Zuben is ecstatic!!! :-)

I surprised Zuben with fantastic news! I didn't tell him what the surprise was, but just hinted that we needed to go downtown to the Mudhouse, then I'd tell him his surprise. We had to park a block south of the Mudhouse, which was very near to his school.

He guess his surprise!!! He is going to return to his spectacularly wonderful school beginning next week!!! He didn't guess the details of course, but oh goodness, was he so super excited! He could not contain his excitement and it spilled over into his brief playtime while at the mudhouse...

I was giving a friend some tomatoes from our garden, but zuben was too excited to wait at the mudhouse any longer... He was ready to go to school! Haha! :-)

Blog from an iphone???

How fantastic is this new technological age we are in, that I can not only type up the most mundane and trivial things to present to you on your own screen of choice, but I can now do all such things from my phone...?

With this app, I can really become trivial with my packets of info that I share. ;-)

My First Chemistry Conference

BCCE - 21st Biennial Conference on Chemical Education University of Northern Texas, Denton

Since I am an undergraduate chemistry student, it is a very good idea for me to attend lectures, symposiums, expos and conferences, as often as time and money will allow. I am in a current state of self-discovery, and I like exploring my options. Some may already know, I had planned on becoming a high school chemistry teacher, but have since made other, more fitting, plans for my college career. This week there was a Chemical Education Conference that I was asked to attend by one of my professors. A faculty member had paid for everything but was unexpectedly unable to attend. Obviously I jumped at the opportunity.
Although it was to be a conference for Chemical Education, I knew that I could get something out of it. Let me tell ya...

The two other faculty members attending the conference needed to be there on Saturday, because one of them were speaking at a symposium Sunday afternoon (I thought it was Monday...), and I was having a BBQ with friends, so I drove to Texas alone.

I LOVE SOLO ROAD-TRIPS!!!

I had almost forgotten how much I love driving across the country, exhausting myself with my best karaoke performances, and no one to have immediate reactions to my behavior. Solo road-trips would definitely be in my top-five most enjoyable activities, and I hadn't done this since I was 3.5 months pregnant with my son. I had a BLAST!!!

I arrived to the University of North Texas campus with almost the perfect amount of time to get checked-in for the conference (lots of name changing was supposed to have already been completed before I arrived), checked into my dorm room, and showered, to only end up about 5 minutes late for the opening ceremonies (which began at 6:02pm).

The rest of the day & all of the next day and a half were filled with all things Chemistry, and more specifically, Chemical Education...

Since this was my first conference, I was not fully prepared for what I was to experience. The symposiums were over-crowded, there were many lost and wandering visitors (myself included), and the vendor's area was highly over-whelming. I wasn't alone the whole time, but a majority, and I attempted to hide in plain sight by wearing headphones and trying to not make eye-contact, as I looked through the HUGE room of tables filled with displays. The headphones didn't prevent their intrusion into my bubble, and I was trapped and sucked into their spiels and misguided attempts at a sale. I may well have been the only attendee that was not an educator, and just a lowly undergraduate. Conferences are expensive, so the typical student would rarely attend... After they lassoed me in, and I had removed at least one of my earbuds, I had to attempt to make them pause, so I could explain who I really was, and let them try to reconfigure their business tactics to apply to me. Goodness. It was a difficult room to get out of...

The positive side to my conversations with these people came in the form of information to share with my fellow chem majors at MSU. These vendors loaded me up with pamphlets and brochures to spread their message, and I walked away, 3 hours later, with a very over-stuffed goodie bag.

Also, due to the over use of my iPod playing, my iPhone battery died midway through the day,and well, I was a bit more than antsy...

Overall, attending the conference was an eye-opening experience for me that I may not possibly have the ability to fully express on the emotional level, but maybe one day I will be a pro at hanging out at conferences, and there's only one way to do that....

Next conference on the books is this October, in Houston.....