I'm back from ORS. First time going, and it was held in Long Beach CA this year, nice. I flew out last Wednesday, and met up with a few colleagues for dinner the night before everything opened. There was a pretty sizeable group of us, plus some people we knew from Boston, all together at a really excellent seafood restaurant (King's Fish House) where I had the Hawaiian Ono for the first time, never heard of it before but it's really good. Back at the convention, I had two posters on display so I had to man them for all sessions, both days. For the most part, Chinese people walked past, took a photo of the poster, and moved on, but a few people did take an interest, especially one who was surprised to see Zimmer there at all ("I thought you guys didn't do conventions") which shows the lack of presence on our part for several years now. I went to a bunch of presentations as well. More seafood in the evenings. Thursday, here's a picture (taken just outside the convention center) that I texted to Beth during a break in the action:

...and the one she texted back to me from home a few minutes later.

Thursday night a group of Zimmer and DePuy (fraternization!) people walked over to the Queen Mary (the ocean liner, now museum/hotel/restaurant/event center) for a very nice and fancy dinner aboard ship. Friday was more of the same at the convention, but Toni and I ducked out for a few hours to go catch a whale watching boat tour. It departed from just down by the convention center so it was pretty handy, and they didn't need us there anyway. The tour took us out a few miles from Long Beach, where you can see all the thick smog hanging over the LA basin, but we also did catch sight of a female humpback and followed her for a few miles, and we also checked out all the sea lions hanging out by the oil platforms offshore. Back on land, we continued to get really good seafood...especially the fish tacos. I got a bit of geocaching in as well, just around the convention center, on Saturday. Everyone headed back Saturday; I had the same flights as Satish and we barely...barely...made the connection in Dallas. Pretty successful trip overall.

We picked up Opal and Iris from the vet today after they spent the night getting fixed and de-clawed in front. I hated to do the de-claw, but they've been climbing. The screens, my jeans, whatever they can get their claws into. The cat condo I built really does help, and they love being able to climb it by the rope windings or the carpet, but overall I prefer the guilt to a shredded house. 2 cats fixed and declawed, $449.50...ouch.