I co-organized a conference that finished today. Highlights:
- Duration: 11 a.m. Thursday-9:49 p.m. Friday
- Registrants: 80
- Papers delivered: 59, plus two keynotes
- Panels that included secret undergradutes: 1
- Percentage of participants who claimed recognize my name "from the e-mails": ~50.
- Pairs of shoes I wore throughout: 4
- Blisters: only 1, but my toes really hurt tonight
- Awkward cat stories revealed to me unprompted: 2
- Times I thought "people MUST stop divulging personal information in panels": 3
(times that was related to cats: 1) - Kisses—on the cheek, tres chic!—from keynote speakers: 1
- Divas: 1
- Times my co-organizer's wife thought I was calling my advisor/co-organizer a diva: 1 (I wasn't, but she was amused by the possibility)
- People who confessed a deep love of creme brulee to me, and to whom I say, "Word.": 7
- Men with a tendency to loom identified: 3. Knock it off, tall men.
- Rooms I had to lead people to without knowing for sure where they were: 4
- Papers I saw on things that don't normally interest me but suddenly did: 3 (Anglo-Scottish borders, Bowdlerizing, dogs in romance)
- Hours it took me to find time to pee on Thursday: 9
- Mini-emergencies faked to get out of conversations: 5
- Best new fact I learned about Carolyn Dinshaw: she really likes her crockpot
- Times I mentioned that the MLA job list came out Thursday: 6
- Times that knowing what schools have English medieval lit lines made me the center of attention: 2
- Restaurant recommendations given: 3
- Microphones dealt with: 1.5
- Times I thought, "This person is not as annoying as usual":4
- Times I thought, "Ohmygod this person is EXACTLY as annoying as usual": at least 15
- Topics that are hot right now in midwestern medieval studies, apparently: fathers, book history, hybridity, narrative theory, memory and time
- Unfortunate jokes by others about my dad's reaction to my dissertation on father-daughter incest: 3 (Wrong to punish people who do by saying that he died when I was a child? Or that I was immaculately conceived?...Oh, fine.)
