The Total Package

The last week of July I was at a conference in Andover, NH on Cellulases, Cellulosomes, and Other Carbohydrate Modifying Enzymes, but that doesn't really matter. What does matter is that the conference was held at Proctor Academy, which is a prep school that prepares kids to go to Ivy League schools. And at Proctor Academy, all of the talks were held in the main auditorium in which many of the seats had little gold plaques on the armrests indicating that someone had donated money to, and I'm totally guessing here, the theater, most likely to purchase those very seats. Most of the plaques say something to the effect of "The Jones Family" or "In loving memory of Sue", which is generally what you expect from this kind of donation-type thing. What you don't expect to be written on one of those little plaques is:

Jeff Peach "The Total Package"

This is what was written on the plaque of the chair that I sat in for pretty much the entire duration of the conference. I would actually look for that particular seat because I found the armrest plaque so amusing (it also helped that it was in the center of the last row, but I digress). I feel that this plaque brings up such questions as.... Who is Jeff Peach and why is he the total package? What makes someone the total package? Could I possibly someday be the total package? And the big question that you are probably asking yourself right now.... Why is Maggie obsessing over this little plaque and not paying attention to the lectures? Well friends, I may not be able to answer the first few questions, but I can definitely tackle the last one - because if you ever have to sit through an entire morning's worth of crystallography lectures you had better pray that there's something amusing written on the little donated plaque on the armrest of your seat. ;)