Fort Worth, there and back again. It is only a mere 4 hours from Stillwater, so it is actually a pretty easy drive. Excepting the solid downpour on the way back that is.
It was nice to receive an invite from Tom Cundari and Angela Wilson to present in the 2014 Computational Chemistry Symposium. It was also great to hear what the other faculty in the region are up to, such as Ben Janesko (TCU), Peng Tao (SMU), and Monte Pettitt (UT-Medical). It would have been nice to hear Tom and Angela talk, but I resorted to pestering their students in the poster sessions and general subject talks.
Being so close and a slightly smaller venue than a full national meeting, regional meetings are a great opportunity for students to get a chance to present on research. Thus, Shanaka was able to give a short talk on his current work and Andrew, who has only been doing research for roughly 2 months, gave a poster. My first research talk was at a regional meeting, and these are great places to get feedback and trial-by-fire experiences. Both Shanaka and Andrew survived mostly unscathed. I'll need to start arranging more trying and traumatic experiences...