Earlier in the year, Jackie, an organic chemistry faculty member at UC Davis, asked me if I would give a guest lecture for CHE 130B, an undergraduate course in pharmaceutical chemistry.  Since it sounded like a good opportunity, I readily accepted.  We agreed that I would give an overview of Alzheimer's Disease in general, and AMGN's efforts in this area in particular.  Because this would involve disclosing structures, I knew that I would have to get legal approval as well.  To make a long story short, I did submit it for legal approval, but I didn't learn until a few days before the lecture that the submission was done incorrectly, and so it was a mad scramble at the last minute to get the required approvals, but thankfully they all came through.

So early Monday morning, I flew to Sacramento, where Jackie picked me up from SMF.  Because class wasn't until 11 am, she took me to a diner called Cindy's for breakfast.  The last time I was at Cindy's was when I was about 10 years old.  After breakfast, we drove to UC Davis, and we had a little bit of free time so Jackie told me about some of her research projects. 

A little before 11, we headed for class.  Because CHE 130B is an upper division course, it's not a huge class.  Perhaps there were 30 people.  She took a few minutes to set up the projector and introduce me, so I had about 45 minutes to give my talk.  That's about how long I wanted it to be, but I didn't rehearse it as often as I would have liked, so I talked for about 50 minutes.  Hopefully the class enjoyed my talk.  They did laugh at my last slide, which was the list of People Magazine's 25 most intriguing people from 1999 (one of them was an Amgen researcher who studied Alzheimer's Disease).  After class, Jackie, the TA, and one other student joined us for lunch at the Gunrock Pub, which is the first time I'd ever eaten there.

From 1-5 pm, I had appointments with various faculty members who told me about their work.  I didn't know any of them personally, but many of the younger faculty and I have mutual acquaintances at AMGN.  I also met with Professor Balch, a relatively senior faculty member in inorganic chemistry (thus unrelated to my area).  He was a little perplexed as to why I requested to meet with him.  But when I told him that a) I'm from Davis, b) I'm classmates with his youngest daughter and in fact we were in the same 6th grade class, and c) he was the parent chaperone on my 6th grade field trip to Alcatraz, he definitely warmed up to me.

When the day ended, I walked to the Mann Lab parking lot where my mom picked me up, and we drove to the capitol area of Sacramento to pick up my brother, and we had dinner at New Station.  Then they took me to the airport.