Today I learned about statistical comparisons and livers.

So...

Imagine me in a small auditorium surrounded by PHD candidates, scientists and pictures of human livers (The plural of liver is livers. I looked it up just for this post). As a discussion of metabolic disorders rages around me, I retreat to Words with Friends, feeling like quite the imbécil.

I have just sat through an hour of torture that biologists call "Cellular Therapy in Mendelian Disorders". And by accident too...well, kind of. I was supposed to be working on an article on the new head of the Biology Department (turns out there isn't one. World +1, Allee 0) so I went to a seminar in which I THOUGHT they were announcing the big man. Nope, they only talked about Rat Livers. I was sitting in the back row, so I could have just left but it felt strangely inappropriate. And it probably would have gone like this:

Allee gets up to sneak away halfway through the section on transplanting rat livers, trips over some people's feet, falls on her face, trips over the projector cord, causing the PowerPoint to black out.

Speaker/Scientist/Really smart guy looks at her quizzically.

"Oh, hey Mr...Doctor Guy," I say. "I need to go do something that will actually apply to my life. I wish you luck with your disorders...I mean, solving disorders."

By now, the whole audience is looking at the girl on the floor, trying to figure out what planet she came from.
She crawls through the door and decides she can never show her face in the science department again. Not that she does anyway.

I decided to prevent this daydream from becoming a reality.
For a very long hour I squirreled my face into my Ipod and pretended to be take notes.

Even though it wasn't in my control I feel like I dropped the bomb on the article. Probably because I did.

Needless to say, my brain is gone. Shot. Poof.

Despite the amount of "terrible" potential this day had, I felt such an influx of kindness from the people around me that I couldn't help but smile.

Thanks all you random (and not so random) people.

I wish I could hug you.

PS. Google is now sending me ads that say "Need a Liver?". I need to be more careful what I blog about.