Another week on the mainland

I spent this week on the mainland. We had an atrocious crossing Monday morning. A storm had blown in over the weekend, and the seas were mixed and rough. We tacked up to Lion's Head before heading across the channel so we would be more in the trough of the swell. So the first twenty minutes or so was a lot of up and down banging. Then for the next hour it was side-to-side rolling. I had taken Dramamine, but some others on the boat obviously hadn't. Finally, we got in the lee of peninsula and the water smoothed out for the last twenty minutes of the trip.

Straight up to campus from the dock. I was attending the TEDxUSC conference. Some of you may have heard of the TED conference. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. The organizing group gets top innovators in the fields and gives them 20 minutes to talk about something that will inspire and excite the audience. This was a first attempt at a satellite conference, and had a collection of innovators from USC and some of the speakers from the main TED conference on video. It was quite interesting and entertaining.

The rest of the week I was working out of my new temporary office on campus. There's an empty wing of office space in the building and the Chair said I could choose one as temporary office space. So for most of the week I was sitting in this otherwise entirely empty space - it was much like working on the island, in terms of being isolated from the rest of the department.

Thursday, Bonnie Bassler was in town for a seminar. She gave an excellent talk and I attended a dinner party in her honor afterward in which I had a nice chat with her and some other USC scientific bigwigs that I hadn't previously met.

Friday, Sweetie and the Things came over on the university boat. We got haircuts (the Things' first since Christmas!) and had Chinese food for dinner - ah the luxuries of the mainland! Saturday we drove up to La Brea and looked at the asphalt (not tar, as is popularly believed) pits and the Page Museum. What a cool place. Afterwards, we drove up Wilshire Blvd through Beverly Hills, just to see how the other 5% live. Then the Things napped on the way home. For dinner we got a delivery pizza and watched Redwall.

Today, I think we are going to go see Monsters vs Aliens (in 3D). Tomorrow, the doctor and the dentist!