Things that happened at our annual department retreat (in no particular order):
1) One black eye. A guy woke up Sunday morning with a black eye, and no clue how he got it. None of us witnessed any altercations during the weekend (except with this other guy and a fence, and all those people with the doors), so it's quite perplexing to most of us. Full on black eye. Without a known cause.
2) Two lost wallets. Yup. And while searching the bushes and the jacuzzi and the like for the wallets, we found a lost key and a lost cell phone (but no wallets).
3) One broken fence. Someone got frisky with our fence. Enough said.
4) Some really amazing talks including one from our lab where new data was presented. Raising the bar for next year.
5) About eight people running into the glass patio door at different times throughout the weekend leaving face imprints all over the thing, which dirties it up so people know there is a door there, and you would hope, no longer run into it, but, no such thing. People keep running into it. All weekend. Results in at least one fat lip and the most I've laughed in months (sorry B, I love you, but you had a running head start into the thing).
6) So much drinking that I swear some of these biologists have devised an instant liver regenerating technology, because there is no other way they would be able to get up at 8am to listen to two to three hours of talks after drinking until 6am.
All in all, it was a very good weekend, and not only for the social aspect. We've grown tremendously in the last few years and this was a great way to see ongoing research in our department and the different techniques available to us.
