I dunno, hon. I'm just not sure it is worth it. I deviated from my usual jeans and tee-shirt today. That's right. I'm wearing a skirt. I'm going to a conference here in town and I dunno. I felt wild! Different! Willing to wear what girls wear. Since all I am doing is sitting for eight hours watching presentations (and dear god. We have got to get away from people who spend all day long thinking about fascinating things slaughtering the effect of their neato results by blandly reading them off slides.), I figured a skirt might be up to the demands of my day.
I am pleased with the skirt itself. It is red, with a flare that ends just below the knee. I'm pleased with the outfit, truth told. But I don't know if it is worth wearing it. This skirt? It has no pockets. I might combust from irritation. You carry bags, right? Things dangling off you? Things in your hands? How do you stand it? Is wearing girl clothes worth that? If I had a gentleman, I could hand him my cash and keys and cardkey and swimpass. Then, when he stashed them for me, I could say, "Thanks, Pocketbitch." and dance away before he could get mad and hand them back. That's what I do when I have to wear dresses; it is small recompense. But I don't have a gentleman with me today and I don't think my employer wants to pay for another registration to the conference just so someone could sit next to me with my crap in his pockets.
I rode my bike with this skirt on. It was OK. The skirt kept sliding and flipping up my thighs, which I suppose is all flirty and saucy. It seemed like a fairly undirected flirtation, though. It must have reached passing cars, and not hott climatologists at the conference. Perhaps the skirt would have greater effect if I rode my bike in circles in the convention center lobby.
Verdict: Yes, definitely cuter. But unless something dramatically changes and the young visiting professors start handing me their cards with their hotel rooms written on the back, I don't think it is worth the huge annoyance of no pockets. I need immediate payback on looking cuter to put up with inconvenience.
Dude. I am so excited! I don't know how I missed this before, but I think poster sessions may be the perfect way for me to talk to people. There they are, right there by their research posters, and they can't leave. This is GREAT. I can back each one uncomfortably against the wall, interrogating them about their topics until I understand all of it. If the topic should die for a second, I can look back over their results and ask a new question. It is perfectly appropriate for me to not already know these things. I found out about how electrical transmission towers need to be re-designed for longer full capacity loads with no nighttime cooling hours, about how sunflowers and cotton aren't going to yield well in hotter temperatures, and how you can identify trees from satellite pictures in urban settings (it is hard to tell them from shadows). When the information starts to peter out, I just walk away!
It was completely coincidence that I mostly discussed posters with cute boy researchers. I talked to Juhon and Cavay and Brian and Jeffrey. I also talked to the utterly smokin' hot lesbian researcher, in case you think that my intellectual interests aren't broad enough. Not one of them issued any sort of invitation to discuss their work further, so really? Skirts are fucking useless.