Of Conferences and Blog Clouds

Wow. I'm entirely wiped out now; this has been one full weekend. We had a good conference out at Qualicum Beach, with some fantastic sessions. My paper went really well, and the other members of my panel are doing really similar stuff to me. I strongly encouraged them to come out to the Berlin conference in September, and I think at least one of them will come. Oh, and the Qualicum Heritage Inn is pretty intense: it's all Bavarian/Tudor style, used to be a college, has an amazing view of the ocean (as my room had), and has a suit of armour in the lobby, along with a huge medievaly-looking chandelier over the staircase. So cool.

I love cultivating a grad student community among the history grads at my University. There were so few of us at my old school that, which we all knew each other ridiculously well, it was less "community" and more "crazy family who spends far too much time with the profs." I love spending time with people who are also entirely steeped in what I do (okay, I also love spending time with people who aren't steeped... but it's good to have a balance). It's fun keeping a running tally of how many times people use variations on the word "hegemony" through the day.

In other news, as seen at Scrivener's, I had fun making a blog cloud (it's supposed to be something where they make a t-shirt out of your blog, but I'm too cheap for that, so I just saved the picture):

Isn't that pretty? I love that the word "procrastination" figures larger than "thesis."

And finally, a confession of something that I did that sounds very giving, but I actually did for self-serving reasons: I bought my friend Brandy a webcam. It's one of those 1 cent on Ebay cameras, like mine (with built-in microphone), and so it just cost the $17 for shipping from Hong Kong. It occurred to me to do that because I was grumbling inside my head about how I won't get to see little Celeste until she is many months old, and sure pictures will be nice, but I want to really see her! Then I wished that they had a webcam and were on Skype. Then I thought to myself, "I could get them a webcam! It could be a baby present! And then she could show me the baby! And Wee Girlie and I could have conversations over the computer! Man, that kid would be so pleased to have conversations with Auntie Mary!" I confirmed with Brandy (who is out of the hospital and fine, and it turns out that the cause of all the problems, and the reason why Celeste was a tiny bit on the smallish side, was because there was a knot in the umbilical cord -- Brandy thanks everyone for praying, because that could have gone horribly wrong, but everything work out well), and she thought it was brilliant, too, although I confessed that it was entirely so that I could see the baby and WG lots.

Totally worth the $17, I think.

(Secret message to Ari and Janny: e-mail me your Skype names! And Ari, I'm sorry that I was out of town over Chinese New Year!)