MidAtlantic Transposon Meeting and Matty's Birthday Dinner

So I got to work extra early to try to be ready for my talk. As I mentioned, this was my first time speaking to non-Penn people and also the first time really speaking to people who knew what I was talking about. As I also mentioned, my presentation kinda sucked. But whatever. The meeting started at 9:45 and was pretty well attended. About 60 people from Philly, NIH, Baltimore, NY and Atlanta. There were some pretty interesting talks and we actually had sponsorship and so got free lunch from Picnic which was really good.

By the time it was time for my talk I had completely psyched myself out. It didnt help that I kept overhearing Nina talking up my data to people all day. There were 3 L1 talks earlier in the day, so I just skipped all of the backgound (the majority of most of my talks) and jumped straight into my data (of which there was little) and 10 minutes later I was done. Yup, 10 minutes. I had 25. I took 10. Then spent the next 20 answering questions. Pretty well in my opinion. Actually it all went really well. People seemed interested and to be following while I was talking. People asked good and helpful questions afterwards (of which I was able to answer most) and after my talk people actually came down and talked to me (which has never happened to me before). So overall it went shockingly (to me) well. Yayz!

Afterwards I headed to Vintage and met Matty and Joey. I tried 2 new wines. Of course did I write them down? No! It was WAY too hot for reds and I rarely drink whites. So I asked for the waiter's opinion between 2. So he let me try them both with a warning against one of them. He was right, it was pretty gross. The other was nice though. Hints of strawberry. Not too sweet. Nothing I would drink lots of but not bad.

Then we went out for Matty's birthday dinner. He had decided that he wanted Chinese. So we tried a new place (for us), Lee How Fook. It is a little hole in the wall with 9 tables and thats about it. We started with pan fried dumplings and then had ginger and scallion lo mein, general tso's chicken and szechuan style shredded pork. Everything was very good. The pork and chicken were a little sweet which I didnt love, but were very tasty. The lo mein was amazingly good with shredded ginger on top. And the dumplings were fried fantastically and the filling was really fresh tasting. It was very very nice.

Then we went home and played Boom Blox which is totally addictive. Essentially you are just throwing things and knocking things down. But it uses the Wiimote exactly like it should be used. The control is really good and the levels are REALLY complicated sometimes! Lots of physics. It is a really really well made game. I would highly recommend.

Matty's birthday dinner puzzle:
Suzanne has three times as many brothers as she has sisters, but her brother James has the same number of sisters as brothers. How many boys and girls are in the family?