Hawaii highlights:

(The speed-posting version.)

1. Having a wild chameleon on my shoulder eating bugs. (Her, not me.)

2. Discovering that for all I angsted about my poster presentation, it turned out to be one of the nicer ones. A shocking number of people were still using that old "individual pieces of paper stuck up on a board" which looks so...1978. Too bad that the poster hall contained thousands of posters at any given hour, and I was in the furthest row from the door, so that not too many people even got to our row in the 50 minutes allotted.

3. Salt water is good for dog bites.

4. Mmmm...crab--the ocean's delicious arachnids!

5. Earplugs go a long, long way in making life okay when you have to sleep in a room with 6 or 7 strangers and you're all jetlagged.

6. Cave spiders are very webby, but don't seem to bite much.

7. Snorkeling is very good after the initial 5 minutes of the suffocation sensation.

8. The pineapple is so tender and delicious I could have eaten it all day. And the papaya--it was so good I don't even have sensory memory of what it was like.

9. No matter how little I pack, I always find I could have packed a lot less.