How to spice up a conference

A group of us exercise physiology students and faculty recently returned from the Southeast regional chapter meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine. The conference was held in Birmingham, AL, at a very nice hotel that is connected onto a fairly good-sized mall. Three of us presented research (I presented a condensed version of my master's thesis research from last year), and everyone did well and a good time was had by all. Towards the end of the weekend though, we were getting kind of silly, and we thought up ways that we could really spice up next year's regional meeting, or any conference for that matter. Here are some of our ideas.

1. When presenting research, you should try speaking in several different foreign accents. The trick is to smoothly transition from one to another. That way, the moderators and people in the audience will be too busy trying to figure out if 1) you are in fact speaking with an accent and 2) what kind of accent you're using, and therefore they won't bother asking you any actual questions on the content of your presentation.

2. You should try creating a fake poster and pin it up at an empty space during one of the actual poster sessions. When people come by to ask you questions, you should either tell them that you can't answer them because your research is classified, or act incredibly disgusted that they would even dream of wasting your time with such an elementary question. Here are some possible poster topics that we came up with:

a. The effect of a long car ride on asymmetric lower extremity swelling in a pregnant female: a case study. This one was inspired by me, as I had rather swollen feet and ankles from sitting and standing for much of the weekend.

b. Exercise responses on Mars. This one would be great for telling people that you can't answer questions because your research is classified by NASA.

c. The effect of significant doughnut consumption on running performance during the Krispy Kreme Challenge. This would be a great one because you'd have a sample size of 5000, and the Krsipy Kreme Challenge actually exists.

3. As a corollary to item 2, and assuming that you could get the conference directors to agree, you could set up a poster session consisting of entirely fake posters. Or you could add in some mystery by having a poster session where only 1 of the posters is actually fake, and people have to see if they can guess which one it is.

Two new baby arrivals, among other soon-to-be-arriving babies

I would like to send a shout out to two couples we know who have recently given birth.

The first is to our friends John and Ashley, who were former small group members now living in FL. Their baby boy Andrew was born on Feb. 6th (original due date was March 15). Although he's slightly preemie, he seems to be doing quite well.

The second is to my PhD advisor Dr. B. and his wife Becca on the birth of their 3rd child, Vincent. He was born yesterday, 6 days early, but weighed in at almost 9 lbs. Good thing he showed up a few days early!

There are several couples who are next in line to give birth before the end of the semester, assuming everyone sticks to their original due date, which as we can see from above, is not always the case! First up is grad school friends Brian and Deborah on the 19th, second is my cousin Jen and her husband Jonathan on the 20th, third is exercise physiology faculty Kristin and her husband Chris on the 28th, fourth is Andy and Michelle on April 22nd, fifth is me and Ben on April 27th, and 6th is Ben's brother Andy and his wife Anne on April 29th.

I know I will eat my words later, but I am very much hoping that Ally does not come early. I hope that she stays in there past her due date. Ben and I really need to finish the semester before she comes! Actually, I think it would be cool if she were born on May 8th so that she could share a birthday with her Aunt Megan.

Updated Belly Progression

I have now added a new pic to the progression on the right side of my blog (also shown here). Ben took this on Sunday, and it is my 29 week belly shot. Things are definitely getting more round in the middle!

Some very nerdy physiology humor

While the rest of us attended our regular Superbowl parties a couple weekends ago, one of the GI researchers in the physiology department at UNC held a "Super Bowel" party at his house (true story).

Here's one that came to me this morning, although I'm sure I'm not the only one that has thought of it:

A geneticist walked up to another geneticist and said, "Your phenotype is showing."