Today is not officially the first day of HRS 05. In fact, it may not even be the first unofficial day. However, for blogging purposes, it is the first.

HRS stands for Heart Rhythm Society, formerly the North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology (NASPE). I like NASPE better because pronouncing HRS requires either strange movements with the lips, or at least three syllables. However, in the interest of keeping with the times, the name was recently changed.

Now that the digression has ended, I’ll continue with the substance of the post.

HRS is in New Orleans this year. As some of you may be aware, it is also the first time that I’ve had an abstract accepted as first author. I’m presenting a poster on Friday, in poster session 5 for those of you following along at home. The downside of all of this is that the first chance I’ve had to be funded for travel as a NASPE presenter has been squandered on a local conference. The upside is that I don’t have to travel. Furthermore, this should be an interesting week, because all of our lab‘s various colonies and collaborations are coming together in our home town. We also have an amazing number of posters at HRS this year — every submitted abstract from the lab was accepted.

(sorry for the intermission — had to go add some more stuff to my soup)

Anyhow, very early this morning, around 00:30, our collaborator Martin Bishop arrived. He was to have arrived at around 18:30 yesterday, but was unfortunately delayed in transit and was unable to make his connection. Later this morning, closer to 10:30, Felipe Aguel arrived and met the lab at Asian Super Buffet in Kenner for the usual amazing feast. So amazing, in fact, that we rarely eat dinner on ASB lunch days. Several of us headed down to the convention center earlier this evening. Some to register, some to take care of problems wherein we did not receive our registration packets even though we had pre-registered. I dropped Felipe off at his hotel, dropped everyone else off at their respective lodgings, and headed home.

Once home, I checked on my simulations, added some more to the queue, and did some reading. Specifically, I worked on finishing up Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, which actually has a few pages left in store for me. I finally got a little hungry, decided to make some vegetarian, Indian, red lentil soup, and have been working on that since. Cooking was accompanied by about half a glass of “Two Brothers – Big Tattoo Red” wine, which is cheap and tasty. Presently, I’m waiting for the soup to finish, at which point I’ll eat and go to bed. It’s been a long day.

Tomorrow, Andre Klebert comes to visit the lab and to give a talk, and we’ll be heading straight down to the first of the HRS sessions immediately thereafter. In fact, we’ll be a bit late. That’s all for now, more updates tomorrow. Good night.