of the occasion- thus no photo to share with you all. But my labmate did take this picture beforehand to prove that I did in fact dress up.]


Also that day we noticed helicopters hovering above campus all afternoon. It turned out they were there because Michael Jackson had just been declared dead at the UCLA medical center, only a block or two away. In fact, I parked my (Brian’s) car right next to this local news reporter (CBS I believe).



After the meeting, my labmate Rafael stayed at my place for a couple days, during which time we hit up four different beaches, the Hollywood walk of fame, the new L.A. Live area near Staples Center, and boat ride to Catalina Island (my first time!), among other things.


Had some good times with the family too, including another trip to the beach, a trip to Lucky Strike bowling (my first!)…


...A Dodgers game, where we got to run amok on the field while watching post-game fireworks...


…And, for the first time since I moved to Kansas, I spent the 4th of July with my family, where we played lots of volleyball, ate lots of food, and went out to see the Disneyland fireworks. Hooray!