Need a Clark Kent who isn't married...

Monday morning I drove to the airport in Windsor. Well thats not true. I drove in the direction of the airport in Windsor - was a few blocks away from my destination locale and realized I didn't actually recall how to get there. I quickly called my mother to pull out the map and ask her to direct me to where I needed to go. She didn't answer the phone. Maybe its just up the street a little further I thought to myself - nah thats silly - you've passed the road you needed to turn - so I entered a gas station. Awesome teenagers....shouldn't they be at school? Maybe they are older than they appear - oh well - lets ask where the airport is. I ask. I felt like a tool. Not a wrench, or a screwdriver - more like a cold metal hammer.... They started to try and explain where it was - but they were both giving different directions - so they pulled out the very conveniently placed map of Windsor - it became clear to me at that moment that many other hammers came in to ask for directions as well. We figured it out. I just drove past a turn - no big deal. I drove back the three blocks I had overdriven turned right and there was the airport before me. In Toronto that wouldn't happen because you can see the structure from a distance - you could pretty much stand in front of the Windsor airport and not realize that it was an airport... its that tiny.
I met up with Fearon (like Erin with a "F"). She had flown in from Fredricton New Brunswick. I had met Fearon just over a year ago when we were doing data collection in Barrie, and then at a conference in Barrie - and now she was in Windsor for a conference hosted in well Windsor. It was a three day conference about the automotive sector - moreso related to engineering. Its interesting to see the technologies and such that we are developing to try and improve automotives. Its also interesting to learn how many of these new technologies I'm against. But I'll save that for an in person conversation if you don't mind - but still care to know.
Dinner the first night Fearon and I sat down at a table and we were joined by a Chemistry professor from Mac. He was very entertaining and made dinner quite delightful. After dinner he was going to make a point to view the posters both Fearon and I (plus our respective group members) had created for the conference. (Its a competition and the winning group gets approximately $5000! - we didn't win :( ). Well he kept his promise. He viewed our posters - found us and asked us questions about the poster (the poster defense wasn't even suppose to occur the first night! hahaha). A PhD student from Waterloo ended up having to save me from the grilling session I was going through... not because I couldn't hold my own nor that I was answering the question incorrectly - just that it was going on forever and it really wasn't fair to me. I understood that he just wanted to understand the information presented on the poster - but it was clear that he was not a biomechanist - and did not understand what we do - nor gave me an adequate amount of time to answer his question before he moved on to his next point in trying to prove my research improper. The scary thing was that I pretty much understood his poster - but thats the chemistry background I suppose playing its part.
Anyway - the more entertaining part of the conference is when you run into someone from high school - someone you didn't keep in contact with - someone you may have asked to go to prom with you and he rejected. Yop that was fun. Actually it was fine - but it was definitely interesting. I had seen him at an engineering conference last year but didn't really talk - whereas this year we did - both at the conference and at the bars afterwards. One of his colleagues is finishing up his masters of engineering and is hopefully to actually start training for the oylmpics in 6 years I think to be on the rowing team! He started rowing not too long ago and has fallen in love with it and hopes he can make this dream come true -- it was an interesting conversation.
More disappointing news that happened within the three days of the conference is that we got news that grant we had applied for that was the reason as to why I came to windsor in the first place (that got denied last year and the year before)... which would fund my masters and phd research got denied yet again. So tomorrow I have to have meetings with my advisors to see what I'm going to do now - I hope that my masters thesis can still go on as planned because I'm not wanting to start from scratch this late in the game - I don't want to be the forever masters student! hahaha... plus after the poster grilling I went through I think that should fulfill my research defence requirements and I should be handed the degree right now!
Anyway - I'll leave my adventures at that.
Oh wait - there was a guy at the conference who looked a lot like Clark Kent - the suit, the hair, the glasses - it was entertaining me for a while - but it was sad in the end because he was married.