I'll be there

I still am a bit disappointed that I had to miss SVP this year, but fellow paleo-blogger Amanda has suggested that everyone who wants to attend the 2008 meeting put a little progress bar on their blog to remind themselves to start saving up for the trip (you can make your own using this word cash meter). I'm setting mine at $1,500, and although registration is only a fraction of this amount, I'm going to need to save a lot for gas, hotels, food, extra activities, the money I won't be making since I'll have to take off from work, and the armful of books I'm sure to come home with. Indeed, I'm setting the bar high ($1,500 is about 1/20 of my annual income) so that even if I come up short I'll still be able to get there, and I would recommend that anyone else who is planning on going do so as well.

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I make this pledge too! Next year, I will be able to buy groceries the week after SVP!

And Jerry, I salute thy liver which is surely stronger than mine.

Sarah, while I do drink my share at SVP meetings, I'm not one of the ones that stay up 'til all hours pouring glass after shot after glass down my gullet -- basically, I drink enough to be social, but not nearly enough to get caught up in the insomniac bacchanalia that a large percentage of SVP-goers seem to revel in. Oh, but those events are the stuff of SVP legends...which was more what my comments were directed at (basically, a big tease of all SVP members collectively!)

Well, if nothing else I probably owe all the paleo-bloggers a drink, but given that alcohol is so expensive I'm more of a social drinker, too.

Michael; I work for the Rutgers IR-4 Project, which is an agricultural program. For the last year and a half I've been working on a database that helps farmers to pick biopesticides or organic pesticides when they have a pest problem rather than going with more toxic conventional products.

Jerry, I would like to assure you I did not think your comment was actually to be taken literally. I meant mine as a joke, as well. I suppose I should have put a winking emoticon at the end? It can be hard to convey jokes and the like through type. :)