I've had a variety of work-related tasks piling up in front of me, and have to devise a workable strategy for prioritizing them. As has always been my problem, i tackle the jobs that interest me most first, regardless of how urgently others may need to be completed. Hence, i spend a weekend fixing my iTunes tracking software instead of writing a paper. Yeah, that makes sense. This week, i burned myself by not preparing my talk for the Chicago ASCO meeting i'd been invited to until i got to my hotel the night before the meeting. Eek. Something in my brain has gotten stuck on the idea that i do my best work under pressure. The conscious part of me shudders in horror at that thought, but i keep finding myself in those situations.

In keeping with my self-imposed "always under a deadline" m.o., i didn't pack for my Chicago trip until the morning i was leaving. I ran into work for an hour to meet with a collaborator, then drove home to pack. Of course, instead of immediately packing i took out my Mac and added a slew of Bonnie "Prince" Billy records to my library. Then when my 1:30pm departure was looming only two and a half hours away, i threw a bunch of clothes in my suitcase and ran out the door. Forgetting to bring both my cell phone charger as well as toiletries of any kind. Whoops. As V had already absconded to work, i decided to try taking Caltrain and BART to the airport again. I walked the half mile to Caltrain and caught a train in a few minutes, making it to Millbrae at 12:15pm. Although i was worrying about how close i was cutting it at the airport, i did the rather laborious BART transfer, taking a northbound train one stop to San Bruno then getting on a southbound train that veers into SFO. I got to the United ticket counter at 12:40pm, and noticed something peculiar on my itinerary. For some reason, my admin assistant had booked my flight for "Ted Graves", rather than under my formal name "Edward". Uh oh. She always uses Edward, but this time it's Ted. I asked an agent what i should do, given all my identification has the name Edward on it, and was passed on to the counter agent. I checked in at the automated station no problem, but the person checking my bag noticed the discrepancy. He looked around for a manager, and after not spotting anyone in ten seconds passed me on to security. I got in the security line, and my ID was checked by two people who failed to spot the mismatch. So at the end, the name on my ticket didn't matter. Not a great vote of confidence for the state of airport security. I was able to grab a sandwich prior to boarding, and also upgraded my ticket to economy plus. I spent the uneventful four hour flight working on my image analysis software and glancing at the inflight movie Jumper, which looked as bad as the reviews made it out to be. God knows how lame it would've been if i'd been listening to the dialogue.

I arrived in Chicago at 7:45pm, and spent 45 minutes waiting for my luggage and another 30 minutes in the taxi line. ASCO is a huge meeting, and a veritable army of oncologists had descended upon the airport and the city. It was 9:15pm before i made it to my hotel, the Chicago Hilton, just across the street from Grant Park. Apparently when it was built, it was the largest hotel in the world. I checked in and headed up to my room on the 8th floor, discovering i'd been placed literally right next door to the gym and pool. Besides the smell of chlorine, i worried about the hall traffic in the wee hours of morning. I ordered an overpriced room service cheeseburger and buffalo wings and set about putting together my talk. I was asked to speak on magnetic resonance spectroscopy, the topic of my doctoral dissertation but firmly in my rear view mirror as far as research goes. To make it even more interesting, the session was on head and neck cancer ... something i'm tangentially working on now and have never investigated with magnetic resonance. And for the final twist, i was also asked to present on dynamic contrast-enhanced imaging, an imaging technique for which i know the basics and don't have a great deal of respect. So preparing a 20 minute talk was an educational experience for me. I worked until 3am, then passed out.

Arising at 9am to the sound of giddy children running up and down the halls, eager to get in the pool, i returned to work and finished the presentation around 1pm. I showered, put on my suit, and took one of the legion of buses shuttling oncologists to and from McCormick Place and the downtown hotels. I spent a good hour walking back and forth across the mammoth convention center trying to locate the registration desk that applied to me (as it turned out, the "faculty ready room" was what i was looking for). I uploaded my presentation then set out to get some lunch, being forced to eat a pre-prepared Cuban sandwich from a pizzeria that tasted about as good you would guess. My session came off nicely, chaired by David Brizel who i met on my several trips to Duke. I was reasonably happy with my presentation, although i only wish i had gotten the chance to talk about my current work as well. As i've been invited to present at this summer's AAPM and ASTRO, luckily i'll get several more opportunities to do that this year. I'll take all the exposure i can get in order to prepare for my tenure review in a couple of years.

Heading back to my hotel after the meeting, i changed clothes and decided to go for a walk along the "Magnificent Mile". I headed up along Grant and Millenium Parks for a mile or so, crossing the river and entering the fancy shopping district. Around this time my body decided it was getting too tired and hungry to go on this kind of hike, and began to slowly shut down. I managed to duck into a Walgreens to get a few candy bars for a much-needed sugar infusion, and continued on. Although i'd only intended to walk a little bit, i found myself nearing the end of the Michigan Ave. magnificent mile, and remembered that my buddy Bill W's wife Elizabeth had recommended a bar and grill to me a few blocks further north. I decided to have dinner there, but was thwarted upon my arrival when i found they were temporarily closed following a fire. Dammit! I decided to turn around and head back down Rush St., continuing my quest for dinner. I stopped in Barnes & Noble to use a coupon on Simon Singh's Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe. I'd read his Code Book a few years back and was impressed with his style of scientific writing. Marching on, i found myself near the river once more and spotted an AMC Theater. I wanted to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and figured i could do the uninterested Veronica a favor by checking it out in her absence. Unfortunately the evening's showings were all sold out, although the bulk of the crowd was queueing up for Sex and the City. I crossed the river and finally found a quaint little bistro called Noodles & Company where i had a dinner of pad thai. Then only another mile south and i was laying on my bed in the Hilton. With a pair of barking dogs, to use the parlance of our times.

I'd already decided to forgo the meeting on Saturday, and got up around 10am. I lounged around my room for a couple of hours, then got dressed and walked a few blocks south to Yolk, an interesting-looking breakfast place i'd spotted on the bus ride to McCormick Place the day before. I sat at the counter and had a quite good chorizo, avocado, and tomato scramble while continuing my reading of Richard Rhodes's epic tome the Making of the Atomic Bomb. I then resolved to march back to the AMC Theater to catch an Indy matinee. On the way i stopped to take some photos of Grant Park, including this one of the fountain from the opening credits of Married with Children. You remember ... "love and marriage, love and marriage ...". The opening trailers for Indy got me further excited for this summer's crop of movies ... the Hancock trailer got me interested in Will Smith's turn as a drunken and apathetic superhero. Unfortunately, Indiana Jones failed to live up to my expectations. The action scenes were fine and all, but i found the plot ... well ... retarded. A nuclear explosion? Aliens? Interestingly, Shia LaBeouf is the least of this movie's problems. My experience with the entire film can be summed up by Indy's assessment of the treasure during the denouement, which i won't quote here to avoid spoilage but those who have seen the flick know what i'm getting at. It's straight out of a G.I. Joe public service announcement.

After that disappointment, i walked back to the Hilton to prepare for dinner with Bill W and Elizabeth. They'd picked out a Chicago bar that does great BBQ, and i was expecting a scene straight out of an SNL "Da Bears" sketch. Wasn't exactly that, but the ribs were no less delicious. We had dinner with Elizabeth's folks and reminisced about Bill's days in Pete and their excellent wedding. After dinner, we drove to Andy's Jazz Bar to have a few more drinks and listen to a pretty interesting Miles Davis tribute. My good friends dropped me back at the Hilton around 11:30pm and i passed out.

I got in one last jaunt around the magnificent mile on Sunday morning before catching a cab to the airport. I decided not to tell anyone about my ID/ticket name issues during check-in and security, and lo and behold no one at O'Hare noticed the discrepancy. So of a total of 6 people who inspected my flight materials on the way to and from Chicago, only one spotted the Edward/Ted mismatch. That's 17%, with the benefit of rounding up ... not a good report on TSA's activities. My flight home was packed, but i got an aisle seat and whiled away the time reading more of the Making of the Atomic Bomb. I've certainly developed a knack for selecting reading material that disturbs my fellow travellers, be it Germs, the God Delusion, or my atomic bomb history lesson. V picked me up at SFO, and i suggested we get something to eat. She said sure, and promptly directed us onto the 101 towards San Francisco. Hrm? I asked where we were going and she responded coyly that we were going to meet some people in a dark room. I quickly surmised that i had just been abducted for a showing of Sex and the City. Oh great. I suffered in silence through the flick. Women love this s@$# for some reason. It's just not my cup of tea. Not at all. I won't go into more detail than that, let me leave my review at a single word: "Mexicoma".

My birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks, and this year i won't fuss around with clever hints ... click this. To combat ridiculously escalating gas prices, i'm also contemplating getting a new bike and beginning to cycle to work. That sort of thing doesn't fit well on an Amazon wish list.