Are you the gopher? (AIHce - Day +3)

last post read: ...second is David Michaels, author of Doubt Is Their Product. Damn, wish I had chosen his book to bring. Would it be toooo geeky to ask the Secretary of OSHA to autograph his book? Guess I'll never know.

Well, I do.

I'm standing in front of my poster, waiting for someone to ask me something about the fruit of the last 4 months of my life. Lo & behold, Dr. Michaels
(Hi, Dr. Michaels! I hope your trip home was nice.)
is chatting with the poster author next to me. As he wanders by, like Brownian motion, I take the opportunity and introduce myself, telling him that I am enjoying his book. It was something like:

Elizabeth: I'm enjoying your book.

Dr. M: something noncommittally bland, like 'thank you'.

Elizabeth: I hadn't realized you were the same person as the author. I wish I had brought it with me. Even if it would be soooooo geeky to ask the Director of OSHA to autograph his book.

At least he laughed. However, he then looked behind me at my poster. I had the microscopic terror that he was going to ask me something about it that I couldn't answer. He did ask, but it had nothing to do with differential mobility analyzers.

Dr. M: are you the gopher?

Elizabeth: smile, wave my hand nonchalantly at the U of M logo on my poster, and state, "Yes, I'm the only poster from the University of Minnesota this year."

Dr. M: no, not the poster. The blog.

huh?

Dr. M: the gopher blog?

uhhhhh

Elizabeth: yes, I have a blog, I guess I must be that gopher.


Apparently, like the fellow from DuPont who commented on my post about Teflon, Dr. Michaels has someone who regularly checks what people are saying about him. Needless to say, I promptly wondered what in the world I had written about him & hoped it was spelled right and wasn't professionally too embarrassing.


The rest of the day at the conference was ok. I went to the 'interesting investigations' hosted by US-OSHA. I was struck by how much an industrial hygienist needs to rely on her intuition. One audit was from a plating operation, where a maintenance worker - who wasn't considered to be a 'worker on the line' - had the highest exposure. He was included for the employee sampling only because the inspector thought 'oh, let's include him, too, it might be interesting to compare him to the other group'.

If you're in downtown Denver & need to eat:

Los Cabos, about 2 blocks NW from the Convention Center has really good Peruvian food. Fantastic citrusy cold fish salad and some melt-in-your-mouth beef dish.

Wild Bangkok has good Thai; I really wish I could remember the name of what I ate, because it was one of the few times I have taken so long to eat because I couldn't bring myself to rush through such good food. I'll have to ask the other fellow who ordered it as a favorite dish.