If you're just joining us, you may want to read Part I first.

( Friday: Creative Nonfiction Panel, Conferencing, Wife Meeting, Buffista Meeting )

From Atlanta to Louis ville to Dallas, the American Medical Writers Association sure doesn't like to gather in the typical conference towns. And even though I was from the area, I was unfamiliar with downtown Dallas.

This year's conference was going to be very important, as I was giving a three-hour cancer pharmacology workshop and speaking on a ( Read more... )

This morning, my mom called to ask for a favor: my grandparents had no one to drive them to the Diwali dinner. My grandfather just had eye surgery, and family drama with my aunt and uncle kept them from being accommodating. So it was up to me to drive down to Belmont and take them up to the temple in San Bruno. It turned out to be the same Diwali ( Read more... )

One of my favorite webcomics is xkcd. It is an extremely geeky webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. Filled with stick figures, pie graphs, and flow charts.

The creator, Randall Munroe-who is three years younger than I am-has put together his first book, xkcd: Volume 0, with the help of Breadpig. And he's doing a few book release ( Read more... )

It was an even lazier Sunday, as smrou and barenakedjanie let me sleep past noon. But then it was time for our final adventures!

• searching for a place to satisfy Janie's craving for eggs
• getting to Frescro right as they closed at one and passing on the fancy-schmancy Petit Robert Bistro
• passing an awesomely pouty little girl in a yelling standoff with her dad
• passing ( Read more... )

This being the last day of the course, it was the time to frantically hand out business cards. I ran out and had to dig into the reserves in my wallet. It figures that it was only at the end of the course that I made some real connections with some of my other coursemates, who were interested in my drug safety background. Also, I met a couple women ( Read more... )

Last week, I had issues with flies in my apartment, and on Tuesday, after killing over three dozen flies, I was not in the mood to cook dinner, so I took advantage of Rubio's Fish Taco Tuesdays. And then I took advantage of the Barnes and Noble to finish reading PowersI sat in one of the chairs by the graphic novel section. To my right, someone had ( Read more... )

So remember that time three years ago when I wrote about the Buffista F2F? No, you probably don't. But that's why I link! Since these posts are like the sequel! Every year, the Buffistas descend upon an unsuspecting city and rock out, and this year, we gathered in Seattle. Which, luckily, contained other people I wanted to see, so it was all sorts ( Read more... )

So I noticed you were gone for a couple days.

Did you? That's very sweet.

Yeah, it's like you were totally offline from Sunday afternoon to Wednesday afternoon. What was up with that?

Well, I was at Asilomar attending the American Medical Writers Association Regional Conference. Don't you remember when I did that last year?

You say a lot of ( Read more... )

I had struggled with the issue of whether to chance it with public transportation (walk to BART, take AirBART, just barely make it 30 minutes before departure: $5) or pay for a shuttle to take me to the airport (get picked up, make it at least an hour before departure: $25 + tip) for my 6:00 A.M. flight on Friday, and I chose the latter. I also ( Read more... )