Lab retreats are fun - in a really sad masochistic way

Here's the deal, apparently. If you are in a lab that is big and well funded and sufficiently hard-core (which big and well funded labs tend to be), your boss will sometimes decide that the best way to get group morale up is to go for a little lab retreat. Now this isn't the kind if retreat that your corporate types will relate to. No fancy yacht, champagne and strippers.

What we do is ensconce ourselves a secluded place and talk science amongst ourselves for two days straight. Which, if you really think about it, is like any other two days at work. Except with less comfortable chairs, unbearably cold air conditioning and catered food (to be paid for, thankyouverymuch).

Of course, the formality of the entire occasion demands that you actually prepare for a good week or so in advance, so you don't make a damn fool of yourself. And then your presentation gets ripped anyway with glee, either because it's way too ambitious or it isn't ambitious enough or the controls aren't quite right or the time line for experiments are incomplete. In other words, its almost exactly like a thesis committee meeting, except with more thesis committee members and no threat of failure. Of course, in this case, you just get fired for incompetence. Still, the whole thing while being incredibly tiring, was surprisingly fun (yes, yes, that means I'm a gigantic dork. I know)

Anyway, all of this is to explain away the absence for a week. And the incredibly hungover feeling this past weekend.

Like you all care. But still, there you have it.