I'm sure you all remember that I was the lucky winner of the Scienceblogs.com Millionth Comment Contest. The grand prize was a trip to New York City, with museum tickets, meals and meeting science bloggers thrown in. So here I am in Manhattan, having a ball, and taking lots of photos. I'll be posting a few over the next few days.Day 1 - yesterday - was mostly taken up by travel from SoCal to New York. There were no significant delays, and, beyond the general annoyances of cross-country travel the trip was uneventful. United Airlines seems to be nickel-and-diming us travelers, charging $15 for a checked back, skipping free in-flight food (not even peanuts) and upselling at every chance (I had to click through 2 upsell screens to print out my boarding pass, for example). Anyway, we landed safe and sound at La Guardia and caught a cab to drive us to our hotel. The trip was supposed to be 8 miles, so I figured about 20 minutes or so. Those of you familiar with New York City rush hour traffic are probably cracking up at that idea. I think the last mile alone took 20 minutes.
Anyway, we arrived at our hotel, the Moderne, which is conveniently located in Midtown Manhattan. It's got a modern-a-la-the-1960s with boldly painted walls and pop art decor. Our room isn't huge, but it's got what we need - a bed, a desk, WiFi internet access and a TV. And I was excited to find a big basket of swag from Seed Media and the scienceblogs.com science bloggers. Very very cool.
Thanks to all the science bloggers for selecting such great stuff.
- "Being the Change" T-shirt (which I'm modeling in the photo) from ScienceWoman and Alice Pawley of Sciencewomen
- "zuska says: Don't make me puke on your shoes" T-shirt from Zuska of Thus Spake Zuska
- "Science commons" T-shirt from John Wilbanks of Common Knowledge
- "A Blog Around the Clock" clock from Bora Zivkovic of A Blog Around the Clock. He also
sent copies of the 2006 and 2007 The Open Laboratory blog science writing anthologies. - A mug with molecular structure designs from Sandra Porter of Discovering Biology in a Digital World. There are a several magnets with molecular structures, which I suspect are from Sandra too.
- Astronomy: A Beginners Guide to the Universe from Steinn Sigurdsson of Dynamics of Cats
- A signed copy of The History of Psychology from Greta Munger of Cognitive Daily
- Worlds of Their Own: A Brief History of Misguided Ideas: Creationism, Flat-Earthism, Engergy Scams and the Velikovsky Affair; Evolution Vs. Creationism and a "Honk if You Understand Punctuated Equilibria" bumper sticker from Josh Rosenau of Thoughts from Kansas and the NCSE.
- The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson from Martin Rundkvist of Aardvarchaeology. The note says it's "The best novel written in the Swedish language".
- Drug Monkey sent me a CafePress gift certificate so I could order a DrugMonkey mug. Extra awesome because I don't have to carry it home in my luggage.
If I missed anybody, I apologize! Also, most of these items can be purchased through Amazon.com or Cafe Press - once I have more time I'll link them up, in case you are looking for a nice geeky gift.There was also some nice ScienceBlogs.com and Seed Media stuff, including a tote bag which it turned out I desperately needed because my purse I brought along is much too small.
More to come . . .
(And a big shout out to Seed Media's Erin Johnson who made all the travel arrangements, and met us at the hotel. Great job!)
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