Whoohoo, the Empire Conference has started

I am glad to have had this experience, but I am so glad that in two days, it will be over! Tonight we held the opening reception, for which we slightly overestimated food and drink, but the reverse would have been worse by far.

So we have nice collection of papers and two really kick-ass keynote speakers, Mikhail Alexseev and Katynka Martinez. I'm really looking forward to meeting them both and to hearing some of the other talks as well. I also finally met Anne Paulet in person; she teaches history up at Humboldt State U. (also a branch of the CSU, for you out of town readers). She and I have corresponded quite a bit over the last months and I was getting ready for the conference, and we have hit it off very well.

Other news--I ended up sticking with a MacBook Pro, much as I admire the MB Air. the latter just gives up too many things I really need, so I will deal with lugging a 6-pounder for awhile.

More later...