New Orleans is one of my favorite food cities in the country, but traveling during a pandemic to attend AAO in person meant that some compromises had to be made. Having procrastinated on air ticket purchase until the last minute, I was stuck with a flight that arrived at midnight Friday. Fortunately, my friend Kareem got a rental car – actually a truck – which helped me escape the taxi line, cancel my Lyft, and check into our 2-bedroom suite together. On Saturday, I registered for the meeting, practiced my talk, and indulged in crispy Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken for lunch, before giving my subspecialty day presentation. After meeting with industry colleagues and attending some receptions, I joined my friend Daniel on the patio at Margie’s Grill to chat about his transition from academia to industry. I taught my OCT course early Sunday, which left me the rest of day to set out in casual wear to enjoy the city. Filling on delicious gumbo and crawfish etouffee from Oceana Grill for lunch, I relaxed at Jackson Square to local jazz musicians while reviewing NIH grants, then compared beignets from Café Beignet and Café Du Monde with my colleague Jeff, where Café Beignet’s version won by a slight margin. Dinner at Gris-Gris with UCD folks included chicken gizzards, fried oyster “BLT”, and oyster pot pie appetizers, followed by hearty shrimp and grits. I had little sleep before boarding my 7am flight back, where I had trouble keeping my eyes open as I compose this blog entry on the plane. Hopefully I will get some rest before covering a surgical case when I return.

Both clinic and lab work has been getting busier since the pandemic. We see more patients in clinic, and have fewer qualified personnel in lab. I still managed to submit three grant applications to the Foundation Fighting Blindness this month, however, including a 5-investigator team proposal for the Translational Research Acceleration Program which had a foreboding acronym. Between upgrading my PC to Windows 11 and my Pixel to Android 12, both of which offered visual enhancements that I did not ask for, I also binged on new Netflix series like Squid Game and Midnight Mass. The Korean battle royale show was surprisingly engrossing, while the limited horror series provided a slow burn as well. We also embarked on Apple TV’s adaptation of Foundation. For me, Asimov’s iconic series was probably my favorite read of all time. So it was disappointing that the showrunners had to deviate so far from the original source material to keep the show relevant to today’s audience. With recent approval of the Pfizer vaccine for kids, Westley was able to revisit farm friends at Grandpa’s Barn, plant cabbage on his field trip to Fiery Ginger Farm, and earn popcorn and cotton candy at the Upstander Carnival at Davis Central Park that was aimed at discouraging bullying. For Halloween, we showed our parental commitment by hand-crafting a robot costume for Westley from cardboard boxes, toilet rolls, and metallic spray paint. The ankle-length design limited his mobility for trick-or-treating, requiring a modification to waist-length mid-trip. Westley seemed less interested in the candy, and more interested in feeding his new venus fly trap, which he named Trapper Keeper FlyEater or Justin for short. Along with his pet spider Aphider, this meant doubling the mouths to feed insects to. The atmospheric river and torrential rain slowed our outdoor kitchen project a little. But with our new marble counter finally set in place after a fiasco with an inexperienced fabricator and fractured slab, we hope to once again enjoy our back patio.