I got up early today to put up my poster, and then went to some talks. There weren’t many good talks today. However, my poster session went well. I got a lot of feedback on my poster, and I was pleased with it considering this morning was the 1st time I’d seen it printed. I used a new program to make it, one that I’d never used before I started this poster ~3 weeks ago, and it was too expensive and I was too late in completing it to have it printed before I left – you always find mistakes on the printed version that you’d never find on the computer screen, and sure enough, I found lots. However, almost none of them were ones anyone would notice, and I was pretty pleased with it. Ed Hooks found me during the poster session. Ed is an old friend that I used to do field work with near Selma, Alabama in the summers. He used to be the state paleontologist at the UAT, but he’s an Auburn graduate so he knows what a crap hope tuscalooser is. It is always great to see Ed, and it had been a few years. Other than that, the day was pretty uneventful.
This 1st night of every meeting is always my favorite. This is the night when we all get bussed to the local Natural History Museum for a private party. There is always good food, drinks, and a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun to hang out under and around the dinosaur mounts and various other natural history displays. The museum was nice, but you can tell that it is old and many of the displays have not been changed in a very long time. Some are obsolete. It was fun regardless, and Jackson was great as usual. We hung out with Ed, Jason Poole, and some other friends and acquaintances, for most of the evening. We didn’t stay too long though because the Museum was very hot and crowded, and we were pretty tired. These meetings are always stressful for me, especially doing the poster. I’m usually pretty tired each day and throughout the week.
We came back ~9:30pm and just went to bed. We got back in time to see the Phillies win the pennant. That’s pretty awesome – I’ve gotten a little bit back into professional baseball for the 1st time since the strike. It’s pretty fun to go to a game, and the Phillies’ stadium is beautiful – right down town. I know people in Philly are going crazy right now. Philly hasn’t won a professional championship in any sport since 1980 (I think). They call it the “curse of William Penn” – I guess every crappy sports town or team has to blame it on some silly curse. Anyway, Philly has a beautiful old city hall building – the largest in the country. On top of the dome is a statue of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. There used to be a city ordinance that said you couldn’t build anything taller than William Penn’s top hat, but that ordinance was lifted in 1980, and since then Philly hasn’t won much of anything. It’s a great sports town – they just haven’t won much of anything. It will be exciting to be in Philly during the World Series.
As you can tell from how much I’ve written, there aren’t many interesting talks today either. Next year’s SVP meeting is going to be in Bristol, England. That’s the 1st time the meeting will be outside North America – a nod to the fact that SVP, once basically a small American organization, has really become international. It’s a little frustrating because it is still dominated by American and Canadians, and that trip will be prohibitively expensive for much of the group. I know I won’t be going – especially if the economy is still in the toilet, as everyone says it will be. The next meeting in 2010, though is in Pittsburg, which is even closer to us than Cleveland, so that’s good.
In case you're wondering, the shirt says "Jacksonasaurus".
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