Some more travelogue.

I managed to get about a day on either end of the meetings to visit my parents. I was very fortunate in that the Sugar Creek Arts Festival was going on during the Saturday I was in Normal - I love going to it (I went just about every year that I lived there).

This year, it was HUGE - they increased the number of vendors and expanded onto campus. It was hot but it was a lot of fun and it was really nice. I bought a few little things - a couple of funky pendants (one made from an antique Victorian button. The other pendant - it was one of those picture-sandwiched-between-glass things, she had lots and lots that were mostly made from bits photocopied out of OOP children's nature books, or old "scrap" cuttings. I got her card but I can't find it now - she has an Etsy shop - I'm trying to find it to link to it because her stuff was so great [it was hard for me to choose just one pendant]. Most of the things had a "nature" theme, as far as I remember. I think the shop's name - not the seller's name, hers was different - had Ramona or Rosemary or something like it in it. Her pieces were pretty reasonable; I paid $20 for mine.)

The trip to Chicago was generally pretty hectic - getting there, wrangling with taxis, managing in a town where I don't really know the geography.

I did go to the Field Museum, as I said. We got in free to the "general exhibits" (some of which, sadly, seemed a bit worn - I suppose generations of schoolkids coming through leads to letters falling off of signs and things like that). There were also a couple special exhibits that were an extra admission. By sheer good luck, they had the Darwin exhibit that had been at the Museum of Natural History (the big one, in NYC) last year. It was $7 to get in but well worth it. Oh, I knew a lot of the stuff already but it was still neat to see certain things - a cartoon a classmate of Darwin's had drawn, showing him riding a giant beetle, with the caption, "Go it, Charlie!" (I thought that would have made an excellent t-shirt, as would have Darwin's first tentative sketch of a "tree of life," to which he had appended the words, "I think..." on the top of it. But I suppose either licensing of those images wasn't possible, or perhaps what I think makes an excellent t-shirt is not what most of the masses would agree upon). They also had some of his equipment and samples. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I think it's cool to be able to go to a museum and see stuff like Darwin's actual rock hammer that he used when he was a student. (I think it's the same tendency that makes me like using "historical" patterns, I can kind of imagine a bridge over all that time).

So, it was fun. As I said before I got totally dumped on by rain coming back to the hotel (and the paper bag of stuff I got in the gift shop totally melted; the book I bought is all swelled now from getting wet. Luckily the stuffed-toy smilodon I bought didn't get ruined by the water. Yes, I am maintaining my conference-tradition of finding a small (sometimes not so small) stuffie from the place I visit.)

I saw more people than I realized at the meetings - I ran into one guy I had gone to grad school with who had been in a different lab (and I had totally forgot he was a plant guy). He's at one of the small colleges in northern Illinois now, so it was convenient for him to go to the meetings. It was good to see him and catch up.

(I will observe - if I may be a bit vain - both of the chaps I saw that I went to grad school with are considerably greyer than I am. And I think each of them was a year or two younger than I. I'd like to credit "clean living" but I wonder if maybe people who get their hair cut short a lot just go grey faster - I almost never get my hair cut.)

I got some decent free-stuff - a little clock from the Noble Foundation (which is actually close to me and I made a point to talk to the lady at the table - she pulled the clock out from under the table, I guess she was keeping them back for other than just casual visitors - and told me to put it on my desk to remind me of them if I ever had a student who wanted a job there.). Lots of pens. A blue plastic maraca (probably the weirdest piece of swag I've picked up) advertising next year's meetings in Mexico (almost certainly won't go, but the woman manning the table encouraged me to take one). And it was just fun talking with the people at the displays - I suppose it gets boring sitting there, especially if you're not a bookseller.

As for meeting-meetings, other than my own session, I went to one on seed biology (I was proud of myself that I understood the metabolic pathways being discussed but I got a bit lost in some of the genetic analysis). I also sat through a long session on Great Lakes botany that was really pretty interesting (and that made me a bit "homesick" for Michigan, even if I never really lived in the parts of Michigan being discussed). And went to a session on prairie (that was where I met my old "mates" from grad school). I probably skipped more sessions than I SHOULD, but as an ecologist, I have a little bit of a hard time getting really excited over the details of lumping vs. splitting taxonomic groups (I tend to be a "lumper," myself - if it looks like it belongs in the species, I group it with the species - and I will continue to do that until they invent a hand-held DNA analyzer that will tell you the differences between two sister species in the field. And I think I'm probably justified in my "lumping" considering that I mainly look at ecological FUNCTION and generally when the phenotype's the same, the function's similar). And I don't understand a lot of the genetics-analysis stuff, at least once it gets beyond Southern blots and that kind of thing. So I decided that it was probably preferable to take a couple of hours each day for a sort of pseudo-vacation, rather than sitting in a dark room being confused (or infuriated, in the case of the pickier "splitters")

I also skipped most of the posters, but they had them in a basement, and they had them all crowded in. I have a hard time looking at posters when they're all crowded and it seems a lot of meetings do that. (I did see one neat one looking at the vegetation on the old coquina-shell limestone walls making up the fort in St. Augustine, Florida.)

And then, Wednesday, the whole big cattle call in Union Station to get on the train home. (That's where I saw most of the really execrable not-able-to-form-a-fair-line behavior. And I also had the misfortune to wind up sitting in a car with a large number of people who had been at a conference for people involved in a particular party-format home-based business, and they were very LOUD and they kept the "networking" going in the train car.)

And I had another day and a half or so visiting my parents. The biggest thing I did was to finish the Waving Lace socks (picture to come later). I also finished the first of a pair of "simple socks" using a Trekking that's almost more variegated than self-striping.

I also got to the yarn shop (well, twice - once on the trip up and once on the trip back). I get kind of sad when I read about people on Knitter's Review talking about yarn shops who have 'snobby' or rude or unhelpful owners - luckily the lady who runs Ewe Knit is VERY friendly and cordial and welcoming. She knew I had been giving a paper - and even remembered from an earlier conversation what the topic was - and she asked me about how it went. (Makes me want to buy stuff from her. And I do. I got some Second Time Cotton in a burgundy-ish purple for yet another Sitcom Chic. And a couple balls of something called "Shire Silk" for an openwork "dressy" scarf. [I just love the name "Shire Silk." Spun by hobbits, I suppose?]).

I also went to my favorite quilt shop up there (Treadle II). My dad insisted on paying for the fabric I bought and told me to buy whatever I wanted. (Oddly, when I know someone else is footing the bill, I buy LESS than I might otherwise - I guess I don't like to feel like I'm taking advantage.)

The yarn came back with me in my suitcase but the fabric - and a couple of the books I finished reading while on the train, along with the hugacious program-and-abstracts from the meeting - are on their way to me in the mail.