And WHAT a Long Weekend it was...

Its Tuesday, and I'm still in need of sleep from the weekend. Hugh gets back on Friday, so none of these stumble-into-work-with-bleary-eyes-and-jogging-pants mornings. Ah, who am I kidding. That won't stop. But the 3 day benders may be curbed a bit.

Went out for dinner on Friday night (very nice place: Latitude) to celebrate the birthday of a friend (the Neurosurgeon). We then moved from Mimosas and steak to Shooters and 50 at the Phoenix -- a bar catering to young 20-somethings that involves GoGo dancers. Also, $2.50 drinks, and retro music. It really is sad when you realize that "Retro" means that "I was well into High School when these songs came out". Although I was trying to be pseudo-responsible (I had a DATE in the morning with a certain FRUIT STORE -- see below), I did have a few, and wound up finishing the night off pretending to be Michelle's sister Sarah to a couple of complete Mingers. Oh, and we were from Zimbabwe. Oh, and I had to speak with a British accent as I was Michelle's sister. What a couple of tools they were. Got home by 3 though.

Up by 7:30 on Saturday to stand in line for the FIRST CANADIAN APPLE STORE OPENING! Yes, and its only 4 short subway stops away from me at Yorkdale. Met Kevin and Jen (who unfortunately had to leave early) at the Tim Hortons, and headed over to scope out the line. I figured maybe about 50 people would be there an hour before it opened. Boy was I wrong. The line went through the mall and outside...we followed it for several minutes before taking our spots as #468-71 in line. Here's the line ahead of us:



and behind us:



Its nice knowing that there are at least 467 people geekier than we are. Brett also drove up from the Hammer and met us in line with his brother.

After only 2.5 short hours, we found ourselves at the front of the line:



and in we went. It was awesome. I bought some in-ear headphones for my iPod (for posterity's sake really), as did Kevin. We also got our FREE TSHIRTs... only 1500 of which exist in the entire world. Here we are modelling them in front of the store:



Man, what a great day...and it wasn't even noon yet! After bidding adieu to Brett and Adam, we tore downtown to catch the rest of the FA (soccer) match at Skalliwags. Kev and I were trying out our headphones on the subway and apparently made asses of ourselves (I've got a video demonstrating this and will include it when Michelle sticks it up). We got into the pub to find the game in overtime, with a score of 0-0. We didn't even miss a damn thing! Unfortunately for Michelle, Manchester lost. Let me tell you, you haven't lived until you have seen a Brit screaming curses over a hometown Football loss to her parents over the phone. We were happy though because we got free champagne (did I mention it was noon?) We spent the next few hours drowning her sorrows with pints on the patio, however. By 3 (and with very few hours of sleep), I was spent, and had to go home. I was, for all intensive purposes, in bed by 4 in the afternoon that day. Although I did talk to Sandra for a while, and I got a pleasant surprise phone call from Lynne from a patio with one of her friends playing the guitar in the background. It sounded like good times and wished I was there.

I spent Sunday trying to figure out this damn blog site. Ryan got back from his wedding in Gravenhurst at about 4 (after very little sleep himself), thought about napping, didn't, then came with me down to Hemingways to meet some of my friends. Keeping in line with the lucrative weekend, we got there to discover a) free burgers and hot dogs and b) free t-shirts. So even though I did spend a copious amount of money this weekend, it was balanced by a multitude of free stuff. Here's a pic of Ryan with Michelle (left) and Lynfa (right):



Also, one of those pictures where even I can see that we look alike, even if I am 2 sheets to the wind:



Another funny thing: Michelle's Brit friend Chris (who is also a PostDoc BTW) brought his 2 roomates along. One of them sits down, looks at the other end of the table, and says "That's Ryan Anderson". Then he says "He's friends with my sister". It was weird: turns out this guy was my brother's old roommate's brother. He recalled a story where he was sitting around with Ryan in undergrad and someone pulled out a book that my brother loved. Apparently they spent the night reading lines out to Ryan, whereupon Ryan would recite the sentences that followed said passage. Nice. Again, he's the brains in the family.

Poured myself out of bed AGAIN the following morning to make the Ryan dropoff to Mom at Uncle Peter's. The house is almost all packed now: Uncle Peter and family are moving to Qatar in 2 months, and everything is pretty much gone. Was home by 3... again, for all intensive purposes was in bed by 5 that afternoon.

I'm going to start trying to blog more "as things happen" instead of at the end of the weekend, because these make long blogs indeed.

Here's What Happens When a Bunch of Vision Scientists Go To Florida...

So we just got back from our annual VSS conference in Sarasota, and of course I have many stories to tell (with accompanying photos in some cases). Instead of sending a mass email, I thought I'd just wax nostalgic on my blog site instead. Let me start from the beginning...

Wed., May 4: Its the evening before we leave. I am packed, showered, and ready to go to Florida for a week. As our flight does not leave until the following afternoon, I don't have to worry about getting some shut eye, and instead spend the late evening watching TV. The phone rings at 11:30, which is either a) a drunk phone call from someone, or b) an emergency of some sort. Feeling apprehensive, I pick up the phone to hear Claudine's voice at the other end. I immediately ask what's wrong. "Nothing's wrong," she says, "But something's up. How would you feel about having Patrick stay with us for the week?". Turns out, as they were falling asleep, Patrick lamented on the fact that she was leaving for a week while he was stuck in the T-dot. She says "Well, why don't you come?" And he figures, "Why not?". With a phone check with me (we had to bunk together for the week, thus solidifying my role as yet another Beta-Wife), and a last-minute ticket purchase, Patrick became a co-traveller less than 12 hours later.

Thurs., May 5th: Only travelling. Nothing exciting. But I forget every year how shitty my hair becomes in the Florida humidity. Get into Sarasota around 10:30, and with bad hair and a 6-pack of Rolling Rock, head down to the beach to finish off the evening. Oh, and the sunglasses that I purchased the day before get lost somewhere between St. Petersburg and Sarasota. Less than 24 hours after I bought them, damnit.

Fri., May 6th: Don't have to go to the conference until 5, and have the whole day to enjoy the 30C weather. Patrick proves to be a worthy Ping Pong opponent (the table was located outside in the Hotel quad). After an hour and a half of Ping Pong, we head to the beach to play volleyball with some guys from Michigan. Funny guys, but dirty bastards. I had to put up with cat calls (not directed towards me of course...they thought I was Patrick's wife). They also invited us to play in a tournament with them on Siesta Key, but I, unfortunately, had a conference to go to. A couple of hours later, I head in to wash up and brush up on my poster (which I present the next morning), admire my sunburn, go to the conference to register. Cool academic moment: at VSS everyone always gets a schwag-bag when they register which includes long abstract book, short program, and a couple of free journals. The Vision Research journal that everyone got this year was the one that had my article in it! Great advertisement... too bad that I'm not going to have any use for the 50 reprints I got in the mail today. Come home, review poster again, and go to bed.

Sat., May 7th: Poster presentation at 8:30-1:30. Goes over very well. Spend the first part of the poster session visiting friends at their posters (Claudine, Kevin and Richard), which is VERY cool because it means that all of us have gotten our presentations over with the very first day. Makes for a good week. By 10:30, I'm bunkered down at my poster for a steady stream of people through the rest of the session. My friend Mike comes by, we catch up a bit, and he invites me to a party at the house that his lab (Nancy Kanwisher) has rented. On a private island. Uber-cool. After the poster session, I feign interest in a couple of talks for the afternoon and then head back to the hotel.

We head out to enjoy some drinks and dinner at St. Armand's circle (the main bar and restaurant scene) later that evening. After many hours (but disappointingly few beers), we decide to make the trek out to the island party. We get to the dock at midnight, and hooray! the private boat is still going back and forth. We hop on and go to the party. The house is really cool: it is a Polynesian style place with rooms that are connected with outdoor walkways and a tall watchtower. We are greeted with beer, strawberry daquaris, and sangria. Meet up with Mike, and spend the rest of the night enjoying beer and getting American opinions on George Bush. To give you a sense of the place, here's a picture with me and Jen (one of our grad students) on one of the walkways.



While we had a great time, it was short-lived, as I reinjured my knee when jumping back onto the boat to leave. I think I really screwed it up this time. Also, quite embarassing (I couldn't help but yell "Fuckin' hell" most of the way back while Nancy Kanwisher was driving). Make it back by 3.

Sun., May 8th: Get my bum knee out of bed by 7:30, make it for a full day of conferencing. While I saw many good talks and posters, nothing for blog fodder. Everyone in the lab decides to head back to the hotel around 4, but I decide that I want to stay for the keynote speaker (Irene Pepperburg), who was scheduled to speak at 7:30. Kevin, Yaniv, Phil and Cory are also staying, so I get to hang with them. At 7:30, we sit down to hear about categorization abilities in Parrots, which was very cute. I'm sandwiched between Yaniv and Kevin for the next hour. Yaniv keeps nodding off. Finally, the speaker says.. "and that was my last slide..." at which point Yaniv perks up and starts clapping. All by himself in a room of 500+ people. The speaker continues..."and I would just like to show a movie now". Poor Yaniv. I start giggling. And giggling. Bit of a fit really. This is especially difficult to control when, a few minutes later, the speaker trips over her high heels and falls off the stage, taking the podium with her. She was OK, but now I'm laughing uncontrollably about both Yaniv and the speaker. I was never so happy as to get out of that auditorium. I cried several times that evening relaying the story to others.

Mon., May 9th: Go to the conference for the morning, but have the afternoon off! After hitting the talks and posters, we head back to the hotel, and I decide to join some folks who are going snorkelling. I couldn't snorkel (knee--couldn't swim or play Vball for the rest of the week), but I can at least enjoy Bradenton beach for the afternoon. Here is (from L to R) Phil, Richard, Yaniv and Cory prepping to snorkel:



and also the funniest barrel I've ever seen (who would brag about being a tradition in rendering?):



After some good fun-in-the-sun, we head back to the hotel for a bit of clean up. Back to Kevin et al.'s porch for some pre-dinner cocktails. Now, you know something is going to happen when Richard shows up with a bottle of Remy Martin and Vanilla-Cherry-Dr. Pepper to drink:



After a couple of drinks, we go to the Mexican Restaurant on the circle. Cheap Margarita pitchers. Good food, good conversation. At some point, Cory decides that he wants to Sombrero that is on the wall behind us. Now, this is not a small hat. Photo evidence of this (look at the wall behind my shoulder):



Cory sends the waiter away (asking for the check), and as soon as he is out of view, Cory runs to the wall, rips off the hat and stuffs it under the table. After sending the waiter away with his credit card, he then rushes to the front of the restaurant, throws the sombrero over the balcony (much to the confusion of the other restaurant patrons), and runs downstairs to stash it. We settle everything up, leave, and Cory retrieves said sombrero:



Everyone had a go with the hat, even the stature of John Ringling who resides in the middle of St. Armand's circle:



Jump back in the car, blast Rush out of the speakers pretty much as loud as they will go (like the good Canadians that we are), and drive back to Lido Key (where out hotel is) to attend the annual Vanderbilt Keg party on the beach. At this point, however, I am so tired I can no longer enjoy the "Guiness" (it was really bad) from the keg. Ended up going home around 1. After, of course, everyone had the opportunity to try on the sombrero. Good times.

OK...LAST DAY...

Tues., May 10th: Get to conference for 10 (the first talk session was of no interest to anyone). Take in some talks, posters, etc. Meet up with Mike for lunch. The boys went to Hooters, which is the ONLY reason that I got any photo evidence that we were even at the conference:



Good job, Kevin. Good job. Get home by 5. Change. Back to Kevin et al.'s patio for some pre "Club Vision" drinks.

Now, I have to explain a bit about Club Vision. Every year, on the last night, the conference puts together a party in the conference hotel for all the Vision Scientists. Vision Scientists are all intrinsically linked through 3 fundamental loves: a) any sort of visual illusions; b) any videos projected onto a wall; and c) anything that glows in the dark. And that's what Club Vision is all about.

We get to Club Vision and stand in line at the bar, so we can enter the Dance Floor that is "Club Vision". We receive a shock to the system when we see that DOMESTIC beers are $5.50 (of course, we aren't even going to consider the imports that are $6). Kevin asks for a Bud. Bartender says he has Bud Light. Kevin says "anything but light beer". Bartender says "well... I have O'Douls..." Its really unfortunate that we are Canadian and would never even question that someone would sell us near beer. Kevin purchases one (it sounds like a good choice given the alternatives: Bud Light and Coor Light), and I quickly follow suit. Its even wrapped in a nice little napkin so no-one can read what's on the label. Onto the dance floor we go, sombrero and all. Start dancing to a bunch of funky techno dance shyte. Little bit of moshing, which is extraordinarily funny in the hat, which bounces up and down like a large Manta Ray. Also, fun with Glow sticks, which are thrown around by hundreds of Vision Scientists in time to the music. Eventually, things must turn dirty:



That would be Phil who is urinating, Kevin who is drinking it, and Yaniv who is spanking Kevin. After this little diddy, we go outside, to find that people on the dance floor are being videotaped, and are in turn being projected onto a large wall outside. As Kevin finds out from his advisor Laurie, apparently the cameraman took a shine to us and spent an inordinate amount of time taping the York folk: the Sombrero was easy to keep track of with the camera. Bit of laughing (bit of blushing), go back inside to get another O'Douls. Back outside, sit down to enjoy it, until someone eventually points out that our beer contains 0.5% alcohol. THIRTEEN DOLLARS LATER and after all that dancing. What a way to end the conference. We got a Heineken to salvage what was left of our pride....which of course was shot out the window again after Kevin started yelling " POLKAROO!!!!" at everyone who left the party. Home by 2, went down to the beach for a beer with the lab mates, and off to bed by 3 so that we could get up at 7 to catch our plane the next morning.

Of course, we came home and I went to my parents, but I'm going to leave that for another Blog.