Let's say i'm having a conversation with someone and come up with an apt euphemism to describe my thoughts ... today it was "keep your cards close to your chest". Once my brain has hit upon this particular phrase, i find myself working it into multiple conversations over the course of the next day or two. And i wonder if other people notice that i keep using this specific cliché, the way i notice i am. There goes the "cards close to your chest" guy. Hrm.

I returned from my east coast expedition on Saturday evening, the trip made much more enjoyable by the fact that i had upgraded to first class. I'm officially spoiled for airline travel now. Getting the royal treatment in first class makes it exceedingly difficult to return to coach. But i'd better get used to the idea as V and i will be doing just that in two short weeks as we head off to Hawaii.

Since last writing, i had a good time at the grant review. I was all set to go Sunday morning, but upon attempting to check in at 10am learned that registration for scientist reviewers didn't open until 1:30pm, and our first meeting was a plenary dinner at 5pm. So i spent the afternoon lounging in my room. Arriving at dinner i sat down at a table with open seats and introduced myself to several friendly fellow scientist reviewers. I met one very helpful more senior reviewer, who gave me a couple of valuable tips for ingratiating myself with my peers in my review panel. I also was excited to see that my old bioengineering friends and MRSC chums Savannah and Catherine were at the event, albeit in a different review panel. Our first review session was held after dinner from 7-10pm, but because one of our panel members was delayed and i happened to be reviewing most of my grants with him, i didn't have any input on the first night. After the panel adjourned, i met up with my UCSF friends for drinks at the hotel bar, where they introduced me to a host of colleagues from their panel. I awoke at 6:45am the next morning (3:45am for an as-yet unadjusted west coaster), had breakfast, and headed over to my panel's room. My delayed colleague had arrived, and as such we were the reviewers on the first four grants that morning. I was a bit unnerved at the thought of having my opinions pounded into dust by more senior reviewers, but that thought was pleasantly eradicated when we took our first coffee break and i chatted with my peers, who expressed very positive reviews of my comments. Emboldened, the rest of the day's work went smoothly. Our group had the fewest grants to review of any of the panels (32), and as such we completed our work by 4:30pm that afternoon. While most of our panel hurried off to catch afternoon flights, the few remaining gathered for a dinner at the nearby Reston Town Center. Mike Joiner, consumer reviewer Sandy Spivey, and chair Ralph Durand and i had a good meal and good conversation at a place called Clyde's. Returning to the hotel, i bid my new friends farewell and went to relax in my room.

Tuesday morning i again awoke early, and had breakfast with Savannah and Catherine. They were a bit peeved that i was done while they had another day of grant reviewing ahead of them, but said goodbye to me and expressed hope that we'd meet up again soon. Meanwhile i checked out of the hotel and caught a shuttle to the airport. Instead of heading into the terminal, i caught another shuttle to the rental car area and picked up my day's rental, a Cadillac DTS. I had selected the GPS navigation option when i booked the reservation, thinking it would be helpful in getting around downtown D.C. and down south to North Carolina, but was amazed that instead of an interactive map unit i got a glorified cell phone that i could use to call someone to get directions. WTF?!?! Luckily i had written down Google Maps directions from the airport to the National Mall in D.C., and was able to fight the morning traffic in the capitol to get there by 9:45am. As luck would have it, that allowed me to get a 3 hour parking space on the street adjacent to the Washington monument, which restricts parking from 6:30-9:30am. Booya. I spent three hours wandering around the National Mall, seeing the Washington monument, the Jefferson monument, the Franklin Roosevelt memorial, the Armed Forces memorial, the Korean War memorial, the Lincoln memorial, the Vietnam Wall, the World War 2 memorial, and the White House. Very nice ... check out my photo essay here.

By 12:30pm my legs were nearly dead, and i hopped in the car and began the trek down to Durham, NC. I didn't have a map and didn't think my GPS unit was worth the trouble, so i guessed that the 395 South would be a good start and drove off. I exited and got a road atlas at a 7-11, which confirmed that the 395 to the 95 to the 85 would get me where i wanted to go. My Cadillac had an auxiliary input jack for the stereo, so i kept an eye out for somewhere i could get a cable to plug in my iPod. I went to Radio Shack, Sears, Best Buy, and Target at various Virginia malls without success, finally succeeding at a second Radio Shack. Driving a little further, i found a Panera at which to have lunch, then got myself a grande mocha frap at a nearby Starbucks and settled in to drive. The journey was nice, made a little stressful by a thunderstorm that had my windshield wipers working overtime. I arrived at Raleigh-Durham airport around 6:30pm, and caught a taxi to the Durham Hilton, passing out after having a room service dinner and watching a few episodes of hotel favorite Law & Order.

My visit to Duke was very encouraging, spread over three days to survey the wealth of research going on at the burgeoning former tobacco mecca. I gave a talk at Radiation Oncology grand rounds on Thursday morning, which was very well received. For some reason, i had the perfect response to every question that came up, in a way which has happened only a few times in my history of scientific presentations. I got to see the surprisingly suave "Research Triangle" area, taking in three nice dinners with colleagues from Duke at Mediterranean, French, and Italian restaurants.

My flight home was scheduled for 4:58pm on Saturday afternoon, but of course i had to check out of the hotel by noon. Not wanting to explore the area with a suitcase in tow, i opted to head to the airport and amuse myself there for five hours. That amusement consisted of aborted napping attempts on uncomfortable gate seating, waiting in line for a half hour at the A&W for a burger and a root beer float, watching a ten year old go into meltdown at said restaurant, and reading a fairly lousy Gamepro magazine i'd bought since i'd already read that month's Electronic Gaming Monthly. I caught a few Z's on my short flight from RDU to Dulles, and explored the airport a bit while waiting for my 7:20pm connection to San Jose. I enjoyed the luxury of first class on the cross-country flight as mentioned above, getting a nice dinner (even featuring the ice cream sundaes parodied on a related episode of Seinfeld) then settling in to watch the in-flight movie Mission Impossible 3. That was okay ... Philip Seymour Hoffman is an excellently detestable villain and the action sequences are engaging, but the twist was fairly easy to figure out early in the film. We arrived in the south bay a few minutes early and i messaged Veronica, but was distressed to learn her and Bob had just sat down to dinner at Bombay Garden in San Mateo. Hrm. Something about this doesn't feel right. She said she'd be there quickly, to which i reminded her i was at San Jose, not San Francisco. Whoops. I sat with my luggage outside the terminal for a while before being fetched, at which point my mood had mostly deteriorated. She cheered me up enough that i agreed to go with her to that evening's New Wave City in SF, though. Unfortunately none of our friends were there so we mostly people watched until heading back home.

Sunday was spent reconnecting with doggie, with an interlude for lunch on Santana Row and shopping at Valley Fair. Arriving back at home, V passed out on the couch while i watched a bit of TV before doing the same on the bed at 9pm. Thus ended Sunday. Today i'm back at Stanford, rushing to put out fires and construct a plan for my group for late summer. Trips away always seem to motivate me and give me a bevy of ideas for the future, and this one was no exception. Plus, i've got two weeks to get things moving before i head away for another week, this time a combination of vacation and conference in Hawaii. Game on!

Speaking of game, i don't want to talk about Chelsea. I've got a very bad feeling about this season. Go blues. Prove me wrong.