With summer weather approaching and many personnel changes in lab, I decided to host a lab BBQ at my house to let people hang out outside of work. Having learned from hosting a BBQ with the retina folks last year, we didn’t bother with homemade skewers or quiche, sticking instead with burgers, hot dogs, and prepared salads from Costco, along with some curried wings which were a hit. We assigned drinks and desserts to guests, which led to a glut of extra sweets that fortunately the undergrads were more than willing to take home. Sadly, Westley broke out in a heat rash and did not cope well with all the new faces. He managed to warm up a bit when we invited our in-laws afterwards to tackle the leftovers. My call week for the Memorial Day weekend was quite busy, but we did manage to enjoy some dim sum with the fellows, having missed Chinese New Year earlier this year. We also stopped by Planet Granite and Medimer to browse marble remnants, and took advantage of online holiday deals for more compact luggages for work travel. Having pulled several late nights to catch up with clinical duties and manuscript preparation, I ran on little sleep and ended up losing my wallet last week. Between getting my credit cards and wallets replaced, and squeezing in a DMV visit for a new license, I felt ill prepared for this whirlwind weekend of our department’s Napa symposium and the iOCT Summit in Cleveland. After Friday morning clinic, I drove to Napa for some oysters and chowder, only to suffer from food poisoning that kept me from enjoying dinner and left me dehydrated on my red-eye to Cleveland. I arrived at the Cole Eye Institute at the crack of dawn Sunday, and relied on coffee to keep me awake through North Coast Retina in the morning and my talk in the afternoon. With little time to catch up with friends, I flew back to SFO that evening, briefly dining on delicious beer-battered cod with rosemary fries at Bar Symon at CLE. I had trouble keeping my eyes open on the drive back to Napa for my quick overnight Airbnb stay before my Sunday morning talk to the department. Exhausted, I was relieved to return home for lunch with my family and my friend Yao, before having to pack again for a trip to Singapore tomorrow. While it feels nice to be popular at times, I just don’t think I’m cut out for the jetset life.