On the Road.

I'm in Boulder, Colorado for a workshop on the effects of plasma outflow from the ionosphere on the entire magnetosphere. For the first time, I drove to a scientific meeting/conference and also brought my family. A few notes before the workshop starts:

• THE LIONS FINALLY WON. First time in my daughter's lifetime; first time since 2007. Because we were deep in the mountains of Colorado during the game, I couldn't follow the game online or over the radio. Phone calls kept me up to date on the score, but it sucks missing out on the first win in oh-so-long.
• My daughter handled the 8 hour drive very well, mostly because she was not feeling well and slept most of the time. She felt well enough to go swimming at the hotel, however...
  
• She didn't sleep through the "tire incident", however. Closing in on Boulder, a car about 100 yards in front of us was struck by a free rolling tire. The windshield exploded and the tire was launched high into the air and over our car. The man driving the car was cut up a bit but not injured seriously. Crazy times.
• As my wife pointed out, today must be "rile up spacecataz" day. The Lions won, which always gets me worked up. Then there was an insider look at Walmart on CNBC that was sprinkled with promotional ads for Scientology. *grumble grumble* Nothing quite like getting good and pissed off before a conference where I will be making presentations.
  
• Met with former graduate school colleagues and talked about future collaboration efforts. Very exciting to be able to work with good friends again.

That's about all for now; tomorrow should produce great conversations about the role of the ionosphere in space weather.

Truly Outrageous.

On the final stop of my "Tour de Conference" for summer 2009, I will be going to the Geospace Environment Modeling (GEM) summer workshop. This is THE meeting for researchers such as myself; I'll be sure to keep the updates flowing throughout the week. I will be giving four seperate presentations (two talks, two posters), so my plate will be pretty full. We'll see if I can get in any arguments with other numeric modelers...

Spring AGU

This Saturday I leave for the spring American Geophysical Union meeting, held in Toronto, Canada (this year, anyway).

I'll be sure to blog the interesting space science that goes on. Additionally, this year AGU has a Twitter page that you can follow if you are so inclined.

Being held over Memorial Day is going to hurt attendance this year. Spring AGU is already a smaller meeting, so it will be interesting how many people turn out.