The One at FACSS

**I started this post two weeks ago at the conference but waited to finish it.  You'll see why ;)

This week Justin and I are at our first chemistry conference in Reno, NV.  For those of you who might care/be curious, FACSS is the Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies.  We are both giving oral presentations about our research, which is an honor.  Last week we were super excited about this.  Now that the presentations are tomorrow (for me) and Thursday (for Justin), we're just nervous!

Pretty much everyone in both of our research groups came to this conference so we carpooled in a couple of minivans on Sunday.  Driving through Nevada is b-o-r-i-n-g.  Justin hopped in with my group and was kind enough to chauffer us the whole way.  Super funny to see him driving a minivan with "kids" in the back.  Hahahaha!!  I taught Cara and Anny who are in my group how to crochet and that made the time pass really quickly.  They both almost finished their potholders before we arrived :)  I am working on a new baby blanket (surprise).  Justin keeps teasing me that I'm a "crocheting machine" to which I say "if people would stop getting knocked up, I'd have no reason to buy yarn."  Really though, everyone else should keep having babies.  I love having crafty projects and better you than us right now :)

The conference is at a pretty nice hotel.  And they are smart enough that there are designated banks of elevators for specific floors.  Most of us are on the 18th floor or above so we take the same elevator and our rooms all look the same.  They have been recently redone (black and brown, very modern) and I really like them.  One group however is on the 15th floor, which you'd think would be better since it's not as long an elevator ride.  Wrong!  We had to go to their room for something and it apparently has not been redone quite yet.  It's dusty orange and blue, Southwestern style!!  I laughed so hard!!  Why did hotels ever think that because they're located in the Southwest they should have weird, geometric carpeting?!  And can anyone honestly tell me they actually like Southwestern decor?  Blech.

A little messy but here's our room.

Loved the bathroom!  A little bit Vegas :)

Last night was the vendor expo.  Justin and I went pretty early to see what kind of cool swag they might be handing out but we were bitterly disappointed!  No one was handing out anything!  There were a lot of laser companies though that had amazing displays- very colorful.  You haven't been to a cool expo until you've been to a science expo  :)  Or Comic Con I'm sure.  Anyway, they did have some great food tables set up and free drinks.  If you ordered wine, they gave you a glass with "FACSS 2011" etched on it that you could keep for a souvenir and for some reason Justin really wanted one.  We thought about actually ordering wine and just dumping it out, but that seemed wasteful and not very "avoiding the appearance of evil."  While we were trying to figure out how to get one of these glasses someone walked by our table and set their empty wine glass down.  But she didn't walk very far away.  We weren't certain if she actually wanted to keep her glass or not.  After a few minutes we were ready to leave and somebody else came and walked between us and the glass lady, momentarily blocking her view.  I seized the opportunity, grabbed the glass and walked away.  Again, avoiding even the appearance of evil, or maybe not.  Justin followed me, laughing.  Apparently I have some thievery skills.  Not sure if this is a good thing.  Then I started thinking "what if she really wanted it and I totally just stole it from her?!"  And how dumb for us to have one wine glass we'll never use.  Not to worry, my little act will not condemn me to an afterlife of fire and brimstone.  Multiple people were either unaware of the souvenir or didn't care so we were able to grab another empty glass off one of the server's cleanup trays.  Now we both have one :)  I did not enjoy carrying them around however.  Alcohol stinks!  **Additional notes- a few days later we did score some pretty sweet telescoping poster tubes.  These come in really handy when you're presenting your research from a 3'x4' poster and don't want it to get smashed, creased, wrinkled, stepped on, etc.

One last funny story.  After the expo someone had organized a social event for students attending the conference.  There is a small sports bar/club here in the hotel that was open for us to go play pool, golf, video games, etc.  They even had a version of that old Nintendo duck hunt game on a huge screen.  So funny!  I went back to the room to work on my presentation for a little bit and then joined Justin and some of the other Utah students downstairs.  Justin had just started a 3-way pool game with some of his group members and one of them let me take his spot.  I haven't played pool since undergrad but it must have been longer for Justin and Grant because I won!  We decided to play one more game before we left and it actually looked like Grant might win when I sank my last two balls on one shot!  The best part was- it was completely accidental!  I was aiming for one ball and a corner pocket and somehow hit my last two balls which rolled into opposite corners simultaneously at the other end of the table!  It was an amazing result but definitely not what I was actually going for!  After that everyone was ready to leave :(

Hopefully the rest of the week goes as well as my pool game :)

Here's a picture of Justin presenting his poster the first night.  It's his first scientific results poster ever!!  So proud :)

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I gave an oral presentation on Wednesday and it went very well.  There were fewer student presenters than I thought there would be so it was really cool to be selected to present.  And the session I was in was loaded with some pretty big names in the plasmonics field which made it even better!  There was a good sized audience.  (FYI- my research is in plasmonics.)

These schedules were set up outside each room.  There's my name!!

And now for the best part- I posted a few months ago when Justin and I were notified we'd both be speaking at the conference that Justin was actually up for an award as well.  This meant that he presented in a special session with 4 other contenders- all of whom work at national labs and universities, Justin was the only grad student.  There were 2 sessions of 5 nominees each and there would be one winner from each session.  Justin gets really nervous before presentations like this (who doesn't?!) but he did so well!!  I was so proud of him.  He was the only one to stay within the allotted time as well.  Thank goodness because the guy before him spoke for half an hour!!  There was a Q&A afterward and most of the questions were directed at Justin which is really good.  It shows that people paid attention and are interested in what you're doing.  At this point I just knew Justin would win :)

He's smiling because he just finished :)

The winners were announced first thing Friday morning so we all headed downstairs to see the big reveal.  For some reason they decided to split the prize and name 2 winners from each session- boo :(  But one of them was Justin!!!!  Yay!!  I saw the slide before they could actually project it on the screen and thought I saw the title of his talk so I was practically bouncing out of my seat before they even officially announced the winners.  Justin was in shock and I was super excited!  Now we just have to decide what to spend our half of the prize money on :)

Yay for Science!!