Bored in Banff

So I’m here – in Banff for my conference. It has not started out well. Due to my crazy schedule the last few weeks I was unable to prepare for much for this upcoming conference. My poster has ended up being rather hastily assembled and I‘m not altogether happy about showing data that has not been published (due mostly to my currently delinquent supervisor). Because of the BH’s ongoing disability, she and I spent all of Friday afternoon/evening and all Saturday planning, packing, shopping, cleaning and cooking so that I could leave and not be freaking out that she is OK. I got to bed at midnight ‘old’ time – meaning 1 am ‘new’ time and had to get up at 5am to make the plane. Naturally, due to my insomnia, I actually didn’t sleep at all; mostly I stared at the ceiling and alarm clock in an alternating fashion.

Hamilton airport is a funny place. It’s sort of like the old movies with everyone clammering onboard the plane by ramp and not via the cool docks (or whatever they’re called) to which we’re normally accustomed. Moreover, there are no carts (that I saw), and parking is outside so I had to haul my ski bag, luggage poster tube and back pack across 50cm drifts of snow (no joke) to get to the terminal. There was a delay because of a computer glitch (never a good thing on planes I reckon). Naturally I didn’t sleep on the plane. Near the end of my flight I managed to piss all over the bathroom when we ran afoul of some turbulence during my “whiz”. When we landed I met up with an old former colleague who promptly mooched a ride from me and my rental car. I felt pretty good about it because I thought she might be able to help me navigate. Little did I realize that she was directionally challenged and frequently mixed left and right. We managed to get thoroughly lost in Calgary.

Since I arrived in Banff things have been OK. I managed to catch two hours of Zzzzzz’s and had a fairly nice dinner, other than the part when I ran into one of my old supervisors. There was some awkward small talk and staring blankly culminating in a half-arsed invitation from said supervisor to have a beer with him - which should be fun given that he was the one who made excuses to not have me back when I returned from my leave of absence.

I had hoped that I would have some time to work on my linux/Perl skills while here in Banff on account of the fact that I’m here alone and that I know no one. The wireless modem that I was told would be available is not and so my wifi challenged linux cannot connect to the intarweb and so I’m essentially f#cked if I want to consult the forums for how to do stuff – like getting my f#cking wireless working. So for now I’m stuck in Windowsland. So right now I have three 14 hour days ahead of me. Seriously, the program starts at 8:30am and goes to 10pm each day. What’s that about? On top of it, none of the talks are in my field, nor is my poster. Good times.

Thanks to google images for this swell pic.

Oh, and I forgot my camera, which is a shame since Banff is pretty nice.

Sorry for being a whiny bitch. I guess it could be worse – like Somalia.