Today began with a terrible realization... these people follow schedules down to the minute. They don't even respect 'Berkeley Time' (+10 minutes for those of you unfamiliar with this term). Not having fallen asleep until 2:30am due to my biological clock, I was nevertheless determined to make it downstairs to breakfast, which was being served from 7am-8am.
True to my nature I carefully calculated the maximum amount of sleep I could attain and still make it to the lobby by 7:59am. I awoke at 7:40, dragged my sorry ass into the shower, ironed my disguise, and hustled downstairs. It was 8:04am... and no breakfast in sight. Nothing but empty carafes, bowls of ice that once housed yogurt and several bagels waiting to be returned to the kitchen (one of them never made it back). I resorted to paying inflated Starbucks prices to feed my caffeine addiction. It was as if an army of caterers descended upon the breakfast spread at precisely 8:00 and executed a 3-minute cleanup with the precision of a cruise missile guidance system.
Most of the day consisted of attending 'sessions'. The morning opened with a keynote address by John Barry, author of 'The Great Influenza' and advisor to a bunch of so-and-so's about flu. The man knows his material, but I think he should stick to writing. I also attended sessions on Disaster Epidemiology & Surveillance, 'The Wild World of Public Health Labs', and 'Laboratory, Public Health Investigation, and Surveillance Performance Measures' for the CDC PHEP grant that goes to states and certain cities. I actually learned a fair amount and most were at least relativley interesting.
More importantly, I saw Alysia and Marissa from RIDOH (my former bosses), and discovered that there was a poster presentation from the one-and-only Kate McCarthy-Barnett, another former supervisor for an outreach program I worked with at Health. Kate wasn't actually there to present the poster, but it was semi-rewarding to see a project I worked on displayed at a national conference.
Last note: Best schwag out of all the booths and vendors displayed here is pictured below. Its a beer koozie from 'Morturary Response Solutions', basically they make high-tech body bags for mass fatality incidents. If you can't read the print on the koozie, it says 'When all that Remains, Are Remains'.
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