Turtles and Tunicates
To Boston, in June -- to see old friends not seen for too long; to finally meet new friends in person. Such are the joys of travel; and such were the joys of a brief weekend in June, snuck out between stretches of call. :-)
I arranged for coverage from work to come to Boston, specifically to see my dear sister-in-arms thette and kjn and their brilliant, fearless daughter. It was wonderful to see them again after far too long (my fault entirely, given clinical duty prevented me from seeing them the last few times they came Stateside). My first time seeing thette since she won her physician's hood and I'd won mine, and a lot of mutual medical geeking, as well as fantasy geeking, political geeking, etc, etc, etc...
And also a chance to see et_alii again after equally too long, to finally meet his wife and his energetic, precocious son, who all kindly hosted us in their Boston home. Not to mention extraordinarily useful to my new research, given et_alii is an extremely accomplished genomic and bioinformatic scientist. His areas of expertise -- trying to find mechanisms patterns in large, complex masses of biological data -- is precisely the challenge I am embarking on now. So in addition to the usual merry, wide-ranging conversations that are the great joy of the special company of Darkfriends I was so lucky to be drawn into just over ten years ago, et_alii was able to give me a great deal of very specific research advice which I hope to be able to follow up on.
I only had a late evening and a day with them -- far too short, alas; time for merry conversation late into the night, brunch in downtown, an afternoon at the Boston Aquarium petting stingrays and marveling at sharks and crayfish and laughing with the seals, and playing catch with an adorable blue sea turtle plushie for an equally adorable little girl. It was wonderful to see you all again. :-)
"Oh, wow!" hypatiasghost and I both exclaimed. "Tunicates!"
We both bent down over the dock edge to examine the underwater hose more carefully, the bright vividly colored invertebrates crusting the length obvious in the afternoon sunshine. hypatiasghost carefully lifted it out, pointing out all the different species living in their little niches on the sunward and darkside of the hose, inviting me to touch and feel the different textures, watching the little creatures flick their feeding fronds in and out. It was fascinating and neat and awesome. As is hypatiasghost, who I finally got to meet in person for the first time. :-)
I am a geek with a capital G -- the kind of guy who, well, will drop everything to bend down and geek out about cool looking invertebrates. I was one of those little boys who was always asking questions about the world, always fascinated about how things work, from stars to slimes -- and still am. And so hypatiasghost and I hit it off like fireworks, since she too is deeply passionate about biology and science and the natural world. Her brilliant enthusiasm and lightning-fast mind was incredibly infectious. And from the moment we met the two of us basically turned the afternoon wandering Woods Hole into a rolling, rolicking scientific geekery session. From the aquarium to the beach, her teaching me all kinds of cool things about tunicate physiology and marine biology, us brainstorming questions of evolutionary development, leaping from idea to idea like bolts across a thundering sky. hypatiasghost doesn't just do science for a living, she *loves* thinking about and brainstorming about science, and so do I. It was Awesome. :-)
But it wasn't just all Science Science Science? Science! (although that was totally awesome). hypatiasghost and Thomas, her PhD-candidate significant other, are also merry geeks of all other kinds. Indeed, role-playing geekery is the connection which first bumped hypatiasghost and I together, hypatiasghost knowing mdrnprometheus from old White Wolf RPG circles, and she finding her way to my journal from there. And so there was much other geekery as we skipped in and out of the ocean surf, started the day with marvelous puff pastries, had ridiculously good fried seafood from a mom-and-pop red-basket diner, scratch-made ice cream in the afternoon and marvelous fish tacos as the sun began to set. Beautiful ocean views, yummy food, wonderful company -- a perfect day by the ocean with delightful new friends met first online and then in person: the latest in a very, very long happy succession of more than five dozen of Those Internet People (tm) become real-life friends, going back almost ten years now.
Thank you, Thomas and hypatiasghost, for a delightful day on the ocean. And I look forward to many more such, in the years to come. :-)
Old friends like kjn and thette and et_alii; "new" friends like Thomas and hypatiasghost; the joy of friendship, is one of the great joys of the journey. Thank you for sharing it with me. :-)