Tuesday, July 03, 2007

In Just a Little over 24 Hours....

I shall be off to the airport. Right now, however, I'm sitting in a Panera Bread taking advantage of the free wifi in order to have a little break from finishing up my conference paper. It's going smoothly - I think I may just have needed a change of scenery as well as some major procrastination in order to get to this point. Still more work to do, but the thing now has enough of a shape that in a worst case scenario sort of situation I really could spend a few hours making adjustments by hand and give the thing to an audience without being embarrassed. Do I like to give papers in this way? No. I'd much rather have things more polished off. But given everything that's been going on of late, well, that's just not going to happen with this one, and I refuse to beat myself up for it.

In other news, I'm wicked excited about my trip, and I really think it's going to be fabulous. Hurrah! Have finally figured out train-related portions of trip, and am allowing myself to relax into the thought of two weeks out of real life. Oh, and I'm also feeling better because I picked up a copy of a novel that I need to read while on the trip second-hand, so now all of my reading material stuff is set (well, except for magazines I'm certain to buy, but that can't be helped).

Ooh! brand new baby in Panera with what seems to be dad and 3-yr-old sister! But baby is very, very new and very darling! Love the brand new babies! (Esp. when not crying, but rather just making really sweet faces while sleeping.) Also a woman here who seems to be recovering from some sort of cosmetic dentistry or plastic surgery who from the look of her neck is around 55 but from the look of her face might be like 37. The hair offers no clue as to age as it may/may not be a wig but is the color that I like to call "playboy bunny blonde" that I don't think I've ever actually seen before in real life.

So yeah, that's the slice of life scenic stuff from the afternoon. But so it's time for me to get back to work. Whee!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

she's saving up money to get her neck done?

Dr. C said...

Have a lovely trip. Hope you will share exciting details when you return.

Charles Montgomery said...

Your breezy insouciance (I always wanted to use that phrase in writing) about your conference paper is both amusing and daunting. As a long time reader (and very infrequent commenter) I believe you should write a long and thorough entry about how one does write a conference paper, how one presents it, and how one is carried off by adoring throngs.

Cause I have my first paper in October and I really have no effing idea!

Good luck...;-)

Tenured Radical said...

Hiya doc,

Good luck with your paper. I tagged you for a meme (in your spare time....).

TR

Keri said...

Hope you are having a great trip!!

(PS: I just returned to blogging after a one year hiatus and was delighted to see your blog still up and running as it was always one of my favourites!)