so it' been a spell and I have lots to tell : Part 1

Where to start?

On Aug 5 I headed out early in the morning to Seattle leaving for BWI at 5:45 am. The lines were surprisingly long at this hour (longest I've ever seen, but of course this was nothing compared to what was coming in less than a week), but moved very quickly (again, unlike the lines a few days later). The first leg of my trip took me to Mineapolis - my rowmates included an older Indian women who turned out to be an evangelical Christian - after luring me into conversation with the old "Where are you headed" trick, she proceeded to lay things on pretty heavily. She had me cornered, and there was nothing I could do but retreat to my copy of Skymall and try to politely ignore her. Well, I could have argued with her, or pledged my love for Satan, but she was a very nice person. Luckily she was not heading to Seattle so we parted ways atthe Minneapois airport and she went on to try to convert someone else on another plane.


I arrived in Seattle about 3 pm, and took a cab to my hotel. I was staying downtown and I tried to get a fix on things in the area around the hotel. After picking up a copy of Seatle Weekly and persusing, I decided to walk to the Capital Hill section of th city for dinner that evening. I got my Vietnamese on at the Green Papaya and walked home, retiring by 9 pm Seattle time.

The next day I was up bright and early- registerd for the meetings, pick up a copy of the NY Times (5$!), and went back to my room to read it. Around noon I caught a ferry to Bainbridge Island to hang out with the Hopkins biostats crew at Sandy Eckel's place. We had a great time eating bar-b-qued salmon, hanging with Sandy and her folks and just taking in the beautiful weather and setting.

On Monday, I led a "roundtable session" at 7am on distance education - about 10 folks in attendance, good discussion etc... At 2:15 I gave my talk on my analysis of my online/onsite outcomes comparison study, and it was received well. The other talks in my session were very good, a nice surprise. Afterwards, I went out with my former classmate Nick Horton for some beers. Then I rolled solo back up the (capitol) hill to get my grub on - settled in at Honey Hole Sandwiches and dined among the hipsters.