My Pseudo-Disney Non-Vacation

Have you heard of that getting-to-know-you game called "I've Never"? A group of people sit in a circle of chairs with one less chair than the number of people, then the leftover person has to stand in the middle of the circle and say something they've never done. Anyone sitting down who has done the stated activity has to get out of their chair and scramble into a new one, leaving a new person leftover in the middle of the circle. Well, my go-to statement for that game has always been that I've Never been to a Disney theme park. And even though I spent the last 4 days in Orlando, FL, it's still true. I was there for a research conference, but didn't actually get to do anything legitimately Disney. Instead, I had a pseudo-Disney vacation during breaks between conference lectures! Wooo-hooooo, Behold! I took a picture of a Disney park transportation bus as it drove by! I explored the boardwalk studded with tacky souvenir shops near Disney World! I snapped a shot of Disney's Epcot Center! (...from the highway, across a parking lot, while lost, moments before doing a U-turn in my rental car in order to avoid having to actually pay to get inside the official park). Squint and look in the middle of the picture just above the treeline! I went inside of a Disney resort hotel! The Swan & Dolphin! (...it's where the conference was held. My actual hotel lodgings were much less Disney and much less dinero.) Swan: Dolphin: And by the way: I'm no marine biologist, but that's no dolphin. Maybe they didn't think "The Swan & Trout" sounded as classy.

In a suspenseful pseudo-Disney climax, I presented my research project at the biggest national pediatric eye conference of the year!

The project was on acquired nonaccommodative esotropia (translation: kids who suddenly go cross-eyed even though their eyes were straight before, and the crossing can't be fixed with strong glasses).

And in a super pseudo-Disney happy ending, my poster won an award for Best in Show! (Look closely at the upper left corner of the picture and you'll see a cute little blue ribbon on the display board.) The last time I won anything "Best in Show" was at the poultry barn of the 1995 county fair for a pair of cantankerous geese. The fair folks gave me a $3 prize. The ophtho research conference folks only gave me a hearty handshake. Apparently, the more lucrative career is in poultry, not medicine.