So this is actually a "guest" appearance by the other half of the Chemistry of Clutch blog. I took a trip to our nations capitol a couple weeks ago for a chemistry conference so I figured I had better tell you guys about it and show you some pictures. It was a spur of the moment trip so Shannon didn't get to go, but my sister went and got a free hotel room out of it. Most of my time there was spent at the conference listening to talks, looking at posters, and talking to other scientists about research stuff. I also had a few job opportunities pop up in the form of interviews at the career fair there. One was with Roche and the other was with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. I also had a possible opportunity pop up that could lead to a job at Michigan State. I had some productive discussions about biofuel cells with some of the top researchers in that area, so the meeting was very productive. That's a basic summary of the meeting, and here's some pictures of the first day that we got there and I actually got to go see some of the sights.

The washington monument

The capitol building


The WWII memorial

The Lincoln memorial as seen from the Washington monument


It looked really big up close....

Honest Abe

The Washington monument and reflecting pool seen from the Lincoln memorial

At the Natural Science Museum, this furry guy was not alive

But this guy was! Some stupid lady held out her hand to hold it after I did and then jerked it back a the last second and it fell on the floor. Poor hissing cockroach....
And of course, what trip to DC would be complete without a mention of the Obamanator. This was a whole store with just Obama stuff in it, including this cardboard cut-out of him! I think I learned more about the national healthcare plan by talking to cardboard Obama than from the real thing on CNN!