Nerd Take-Over of San Francisco, Days 4 & 5

Well now I am back home, and it feels good! Thursday and Friday of the AGU conference were a blur because I was so drained from the poster session on Wednesday. Thursday morning Erica and I went out to breakfast at Cafe de la Presse, a delicious French cafe where my friend Stephane Fondement works. I know him from the cycling team. It was nice to see him but he was pretty busy. He works a lot, guess you pretty much have to in order to survive in San Francisco!
The best sessions I went to on Thursday were in the late afternoon, and I didn't leave the conference until 6:20, so it was a long day. They were all focused on the environmental effects of climate change and on the concept of tipping points in the climate system - at what point have we gone too far? They were all pretty interesting and the next to last talk was from another researcher at Georgia Tech and was about drought in the Amazon.
Thursday night I went to Fisherman's Warf with Nick, Brad, and Erica. I was so tired I was feeling a little delirious, and then we went to Ghiradelli's square and got pretty goofy after OD'ing on chocolate. :)
Friday was another blur and most of the people in my group had their posters, so I enjoyed browsing through the posters. I went to lunch with Ian, Marek, and Lixin (all researchers in my group) to a really cool Cantonese restaurant that serves dim sum - it is kind of like Chinese tapas. The waitresses bring the food around on carts and you pick and chose what you want to eat. It was really great because Lixin is Chinese, so she knew what is good and could ask for special things from the servers. It was really good stuff, except for the seaweed.
I was excited all day because Chris came to San Fran on Friday night. He arrived around 6:00. I gave him the tour of my spacious room and then we went out to an Italian restaurant in the alley where I ate on Monday, called Tiramisu. I guess Friday was my day for eating strange food because I had cavier on my dinner, but it wasn't too bad. My main dish was crab ravioli, yum! We had a good dinner and then had some beer at a sports bar. Then we decided we needed to practice for Saturday (when we went to Napa Valley), and so bought a bottle of wine to enjoy back at the hotel. It was really fun to have him in the city with me and live it up for a night (our dinner was pretty expensive and we would never spend that much on a date if I weren't on a per diem!).