decidedlyodd

I did get on my flight to Chicago on time and in first class. However, it was about 1.5 hours late which caused me to miss my connection. I then got rebooked onto a 4pm flight that was supposed to get me into Raleigh at 7pm, but I managed to luck out and get onto an earlier flight through standy. I really didn’t think I was going to be able to get on when they made an announcement requesting 3 volunteers to get bumped 20 minutes before departure. In the end, I think at least one or two large groups missed their connection or otherwise didn’t show up because I heard “final boarding call …. X party of 4 … Y party of 5″ a few times before they started calling standby names. By 12:30 I was on the ground in Raleigh–about 20 hours after my original planned arrival time or 29 hours after arriving at SeaTac (the first time).

After picking up my rental car at the airport, I met up with Steve and John over at Panera in Durham to make some conversation and grab a very late lunch. I went back to Steve’s aftewards and took a much needed 2 hour nap before heading over to Mellow Mushroom in Durham at the American Tobacco Project for pizza with everybody I had originally planned to eat lunch with that day. Here’s a pic Steve took of everybody:

From there, we went to . Nobody we knew won anything, but Aaron, Brad and I got our picture taken with the MC Mary K. Mart. She’s scarier in pictures I think, but in that Divine/West Virginia sort of a way:

My fourth major social event of the evening was my fashionaby late appearance at a CS grad student party at Tynia, Mike, Todd and Sasa’s house. I got to talk to just about everybody I wanted to see, which was awesome. At 2:30, I left the party to crash at Sarah and Jason’s. It must have been 3am by the time I went to bed. I slept until 1pm and still felt a bit groggy when I got up. I hadn’t slept more than 2 or 3 hours at a time for several days. The three of us and Jeff T went for a very late brunch (if you could even call it that) at Elmo’s in Carrboro just like old times.

Upon arriving back at Jason and Sarah’s, Jason and I played this board game Carcassonne. Even with just two players, it worked quite well. It was both simple and fun, unlike a lot of other board games out there today. I need to pick up a copy some time. I ended up sticking around for dinner (yummy eggplant parmesian) there with Nico and Jeff T eventually joining us too.

I took off for DC around 9pm and got to the hotel here in Alexandria around 1:30 or so. The first room they put me in wasn’t really complete. The pillows were laying on the beds in a pile without covers. The guy at the front desk didn’t seem to believe me for some reason, but he gave me another room anyways.

I just finished up putting the final touches on my slides. Tomorrow, my plan is to get up, eat some breakfast, practice my talk and then give my talk. Hopefully, I can grab lunch with some people I know from UNC and/or MPI before heading back to Chapel Hill later in the day.