Our neighbors organized a block party earlier this month, where we realized how few of our neighbors we actually knew. While Westley played with his friends, we took notes of who lived in which house and which medical specialties were represented on our street. At his school’s fall festival, many faces were unfamiliar, and I was embarrassed to not know that my high school classmate had lived down the street for the past 6 years. Melody and I took turns volunteering at the limbo station, while Westley mastered plunger-cart driving but struggled at rock climbing. Too bad the haunted house was not as impressive as the $9 price tag on hot dogs. At home, we replaced more dead plants, installed a side-door electric deadbolt, and replaced our undercabinet lights to better match the warmer color of our kitchen lights. We also caught up on new seasons of Stranger Things and SYTYCD, and ate waffles and mochi while watching Waffles and Mochi. Netflix’s new Cyberpunk Edgerunners anime was a refreshing take of the excellent PC game, and Miles Morales’ endgame was a satisfying reminder of the PS4 Spiderman game. My car needed both windshield and bumper replaced, which prompted me to test drive the Mercedes EQS and BMW i4, before placing an order for the latter. The outings gave us a chance to try Jamaican goat curry and beef patties at Dub Plate Kitchen, chicken fingers at Raising Cane’s, and steamed buns at Dah Bao. I also got to relive undergrad dining at the Segundo commons with my lab. On Halloween, we joined the neighborhood gang for trick-or-treating. Westley went as a ninja, which made Melody his armorer preparing his costume, and I his blacksmith fashioning nunchuks and ninja stars. Joining the swarm of children and families was exhausting but exhilarating, as we got to bond some more with our neighbors. 

Feeling overworked recently, I kept my trip to AAO in Chicago fairly simple this year. Despite vowing to avoid red-eyes, I was also keen on avoiding connections, and ended up flying Wednesday after clinic to land in ORD Thursday morning. Fortunately, I made the smart move to book an extra hotel night which gave me a few hours of shut-eye before lunch. The sketchy walk to Chinatown rewarded me with hearty Slurp Slurp Noodles and baked goods from Chiu Quon Bakery to fuel the pig eye injection wet lab at UIC. For dinner, I unwittingly opted for fish at a steak house for the Adverum steering committee, but enjoyed my colleague rapping on the cab ride back. I managed to attend most of the first Retina Subspecialty Day, with only a break for dim sum with ex-fellows, and ended the day with industry functions, the Michels reception, and a dip in the hotel pool. Saturday included investor lunches where I spent more time waxing poetic on clinical trial data than ingesting food, my talk on gene therapy inflammation, and catching up with friends at the MEEI and UCD alumni receptions. After my OCT course and shooting an EyeTube video on Sunday, I headed for some Qing Xiang Yuan dumplings which were definitely worth the wait in line and another visit in the future. I managed to avoid socializing with colleagues and residents on the return flight, giving me time to catch up with work before another work week begins.