As you can tell from the title of the conference, this is a real edge-of-the-seat experience. A lot of the presentation content is focused on policy and procedure, neither of which I find very interesting. People from my group (many of whom attend this conference) tend to cluster around the technical talks. Unfortunately, the talks are collected into sessions with vaguely similar talks and they often had multiple technical sessions going concurrently. So there was a lot of time spent wandering the exhibitor's hall during periods when there were no technical sessions in progress.

On the other hand, the quality of the technical talks was very good. I learned some interesting things. The N1 talks seemed to go over very well as a general rule. I was a bit nervous for my talk because they put me in the largest room and it wasn't as empty as I had anticipated. A lot of the N-1 heavy-hitters showed up, despite Shorty's talk going on concurrently (and the opportunity to see him in a silk shirt [no tie] and with his black jeans pulled over his combat boots rather than tucked into the top). I had my talk more or less memorized from the previous two evenings of practice, but I found myself slightly less comfortable than I am used to once I got up on the stage. But it wasn't a big deal; the talk proceeded without incident. The questions were not aggressive and were easy enough to answer. All of the hard copies of my paper that I had brought with me were gone by the end of the session, as were all of my business cards.

I had lab travel change my rental car agreement, so now I have to drive back to the airport today and turn in my Avis car and pick up a new National car, which will have unlimited milage. Sort of a pain... but the admins in my group office took care of the bulk of it; they're awesome. The only remaining issue is that the hotel only charged me the government rate ($139) for the first night of my stay, then jacked it up ot $179/night. I'll have to go down and have a chat with them.

Nashville, like much of the country, has been in the grip of a heat wave during my stay. The 1 block walk from my hotel to the convention center has been really uncomfortable, particularly with the formal attire yesterday. Yuck.

The fine folks at Reuter-Stokes (they make ³He tubes for neutron detection) took a bunch of the LANL guys out for dinner last night. I am now sick of barbeque. Someone ordered the humorously named "Mexican Spaghetti," which was clearly spaghetti with Cinncinnatti-style chili on top. It'll be nice to get out of downtown Nashville and start eating normal food again. Downtown caters to tourists and conference types, and there is an air of falseness to it (and far too many honky-tonks). Speaking of honky-tonk, the radio in my room woke me up on my first night here to a song called "Honky Tonk Badonka-donk" which I found.... very disturbing.

Anyway, today I'm driving up to Lexington, KY, to see my cousin Rebecca and her newly-acquired husband. The following day it's the Kentucky state highpoint and some random sight-seeing, then I drive down to Charlotte to see various aunts, uncles, possibly cousins, and grandmothers. I haven't seen any of these relatives since I was at my sister's wedding.