Seattle AAS

This past week I was in Seattle for the annual winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society. This is typically the largest astronomy meeting every year. I don't know how many people are here, but it's somewhere in the thousands. It's been a lot of fun to catch up with people I know from different places.

Since I'm currently applying for jobs (funding only goes until September, so I have to look now for a job that would start next fall), I am attending the meeting. And since I'm attending the meeting, I needed to present something. I'm currently working on a really cool, interesting project. However, I don't really have any results yet (although it's not really entirely my fault), and so putting together my poster was really stressful. An AAS poster certainly won't make or break one's career, but I still want to do the best job I can. Especially since I'm applying for jobs. Gotta make a good impression, you know?

But it was still stressful and I worked some long hours, including a large percentage of my Christmas break. Boo.

But surprisingly, despite not having any real results, my poster turned out pretty well. It looked pretty, at least. (Yellow font and white plots on a dark blue background is so striking!)

My poster was up Monday at the meeting. (The AAS is so big that each poster is only up for one day of the week-long conference.) It actually generated a lot of interest, which is great. This is easily the most popular poster I've ever had up at this meeting. (And I've attended several of these annual meetings.) Seriously. It was great (and kind of weird) to have so much interest.

Here's a picture of me and my poster:

Oh by the way, just in case you're wondering. I officially found out that I did not get the job in Seattle I wanted. I heard it right from the source (i.e., I actually talked to the project's PI). But that's okay, it just means that I'm supposed to be doing something else and living somewhere else. Now to figure out what/where that is. I can deal. Anyway. That's all I want to say about that.

On a more up note. It was really fun to see people and catch up. I didn't take many pictures of people, but Kevin and I went to lunch with Mike and Lisa Joner, which was so fun. Lisa took this picture of Kevin and I. (He looks a lot happier than me, but I promise I was having just as much fun.)

During lunch on Thursday (last day of the conference) I went down to Pike's Market, which people kept telling me I needed to see. Once I got there, I realized I saw it the last time I came to Seattle (like 7 years ago), but I still haven't seen anyone throwing fish.

I took the red eye flight out of Seattle Thursday night. Since I had an entire evening to kill, I decided to go to the temple. Maybe it's not really the normal touristy thing to do, but hey, it was raining and it was so close (-ish). So why not?

These white specs in the picture are raindrops.

As it turns out, there were pretty much no places to put a camera to use the timer. So I put it on the sign (see above), set it to go, then started to back up. This picture was taken when I ran into a low bush after about 1.5 steps and realized that the grass was really wet and my shoes were wholly inappropriate. (But at least my reaction was laughing, right?)

Better picture of the temple from the side.

Someone finally came out and was able to take my picture.

I made it to the airport in plenty of time. And I slept really well on my flights. (I think I was just that tired.) Of course, they weren't nearly long enough to get a decent amount of sleep. Short layover in Houston, then onto Baltimore. It was kind of annoying because all the overhead space was full on the flight from Seattle to Houston (I shouldn't have changed my seat to be closer to the front! Lesson learned.), so they made me check it all the way through to BWI. But the flight to B'more was really empty, so it came off the carousel fast. Oh, but in other news, Continental served Biscoff of the flight from IAH to BWI. My favorite!!

And now....back to work. Dealing with two referee reports (one super easy, one less easy), and finishing the next round of job applications.