Post-Kalamazoo Roundup!

Now that Vaulting and I have returned from an excellent Kalamazoo (and had time to recover. Slightly.) there are a number of things I'd like to address. And I'll get to those in good time. But first, I just want to say thank you to everyone who made it fantastic: the presenters in Vaulting's session and my own, the random people who asked all the right questions, the old friends we saw and perhaps drank too much with, and the Richard Rawlinson Center, the University of York, Early Modern Europe, and the mead brewers (sadly now defunct) for providing a proportion of that "too much" free of charge :) I'd also like to blow a great big raspberry at those who lose all interest in you once they realize you're nobody special: to borrow a phrase, "bitter kittens, you ain't so special yourselves." So, here's a brief list of highlights, lowlights, and othermoreconfusinglights of the conference, some or all to be covered at greater length later (I'll leave it to you to decide what's what):

-Doctor Who audiobooks
-The astounding, insane price of petroleum products
-Sharing a bathroom with someone you *actually know* (and like)
-Ethernet (for one) in cell block H
-American Continental Summer for two days followed by English Winter for two days
-Books I can't afford because I'm poor
-Books I can't afford because the used bookseller thinks none of us have heard of abebooks and amazon
-Books I can just barely afford and must buy because it has a chapter that replicates almost exactly what I'm doing OMGWTFBBQ (and now he's writing self-help relationship books.... O_o)
-Very Cheap Amazing Books
-Free Swag
-Sessions run by Venerable Scholars
-Sessions run by Venerable Scholars in part as a 3-day roast of Patrick Conner
-Sessions run by less-venerable scholars who are my friends
-Sessions run by my friends
-Sessions which piss off the Society for Stuffy Old Art Historians (would you like to run a session? Please send us your CV)
-Eminent Scholars who ignore one's nametag
-Eminent Scholars who read one's nametag in order to learn one's name (and not one's social status)
-Eminent Scholars who ask if they can accompany you to lunch in order to further the conversation you're having with them
-Young scholars who engage one in conversation in order to (obviously, blatantly) chat up one's friend
-Drinking in strange (and possibly illegal) places
-Really, really, *really* hilarious waitresses
-Really nice people who show one where to print things before the computer lab opens (which happens to be at the same time as your session)
-The Dance
-Jon Jarrett and Heptarchy Herald headbanging to Bohemian Rhapsody at The Dance
-Half-price books at Powell's on Sunday morning
-Goodbyes to people you saw
-Apologies to people you didn't
-Days of recovery

As I said, some of this will be written about, some not. But it all really happened. I think.