Hotel

I finally got around to booking my hotel for the conference I'm going to in May. Uh, thank GOD I did because practically everything in the city was already booked!

I ultimately decided to stay for most of the conference. I'd initially fancied myself flying in on Sunday, presenting my poster, and then leaving later that night, thinking that I'm not so into lungs, and therefore wouldn't find much of interest there....

But! I looked at the program and found some sessions on palliative care, a couple of sessions of management of neuro-icu conditions, some sessions on autoimmune disease (LOVE!), some sessions that will be led by a committee member of mine, and another session led by a woman who would be me if I hadn't f-ed around in the business world for 7 years before coming to med school. (Yay my life!) So I decided to stay for the whole thing.

So I managed to get a room about 6 miles from the convention center. I had a choice between Doubletree, Red Inn, and some other hotel I'd never heard of. I chose Doubletree, even though it was the most expensive. My justification process went as follows:

1) If I'd managed to get a hotel near the convention center, it would have cost $219/night. At $179 a night, this was a bargain!
2) They have a 25 meter pool (allegedly)! Considering that I won't know many people at the conference and will probably spend much time by myself, I thought it might be nice to be able to keep up with my fledgling swimming regimen.
3) I remembered that Doubletree has really good cookies.*
4) The Doubletree had 4 stars and the other hotels had 3 stars.
5) My GRANT is paying (thank you NHLBI!!!). Somehow I have to spend $2700 on computers and travel/conference expenses this year. Since I already have ample computers (3 and counting), I decided I could live a little.
6) The other hotels were not that much cheaper.
7) Apparently dogs are allowed. Not that I would bring Miss. Ferocious to ATS anyway, but I appreciated the sentiment. (Can you imagine how awesome it would be if I COULD bring her????)

Anyhow, I haven't booked my flight yet because Luca and I are trying to decide whether we want to make a mini-vacay out of the trip.

We had thought initially of driving up to Boulder for the weekend after to hike, but then felt a bit meh about the whole thing.

Then we thought of flying to Chicago for a fun weekend there.... but then I remembered most of my friends who still live there that I'd want to see either I've seen recently or they have moved away. We thought about trying to take my old PI and his wife out to dinner to thank them for basically getting me into [my godforsaken MD-PhD program] but who knows if they will be in town and/or interested in seeing us. I don't know.

Any suggestions for what to do for a mini-vacay of about 4-5 days? We don't ski, so please don't suggest that. I think it would be great to have a small break before I start the quals study push over the summer. God knows I need the time off.





*This knowledge was gleaned by my year at the consulting firm where I learned (among other things) that there really is a difference between a nice hotel and a motel 6. Consulting ruined me forever, what can I say. My favorite hotel was the W in Atlanta (what with its bathroom stocked with Aveda products and 300 threadcount sheets and down comforters), but Doubletree was pretty good too. See, consulting wasn't a TOTAL waste of my time, right? Ha.