Banff Shenanigans - Day Two

6:15am: I'm up! Shower and dress presentably. What colour is my poster again? Pink shirt and baby blue necklace means I am ready to snub my teachers at today's poster session. Grandma is up a few minutes later and we leave for an early, leisurely breakfast in the amazing Vistas restaurant. Cinnamon raisin french toast with fresh fruit, eggs, and hashbrowns makes me happy. The three cups of coffee don't hurt either.

8:30am: First sessions begin. Two talks, one "nutrition break", three more talks. Nutrition my foot - welcome to scone and danish heaven. One cup of coffee per two talks = heart-stopping stimulation. Good thing too, since I received an oddly enthusiastic endorsement in my supervisor's morning talk. My labmates tell me I am going to be mobbed at the poster session and I prepare myself for a lynching.

12pm: Lunch in the beautiful restaurant again. Hello broccoli soup and delicious salads. Cherry poppyseed torte? Mocha cheesecake? Maple walnut ice cream? Pass the insulin please. We stroll into the poster session late because a lunch like that requires more than a half an hour to enjoy.

1pm: Uh-oh. There are many labels missing from my poster. Also, the pink seems to be warding away many of the male faculty members who expressed interest in the project initially. They catch sight of my pink shirt and the pink headings and then make a beeline for the other end of Cpx row. Except for the structural biologist with a vendetta against periplasmic-facing OM lipoproteins ... when he is satisfied that I don't know the answer to his questions, he leaves to grill a labmate. Surprisingly, the poster session makes me feel like I know what I'm doing. Inappropriate jokes mean it's time to leave.

3pm: The pool is smaller than I thought, not that I need a large pool for my skills. I throw deflated yellow balls at Grandma's head while she swims laps and make pathetic attempts at shooting hoops in the water. Lack of hand-eye coordination confirmed. Shampoo and body wash is PROVIDED in the showers. I am easily impressed and enjoy all of the many benefits being a patron of the Banff Centre offers.

4:30pm: We're off to Sukiyaki House for some sushi. Plum wine is a sweet aperitif. The vegetable sushi combo is ridiculously filling and ridiculously delicious. ET eats a whole mound of wasabi and everybody's stomach turns. The training chopsticks are broken out and I have to remind everyone that I am NOT Japanese. Racist bastards.

7:30pm: Back at the Max Bell Building, we're still full but I grab another cup of coffee. The first speaker is hilarious, which is great because the power fails in the middle of his talk. My attention fails by the next coffee break. Four talks at night? Really? I conclude that biofilms are just not my thing.

10:45pm: Props Pub is tiny but perfect for an informal gathering like ours. The Doppler Effect, Pynchon's novels, and words that are impossible to pronounce make their way to our conversation. More racism, more made up laughs, and scientific sexual innuendo bring us to the bottom of two pitchers before we give up and leave. RM manages to catch a terrible video of us. So much blackmail in so little time. I stay up until 2am, wishing I wasn't too drunk to write up that scholarship application.

Banff Shenanigans - Day One

Hour 1. Speedy SL takes off for Red Deer before us because JI was late picking SV and I up by, maybe, five minutes. Blasting Madonna's "Like a Prayer" from a sporty blue Honda, we take off for Starbucks so that I can feel my face again. Grande soy cinnamon dolce latte secured and I am at least partly human as we take off for Banff.

Hour 2. The 90s are back for good. Ace of Base, Backstreet Boys, and N SYNC join the ride. SV may or may not have taken blackmail-worthy video from her backseat view. Grandma SL meets us outside a purple ceramic teapot gallery beside the Donut Mill for a brief stretch before we head for Cochrane.

Hours 3 and 4. Hanson blares through Airdrie, though the locals pretend not to notice. The four blocks of Cochrane's downtown afford us little eating choices and we settle for an Opa/Quizno's split. Guacamole means Quizno's trumps Subway's veggie delight anyday. McKay's ice cream anyone? How can SV call herself a vegetarian when she eats flavors like "spotted cow"? I have never eaten Halo Halo, you racist bastards. I am NOT Phillipina for the umpteenth time. I choose white chocolate raspberry truffle, hailing the beginning of the end for my pancreatic beta cells.

Hour 5. Winding roads into Banff are occupied by people who like to drive on the double solid yellow line. When the signs say "Mountain sheep - next 2km", they literally mean 2km worth of mountain sheep. The Banff Center is lofty and beautiful. How could I have let so much time elapse between the last time I saw the mountains and now?

Hour 6. Sprawled on our large double (queen?) beds, Grandma and I break out the candy. Our very own Backstreet Boy joins us for some Mead, Aprikat, and sloppy ballet. Lazy is an understatement.

Hours 7 and 8. There's already mead on the carpet but none of us can bring ourselves to clean it up. Wait ... Grandma is anal enough to fight the laziness and finish off a box of mono-ply facial tissue to sop most of it up. We pull ourselves from the luxurious beds and head to registration.

Hours 9 to 12. It's an intimate meeting alright! Three ambitious talks with plenty of comic relief. Thank goodness microbiologists are so good-natured. A million samosas, cakes, squares, mousses, late spanakopita, and a glass of red wine later, Grandma and I are tucked in and ready for sleep. Our computers finally connect so we can check our e-mails (for peace of mind) and day one closes uneventfully.