Magnolia

With the lab having it's first, for some time, potential post-doc candidate visiting, you can imagine that a lot of us were interesed in taking the opportunity to go out for dinner or lunch on work - a chance to try some of the nicer restaurants in town and not worry overtly about the cost. Fortunately for me, I was given the opportunity to go out to dinner and had selected a restaurant in downtown Charleston that has a reputation as being one of the nicer places in Charleston to eat whilst not being ridiculously extortionate. The place is called Magnolia and is one of three restaurants owned by the same people - they have one that is slightly cheaper and one that is more expensive. Now, having said that the prices aren't too bad, it can also be said that it would be extremely easy to drop a large amount of money there - a glance at the wine list reveals a good number of bottles of over $100 and much much more. Fortunately for us, our tastes aren't THAT expensive, so the main concern was whether the reputation afforded the restaurant was accurate or not.

I'm happy to report that the food certainly did live up to the word of mouth. The style of cooking is something of a Southern cooking that has been given some upscale dressing - basically, it's high class Southern food (even with the grits, i might add) that works very well I think. I'm not sure if i would rush back to the place again, given that there are also a couple of other places in the vicinity that do a similar style of cooking for a slightly more reasonable price (it was no surprise to any of us that we were right at the limit of our budget). However, overall, i'm happy that i have had the chance to eat here, and would certainly go back. Provided someone else is offering to pay!!!

Conference Approaching

With January already having flown by it seems like 2007 is set to be yet another of those 'blink and you'll miss it' occasions or, perhaps, a 'drink and you'll miss it one' given the amount of parties that i seem to have been attending recently!! With my Dad's visit over and done, and the remainder of January been somewhat filled with work stuff - like seminars and the like, I was quite relieved when February came along, only to then realise today that the next big event on my scientific calendar is fast approaching - namely, the Charleston Ceramide Conference (aka CCC) which takes place on March 7th-11th. The timely reminder came with an e-mail confirming that my abstract had been accepted for a poster presentation (another one to add to the CV) and reminded me that i had actually better start putting something together - given that it's only three and a half weeks away now.

Of course, an added advantage of this conference is it's location. The CCC is so named because it originated here in Charleston in 2001 - and was spearheaded by my boss Dr. Hannun as a conference for discussing sphingolipids (my labs primary research area). Since then, the conference has been held every other year but has not been restricted to Charleston. In 2003, the second conference was held in Italy (I forget where, but the place began with 'C' to keep the CCC up), was back in Charleston in 2005 and so now for 2007 will be at another destination - namely, Carmel in California. Thus, along with the conference this will be giving me a chance to hop over the West Coast for a few days. Whilst my plans to spend a few days in San Francisco (the nearest major city) on the way had to be shelved (owing to a late decision to go back to the UK for a week at the end of April), it will still be a nice chance to see a little more of the country - and, hey, with no major trips back to the UK for 2008 planned, I think i may hop over that side again soon enough!! So, without much further do, i think i'm going to sign off and start preparing my poster - if i can find the abstract i wrote, that is!!