if anyone lived in a pretty how town

30 minutes snatched away from work for myself, prior to going downstairs to ride the bike and trick my body into parting with a few fat cells... what, oh what to write about?

- I just returned from temperate California in time, basically, to turn back around and travel again tomorrow! This time, I'm off to beautiful Parsippany, NJ. I know, it's a traveler's dream come true. I will stay in the gorgeous Parsippany Hilton, surrounded by marketers and market researchers promoting themselves. What's not to love? And I myself will give a fantastic talk about how one can use sociolinguistics to answer all manner of research questions. Whee!  At least my colleague, C, will be there, and we'll have a little fun together. Less fun than we would have had if she were not in her first trimester of her second pregnancy and throwing up pretty much constantly, but still, we'll enjoy each other's company.

- California was very enjoyable, by contrast. My friend and colleague P. and I presented our research at Amgen, and it went extremely well. I really do get very excited about it when I can use my findings to help marketers think creatively about patient education and, especially in the oncology realm, to get them to promote survivorship programs, and free-up funds to make copay assistance available to more people. I WILL rework the system, dammit!

( Warning: discussion of cancer patients' needs and getting them some help )
The brand team was absolutely delighted with my bid to rework the system in this case. One man in particular paid extremely close attention and was highly interactive. At the end of my presentation, he invited me back in March to speak to a much larger group including advocacy professionals. As she walked us out, the client who contracted with us told us that that was her boss and that she'd never seen him pay attention to any other marketing research presentation before. He's apparently a "fiddle with his smartphone and leave early" person. So it's lousy that he's a jerk, but the implicit compliment is pretty nice to have received.

- Otherwise, it was actually quite a hard trip. The flight to Phoenix on Thursday was delayed by 45 minutes because a broken seat had to be documented (and the man who had purchased said seat on the plane was bumped to another flight without the rest of his family, which was pretty lousy for them all, I'd imagine). The turbulence on the trip was constant and regardless of altitude, it couldn't be avoided, which meant that there was no drink and food service on the flight for five hours.

( Time to rush off the plane... )
Once we finally rolled in, P. and I decided to collapse, so I got room service (and the very strange man who brought me my food rubbed my arm/sleeve -- nubbly fabric! -- and I ushered him out because eww, that was slightly awful), and then more oddities occurred the next day, but that is a tale for a different time. I've taken more than 30 minutes and I need to spend some time with L and pack for tomorrow's trip!