Greetings all! We are now in the crazy travel period for your VIPEr leadership council. Next week, quite a few of us will be headed to Chicago for our workshop on bioinorganic chemistry, so lots of us are gearing up for that. Joanne Stewart and I will be continuing the IONiC invasion of Canada as we head to ICCE in Toronto that same week. But this week, Adam Johnson, Nancy Williams and I are in Newport at the organometallic Gordon Research Conference. So far it has been an incredible conference. Bernadette Donovan-Merkert has put together a tremendously diverse and terrific list of speakers. In particular, I know I was shocked when I saw Bill Geiger give talk in which he not only showed a CV of a ferrocene compound (he has promised he never would) but also didn't show the CV triangle (potential vs. time) which he had told me was legally required. I also learned a lot about PET imaging from Tobias Ritter. Tonight I am really looking forward to Paula Diaconescu's talk; it must be something about the ferrocenyl ligands.

I've gotten to catch up with some former students, some old friends and to meet some new people. Joe Templeton is entertaining as always and seems to derive particular pleasure in trying to get me in trouble with my former students and vice versa. Rich Jordan and Mitch Smith gave a moving tribute to Greg Hillhouse last night; his presence at this conference is certainly missed.

It has been great getting to see Nancy and Adam. I picked up Adam at the airport and it wasn't snowing! While that may not be surprising to many of you, Adam has been in my car twice before, and both times it has snowed. So, I was especially happy about the snowless weather Bernadette ordered. In fact, it has been so nice, I actually woke up cold one morning, a Gordo first! I've gotten some ideas for LO's, so be on the lookout for those in the future. I took a picture for those of you that have never been here. If you look closely, you may notice the rare Viperous Californicus Johnsonous in its summer colors. It got a little feisty so I had to leave.