Finally all home.

I haven't been posting for a few days because I was in Kansas at a conference. Many exciting adventures to tell you about. (Most of them are only exciting to me, though.)

(1) I was supposed to fly out of Pearson at 9:30am last Thursday to Detroit, and then on to Kansas City. Ended up leaving at 8:50am bound for Minneapolis. Thunderstorms in Detroit apparently made my plane late, and since I had a connection to make, they rerouted me through Minne instead. When I boarded the plane at Minneapolis---which looks like a really beautiful city from the air, and has an amazing airport---I discovered that I'd been booked into a first-class seat! So, I flew first-class, Minneapolis to Kansas City. Too bad, as the man beside me remarked, it was only an hour-long flight.

(2) There is free WiFi at the Kansas City airport. So, that's what I did while waiting for unknown (to me) JL to come pick me up. He's a friend of my friend EW, but we'd never met before. Good thing he sent me a photo beforehand, so I'd know what he'd look like!

(3) I stayed in Lawrence, KS with EW's parents. They are super-awesome. Lawrence, by the way, seems like a really nice town. An island of liberal blue in a sea of red, says JL. Cute downtown, and nice residential neighbourhoods with relatively inexpensive little houses. Lots of trees. The University of Kansas (KU) has a really beautiful campus. Very nice place to live, work, go to school, it seems.

(4) My paper went well. At least, I think it did. Yay!

(5) The other panels I saw were good, too. I mean, this is a serious academic conference, so it's not the most exciting thing sitting and listening to people read for 20 minutes, but it's interesting enough. I learned some stuff. Most importantly, though, I got to put names to some "famous" (for me) faces.

(6) I talked to all the profs and grad students I wanted to. All very nice and potentially good, useful contacts. I definitely need to go to this conference in later years. Collected a handful of business cards, which I will put to good use over the next few days following-up on some conversations.

(7) The prof. I was most excited about meeting did come to my talk. He then took me on a tour of campus, the town, and out a bit in the surrounding countryside. Very nice, down-to-earth man, if not super chatty. I'm a fan, for sure. And, I got to buy his last 3 books for 40% off! I figured I'd be able to get them with a conference discount, but I guess because the conference was at KU, and his books are published by the University of Kansas Press, the discount was double the usual 20% off. Awesome.

(8) American accents. Who know there were so many?! Not me. I was really quite amazed, though I guess I shouldn't have been. I especially like the older southern "gentlemen" I talked to. Very nice people, all. And everyone else I talked to was nice too.

(9) Got to talk for a long time with Juan Cole. Okay, mostly listen to him talk. He's very chatty, very knowledgeable, super-approachable, and not arrogant... though perhaps a bit of a name-dropper (in a good way). I really liked him, and didn't think he was at all like the man the neo-cons like to disparage. On a related note, I was surprised that it seemed like everyone at the conference was pretty liberal. I don't think there were any pro-Bush people there at all.

(10) I flew back to Canada on Monday with friend DS. Good times. This time I did head back through Detroit. Oh, and the Detroit airport is pretty neat too. There's this big tunnel with a huge art installation of sorts in it. The whole tunnel is filled with music and lights that change colour. I can't really explain it, but it was cool. And in the Northwest terminal there's an indoor train thing! We took it to speed down the terminal to our gate. I should mention too that I had chilly fries with cheese for dinner. I started to remark to DS that, "now I know why Americans are so fat!" until I realized that I was surrounded by Americans, so perhaps I shouldn't finish the sentence.

(11) When I got to Pearson... my luggage wasn't there! It was left behind in Detroit. But I've got it now. Which is why I'm "finally all home."