I'm in the office this morning, taking care of a bunch of last minute details before I depart this afternoon for the Geological Society of America's annual meeting. It's held this year in Portland, Oregon, and I'm pleased to be going in spite of the many responsibilities I'm temporarily putting on hold back here in DC and NOVA. Meetings like this are a great opportunity for professional scientists to catch up on the latest ideas both inside and outside their specialties. I'm also going to be participating in a field trip to the awesomely-named Boring Volcanic Field tomorrow, and maybe doing a little self-guided tour of Portland's geology on my own. I will be presenting a paper of my own (on the role field trips play in geology education*) on Monday. I'm looking forward to meeting many of my fellow geology bloggers Monday night, and not looking forward to the red-eye flight back to DC Tuesday night/Wednesday morning... and then going straight back to work. Fortunately I think I've got all my stuff set for next week, so it should be "plug and play" upon my return... but I've got a hunch I'm going to be pretty tired, regardless.

So... take a deep breath, Bentley... here we go!
______________________________________
* subject of my MSSE capstone research project.

Labels: meetings, oregon, travel