Day 1 of conference fun and visitors from across the ocean.

This morning I got up at the ungodly hour (for Toronto, not for College Park) of 7:30am to make sure I got to the department in time for breakfast and to man the registration table at the conference. PM and I did the meet-greet/take your money thing for a couple hours, which was mostly fun. (Especially when he called me an "ice queen"! Was that in response to something I said, or does he just generally get that impression from me? Hmm. What do you think?) It's been a long day, but generally a good one. After several interesting conference sessions and lots of brief chats with fellow historians (yay!) I came home pretty tired and ready for a nap. But there's no time for sleep!

I ditched the historians---a chunk of them went for sushi (yum)---to be home in time to meet my Dutch friend EH (and her Dutch friend travelling with her) who flew in from the Netherlands for a winter trip to Canada. They were much more tired than I was at this point, having been awake for nearly 24 hours by the time dinner was eaten and the bed made. Oy. Despite their tiredness I hope their trip got off to a good start in Toronto! It's great to see EH in person again.

I could have gone back to school to party it up with the conference attendees but decided I had better things to do. (And, believe me, this is saying something: I usually can't be kept away from a history party!) Also, I was tired. I'm sure it went great without me there . . . (though I secretly think it would have gone better with me there). And I'm only half-joking. ;-)

Tomorrow I'll be up early to hang out with the Nether-folk currently asleep on my futon. I'm planning on taking in more of the conference in the afternoon if I can---the papers look really interesting!---but we'll see how things go.