I arrived at the Huntsville airport an hour before my scheduled 10:40 AM flight. Typical with modern-day air travel, the flight was very delayed, and my long layover in Dallas, TX ended up being a race across the airport, arriving at the gate during the final boarding call. At that point I realized that I had shared my flights with a scientist from my group. Once we landed into LAX, we discovered that, while we had made our connecting flight, our bags had not. We filed missing luggage reports, then took a shuttle to our hotel downtown. Thankfully, my bag was delivered this morning.

I collected some fun science loot when I arrived at the meeting area this morning: a small tote bag, a pen, a small plasma ball, a cube with changeable astronomy images displayed, a GLAST magnet, a GLAST paper model, a GLAST sticker, and a Swift sticker (I've already built the Swift paper model). I attended the first morning session on accreting black holes. The second morning session had some interesting GRB talks and some talks on gravitational waves.

After lunch, I strolled for two hours around the city with some members of my group, casually taking in the sights and enjoying the warm sunshine. We first passed by some centers for art, music, and performance. We then found some sculptures and fountains, and discovered that the nearby tall white building was City Hall. Finally, we ended up in a primarily Spanish-speaking area, before making our way back to the hotel.

That evening, I enjoyed a pre-made sushi dinner (appropriately, a California roll) in the serene location beside a pond-like fountain that I can view from my room window.

I attended the evening talks from 7:30 – 9:00 on non-GRB science done with Swift, which was mostly very interesting. I'm not used to talks scheduled so late, but I was able to keep focused for the most part.