Snapshots from Chicago

• It was a beautiful day in the Second City, and I spent it inside a windowless board room voting on things. Thank goodness for lunch and a stroll in Grant Park, where the Obama campaign has taken over a huge chunk of land to set up their election night celebration. Gazing out over the city tonight from the balcony of the organization's penthouse suite, full of the conviction of shared ideals, was almost overwhelmingly emotional.
• One of the strangest experiences of a meeting like this is having your name recognized by someone you don't know. The meeting has barely begun, but in the elevator, a Virginia graduate student introduced himself by saying that my name was still bandied about in the department. (I hope the stories are positive.) At the book exhibit, a person whose name I knew because he's a committee chair knew my name from reading my work.
• While browsing the book exhibit, a voice at my elbow said, "Nice Clapotis." Yes, there was a knitter making herself known, someone who recognized the famous pattern and correctly pronounced the secret password. Turns out she's a grad student in North Carolina who's known on Ravelry by the name Lazuli. Wearing a popular handknit is like flashing a gang sign-- instant bonding.
• Sure, Chicago is beautiful (67 degree weather and brilliant fall sunshine today). Sure, my colleagues are marvelous and I care for them and our common enterprise deeply. But is this a pleasure cruise? As I told my students, I'll be awakening before dawn tomorrow for an ungodly 7 am breakfast meeting. Not my idea of a vacation, no matter how wonderful the company or the cause.
  

My kind of town

I am in the great city of Chicago. And right now I should be stepping into Scott's car and heading a mile uptown to have a drink or two with this man, whom, LIKE ALL RIGHT-THINKING AMERICANS, I greatly admire.

But after a five-hour meeting and the threat of a physical complaint that sometimes assails me when I am under stress (can you guess? I'm not going to tell), I've decided that going out tonight isn't in the cards.

IT IS A GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT TO ME, and, I'm sure, TO THE ROSEBUD PRIME.

But probably a boon to those who will be spending tomorrow with me in a 9 to 5 meeting.

AND YOU THOUGHT ACADEMIC MEETINGS WERE EASY.

Notes before takeoff

• Tomorrow I head north to the great city of Chicago -- the city with the big shoulders, that toddlin' town -- for the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion. It will be an easier trip than the Denmark jaunt of a couple of weeks ago, of course. But I told my students that they shouldn't envy me. Almost as soon as I check into my hotel, there's a 5 pm - 10 pm meeting. Then on Friday, a 9 am - 5 pm meeting. Then -- the real killer -- the Saturday morning 7 am meeting. It's not going to be a restful jaunt. But I hope to break away long enough to see my Chicago colleagues for dinner or a drink. Don't worry, guys, I'll be in touch.
  
• I finally got away from the office long enough to get a haircut this afternoon. The stylist plucked something from the back of my head and held it up to show me. It was a gray hair, but not just a gray hair -- a crinkled, curly gray hair. In other words, a terrifying glimpse of the near future, when my thick, slightly wavy, easy-to-manage strawberry blond coif turns into a colorless mass of kinks.
• Following an intriguing recommendation from Boing Boing, I bought ABC3D (only $11.97 with free Amazon Prime two-day shipping when I ordered!), the stunning and elegant alphabetical pop-up book by Marion Bataille. Check it out -- my favorites are the U and Z.
  

Dressing up

Today's post about a new costume is at Toxophily.

In other costume news, Archer will be a Lego brick for Halloween, thanks to this tutorial.




Cady Gray will be a beautiful princess, thanks to the best costume I could find at the consignment sale.




And each will have a jack-o-lantern that strangely resemble him or her.

In the news

http://www.uca.edu/news/index.php?itemid=2110

We are all fine. No students of mine were involved. It was good to be in the office and choose our student teaching assistants for next semester -- to focus on the future and the mission that continues even when violent crime invades our beautiful campus.

Thanks to everyone for your thoughts and messages.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel

While walking with Noel after dinner last night, Archer said that he wanted to play Rapunzel, with him as Rapunzel and Noel as the prince. I assume the following rhyming game was inspired by some book he read at school during his fairy tale unit.

Archer: How will you get me?

Noel: I'll use a ladder.

Archer: (Makes sound of something falling off a tower and crashing) You gave me cake batter.

Noel: OK, I'll use a rope.

Archer: (Same sound) There goes the cantaloupe.

Noel: OK, let down your hair.

Archer: (Sound) That was just a bear.

Noel: I'll get some tree branches.

Archer: (Long pause, then the sound) That was a squirrel named Frances.

Noel: I'm using a pole.

Archer: (Sound) That was just a hole! (Pause) Hey Dad, a person from Poland is also called a pole.

Noel: That's right.

Archer: (Sound)

Noel: What was that?

Archer: That was a person from Poland.

Danish dining

A quick rundown of the culinary side of my recent trip:



Here's a typical spread at the student center. You can see chicken, potatoes, pasta salad, vegetables, and a couple of different fish plates.




The three-course conference banquet was almost ridiculously posh. Here's the meat course, with artfully arranged parsnip and beet.




And this was dessert -- a chocolate cake with ganache topping and ice cream.




Danishes do exist in Denmark, but they are not called Danishes.




I tried to eat as cheaply as possible -- this single-huge-pizza-slice lunch cost me 25 kroner, or about $4.50.




On my last night in Denmark, I treated myself to this delectable plate of spaghetti bolognese. No matter where you go, pasta's usually a safe bet, and sometimes it's truly remarkable.

Fix it!

We watched the final Saturday Night Live Thursday edition last night. Then I read my colleague Nathan Rabin's post about it this morning.

I'm not sure I saw the same episode, to be frank. I don't believe I've laughed more at any SNL-produced piece of television in the last year. Part of it, I'm sure, is just a difference in perspective. For example, while I understand why Seth Myers rubs people the wrong way on Weekend Update, I have a very different experience, because I filter his performance through Amy Poehler. I trust Amy Poehler. I believe she's funny, and she knows what's funny. I think she has a great sense of humor. And because she clearly enjoys what Seth Myers is doing, I tend to give Myers a huge break.

But the part of Nathan's review that really runs counter to my perceptions is his accusation that Kenan Thompson's economics commentator character. He describes the shtick as a one-note idea that has been run into the ground by having him appear three times in a row. No clips appear to be on YouTube, so if you haven't seen it, you're out of luck. The character, upset about the economy, demands that somebody "fix it!" He offers a three-step plan. Step 1: Fix! Step 2: It! Step 3: Fix it! Thompson pronounces it more like "Fiss it! and yells it in a screechy staccato of frustration.

Yes, there's only one joke. But it's precisely because the economic news gone from bizarrely bad to bizarrely worse that the repetition of the gag week after week strikes me as brilliant. When Thompson came on this week, he was trembling with fear and anger. What can any of us do in the face of this massive boondoggle but yell to "them" to "fix it!"? Thompson's impotence seems to speak volumes at this moment in time. And without the recurrence of the bit week to week, that fuming, combined with the inability to offer any particular plan, is exactly where all us viewers find ourselves.

Of happiness

• Paul McCartney's slight but beautiful song "Bluebird" came up while my ancient iPod was shuffling today. It reminded me of an odd coincidence -- several songs I love have "bluebird" in the title. ELO, one of my favorite bands, has not one but two great bluebird songs: the early album track "Bluebird Is Dead," and the obscure eighties deep cut "Bluebird." The latter is a near perfect pop song: joyful, soaring, and beautifully arranged.


• Thanks to what I can only describe as an inauspicious television choice, Archer is now preoccupied with Rachel Ray. He recreates her 30-minute meals program with Play-Doh, recruiting Cady Gray to be his partner, also named Rachel Ray. This apparently started while I was in Denmark, but I've witnessed the creation of a pancake breakfast and smiley-face cookies. I think Archer's favorite parts are the commercial breaks; he seems delighted to be able to say "And we'll be right back after these messages."


• Cady Gray came home today full of excitement about an encounter with a bee on the playground. "Samir found a bee, and I had to run from the bee. I was running away from the bee!" she repeated with great gravity. I asked her if it was a friendly bee, and she said, "No, there are no friendly bees."
  

Kittens, cats, sacks, wives

Today's post documenting my Aarhus yarn crawl is again at Toxophily.

At Archer's parent-teacher conference on Tuesday, while I was still on my way back from Denmark, Noel heard a typical Archer anecdote from his teacher. It seems that the class was talking about the old riddle "As I Was Going To St. Ives" a while back. You remember it, don't you?

As I was going to St. Ives
I met a man with seven wives
And every wife had seven sacks
And every sack had seven cats
And every sack had seven kittens
Kittens, cats, sacks, wives
How many were going to St. Ives?

The teacher was writing the numbers up on the board and exclaiming over how difficult it was going to be to total it all up. Another student volunteered the answer -- one -- and said that he had seen it in a book.

Later that day, Archer went up to his teacher and said "2801."

"2801 what?" she asked.

"2801 people going the other way," he replied.

I like to think of him sitting at his desk patiently figuring it up in his head. Because the official answer has always been unsatisfying to me, too, avoiding as it does all the interesting calculations in favor of a patently unmotivated assumption that one can't meet people traveling the same direction as you.

24 hour party person

After almost a full 24 hours of travel, broken up by a few dozing hours over the Atlantic, I'm home -- or at least at the Little Rock airport waiting for the luggage. Today's post on conference knitting (prepared in advance) is at Toxophily. Now to home and to bed as fast as may be.

Scenes from a yarn crawl

Today's main purpose was to visit as many Aarhus yarn stores as I possibly could. My total: 4 1/2. But I'll save that adventure for a Toxophily post sometime in the next week, and instead give you a glimpse of the sightseeing I did in between fiber-fondling.



I started at the Frue Kirke, the Church of Our Lady.




Underneath the church is a crypt church that was built in the 11th century -- the oldest preserved building in Denmark. It was forgotten after the Reformation and only rediscovered during a twentieth-century renovation project. I thought this picture without flash was the best representation of the place. The reproduction of the original Romanesque crucifix is just a bare outline, stern and mysterious.




These small arched windows under the side vaults let in the only light.




Near the end of my afternoon, I finally went into the Cathedral (St. Clemens Kirke or the Domkirke), which is right by my hotel. The number of frescoes that survived the Reformation is remarkable. Here's a detail from a three-level depiction of purgatory, the judgment, and Christ enthroned; check out those angels pulling souls away from such torments as being roasted on a spit!




I loved the intricate brass portals that were created in the 16th century.




A Baroque marble piece in an entrance chapel featured these rather alarming memento mori among the fat cherubs and fashionable depictions of the patron nobility.




My last stop was the Viking Museum that lies underneath a large bank building beside the cathedral. During construction, ninth century artifacts were uncovered, so this museum was built as a basement to house some of the relics. I liked the information displayed on the stairs down to the museum -- walking down equals walking back in time.




And to end this intermittently morbid slideshow on an appropriate note, the skeleton of a Viking in situ, as found on the floor of his pit house.

Pathways

Around every corner in Aarhus, there is an inviting lane beckoning you on.



Shall we take this broad, tree-lined boulevard leading down from the university on the top of the hill to the city below ...



... or turn in at the Botanical Gardens when we see this peaceful scene?



There the grassy hills fairly beg you to lie on your back and watch the passing clouds.



No time to stop, though, when this path meanders downhill nearby.



The autumn color and the slight chill in the air only sharpen the senses.



Head down this steep, sandy trail toward the water, and the scent of spruce that unexpectedly wafts past will bring Christmas unbidden to mind.



Back in town, the broad banks of the river make an ideal spot to pause and people-watch.



Mansfield Park is a fine literary accompaniment for such a moment of leisure.



Round off the day with some rich chocolate gelato.



You'll be glad you took the journey.

I want to shine on in the hearts of men

Today was all about the marathon conferencing. I got up at 7 am, the same time I got up yesterday morning, under the theory that I managed to arrive at the conference at 9 am yesterday, the same time that sessions started today. (So much for theory -- I arrived about 8:20.)

It was cloudy with intermittent spitting rain and mist, not the best day for walking or picture-taking. But I did enjoy a Berliner on the way, a pastry that always reminds me of my undergraduate German teacher, who delighted in telling the story that John Kennedy had erred in his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" statement; the correct grammar is "Ich bin Berliner," no article. My teacher, who looked like Santa Claus, would say with a jolly laugh that Kennedy had actually said, "I am a jelly doughnut."

Then: conference conference conference. Morning session; plenary; lunch; afternoon session; afternoon session at which I presented a paper. (I thought my paper the best of the bunch in the afternoon, if I do say so myself; but its appearance at the end of such a long day meant that while attendence was good, attentiveness suffered somewhat. At least one attendee right in my line of sight slept through the whole thing.)

Tonight is the banquet at the Aarhus Art Museum, a massive and relatively new cultural project named "Aros" after the original Viking name for the city. I have a cautious expectation that we will not have to purchase our own wine; so far beer and soft drinks have been provided on each table during the conference meals, but at the first dinner last night a group of would-be drinkers was required to pool their kroner for wine.

A few pictures, although weather wasn't conducive to photography as on Day 1:



Ever wonder what the Danish version of Dancing With The Stars looks like?


How about the Danish version of America's Got Talent? (Denmark's Got Talent?)



Despite the city's hilly streets, bicycles are the way to get around. Dozens are parked on every sidewalk.



The Danes have a thing for gummi. This display at a convenience store around the corner from my hotel is just the tip of the iceberg. At the theology building where the conference is held, the vending machine contains one row of chocolate candy and three full rows of gummi products. Also some sort of salty licorice is inexplicably popular, with three different brands of the stuff represented in the vending machine. Those crazy Danes!

One awesome thing about the time difference: I'm seven hours ahead of Central Daylight Time, where Noel and the kids are. So when I get up in the morning, it's midnight back home, and when I go to sleep late at night, it's mid-afternoon for them. Last night I got an e-mail from Noel with the kid update news (short version: kids are awesome) in the evening when I got back to my hotel -- the one he wrote the day before. Then when I got up this morning, I turned on the computer and there was another kid update -- the one he wrote just minutes earlier. It's like they're living in a faster timestream than me, one that can fit a whole day into my overnight nap.

Breaking the norms

I woke up in my crazy little 3rd-class-on-the-Queen-Mary-style "economy room" after a refreshing full night's sleep and headed out to find breakfast and the university where the conference was taking place.

Breakfast report: No Danishes were on sale at the coffee shop where I bought a bagel.
Walk report: Here's what I saw.



My hotel is on the left just past the footbridge, right on the river that runs through town.



Everybody wears scarves in Denmark -- knit, pashmina, something. And naturally the modish shop windows are full of scarves. I had to capture this one for the Ravelry folks -- it's actually a tube. If somebody can figure out those cables, I'll whip up a version. (I've got a close-up, no worries.) Naturally I feel quite in fashion with my Clapotis tucked around my neck.



There's a large park in the middle of the University campus, and I kept trying to capture how it looked in the brilliant early morning sunlight. This was as close as I got.



Moon over University of Aarhus. All the buildings are built of yellow brick with simple, clean architectural lines, and few are over two stories. There are 20,000 students enrolled.



Next to the theater building was this steep grass-covered amphitheater. I'd love to see Aristophanes performed here.



Fall is in full swing here -- the scarf-clad Danes are enjoying mild weather of 40-50 degrees Fahrenheit -- and the colors are beautiful, as shown by this deciduous ivy covering one of the economics buildings.



And finally to the conference, in the buildings housing the theological faculty. My paper will be read in this lovely, radically raked auditorium tomorrow, though not with nearly as many people in attendance as were at this opening plenary with Kirsten Nielsen.

Time to turn my tiny bathroom into a shower by means of a rotating curtain. Perhaps I'll sleep on the pulldown bunk over my head, or in the murphy bed underneath. You'll be amazed a room smaller than half the double dorm rooms at my university can sleep a family of three!

One day later, on the other side of the ocean

Eventful travels are not always welcome, especially when one's goal is to reach one's destination rather than have an adventure along the way. I did have some unusual twists and turns to my journey over the last 16 hours. But now I'm sitting in a first class car on the delightful Danish InterCity rail, having by chance made the earliest possible train to Aarhus after my arrival in Copenhagen, and even though it's an hour or so later than I had expected to be clickety-clacking toward my hotel, nothing gives you a sense of relief – that “ah, all is well” feeling – like a seat on a European train. Clean, efficient, on time, smooth as silk. It's travel the way it was meant to be.

Which I cannot say for air travel these days, although to be fair, my last two flights were on time and featured luxurious British service. There were only supposed to be two flights total, you see. I was going to Chicago, then straight to Copenhagen on SAS, then I was going to be on this train – or to be precise, the one that left an hour ago.

But after checking in for my Little Rock to Chicago flight about three hours early, having a leisurely lunch, and catching up on my e-mail, I presented my boarding pass when my group number was called, only to have the machine beep angrily and spit it back out. See, the airline had substituted a smaller plane from the one on whose basis advance tickets were sold. The agent had been searching for 14 volunteers to give up their seats, and had bumped about 7 people after he predictably didn't reach that number. But it turns out he should have been searching for 15 people; I checked in before the change was made, and my seat number was assigned to someone else. After a man gave up his seat but specified that it was for a businessman who was quite insistent, I was the one on the short end of the stick. Denied boarding.

I got a $300 travel voucher out of it, and the agent rebooked me as follows: Little Rock to Dallas/Fort Worth, Dallas/Fort Worth to London Heathrow, London Heathrow to Copenhagen. (He tried to give me a free upgrade to business class on the transatlantic flight – those lay-flat beds, you know? Oh, my Lord – but the system wouldn't let him.)

I was skeptical that my bag was going to follow me on this new itinerary. It was pulled off the Chicago flight at the last minute, then instructions were sent down to retag it. The flight to Dallas was about 25 minutes late, and by the time I took the train over to Terminal D, the London flight was already boarding. It seemed like a fifty-fifty shot that my bag made it onto that plane – added to the already uncertain probability that the bag got retagged correctly and was actually intending to follow my route.

My economy class flight to London, back with the tailies, was about as good as such cramped quarters can be; you still get good service on the transatlantic routes, it seems. I didn't catch more than 15 winks, I'd guess, in the eight and a half hours. I watched an episode of Old Christine I don't think I'd seen ("What About Barb?"), an episode of The Office I had enjoyed very much the first time around (“Complaint Resolution”), and the Tina Fey/Amy Poehler vehicle Baby Mama, which is just the kind of lightly amusing fare you need to see on a plane.

After landing in the maze of Heathrow and negotiating the bewildering series of buses needed to get from terminal to terminal, I landed in Terminal 5, where they have a system of departures that I hadn't encountered before. The gates aren't assigned to outgoing flights until 30-90 minutes before they leave. Everyone waits in a big shopping concourse and watches the computerized boards, and when a gate pops up for their flight, they book it – some of the gates are 20 minutes away and require you to take a train! It's a little nerve-racking waiting for that gate to appear, as your flight time draws nearer and nearer, and flights leaving only five minutes before yours show “boarding” or even worse “closing.” I ate a cheddar and pickle sandwich and tried not to think about where my suitcase might be.

The flight to Copenhagen was only half full, and I had a row to myself for a change. As I watched the mist and rain roll by the plane's windows on our descent and heard the temperature on the ground (10 degrees C), I worried more about my bag situation. You see, when I did my final packing yesterday morning, I had intended to put my fleece jacket in my carry-on, along with my usual change of clothes, computer and accessories, knitting, and books (this time in Kindle form). But the jacket was so bulky and made the bag so awkward to carry that I stuffed it in the front pocket of my suitcase instead. Either the suitcase will make it there with me, I reasoned, or the weather (which was supposed to be mild according to the international forecast), wouldn't be so awful early in the evening, when I expected to be walking to my hotel from the Aarhus station – the only outdoor leg of my trip.

But all my fellow passengers had jackets, rain gear, scarves – the whole nine yards. I began to prepare myself for buying a jacket in the Copenhagen airport so I wouldn't freeze in my thin rayon top and jeans.

Miracle of miracles, though – when I arrived in Copenhagen, got through passport control, changed some money, and made my way to the baggage belt – my suitcase came around. I said a silent thank-you to the harried American Airlines agent who had gotten me off on the right foot.

So here I am in the first-class car (the only seats available – an extra 100 Kröner, or about $20, over the normal second-class fare), typing away on my worktable, drinking complimentary water and eating complimentary apples, experiencing Skandinavia the way I would have chosen if I'd had all the modes of transport in the world from which to select. The sun is setting behind the clearing clouds, the car lighting is warm, the illuminated signs and streetlights of the towns we're speeding by are picturesque, even poignant. A little sleep – okay, a lot of sleep – is all I need now. Tomorrow, the conference begins, and today's weariness will be temporarily forgotten.

Torn away

I travel four or five times a year on business -- to conferences and board meetings, mostly. It's not like I'm a salesman on the road five days a week 50 weeks a year. Travel's not my way of life. But I do it regularly enough that it's not an unusual sensation to say goodbye to the family and spend hours in airports.

So you'd think it would get easier to tear myself away from my home and my husband and my children. Not everyday routine, but not dreadful or extraordinary either.

And yet every time I stand at the door, sit in the garage, pause at the interstate on-ramp, and think -- Can I do this?

The bond between me and my home and family feels like the elastic cord that attaches the rubber ball to the bolo paddle. It stretches, it stresses; there's a risk of breaking that can be palpably felt in the muscles and the materials. Just the thought of pulling on the cord makes me nervous. At every segment of the journey, I have to take a deep breath to steel myself for stretching the bond again.

Here in the airport, ninety minutes away from the first leg of my trip to Aarhus by way of Chicago and Copenhagen, the urge to bail out and return home is less intense than it was when I closed the front door. In Chicago, it will be less still; in Copenhagen, almost gone; in Aarhus, I won't even remember it. The adventure takes over, and the homesickness recedes.

But traveling is a kind of powerlessness. The solo traveler's freedom of movement, of choice, of self-determination is purchased at the price of distance from the ordinary processes of home and hearth and loved ones, locations of control that she takes for granted. Temporary loss of contact with those people and places leaves the traveler weightless -- half exhilerated, half sick.

Crossing the ocean

Key items on my packing list for Denmark:

• camera and extra battery
• six days worth of clothes
• portable umbrella
• mittens and socks to knit
  
• brand new birthday Kindle loaded up with Project Gutenberg books, a few select Amazon titles, and all the 14-day free trial subscriptions to magazines and blogs that I can fit on the home screen

Off I go!

It's finally here

Earlier this week, Noel turned to me and said, "It's going to be a big week for Donna on Popless."   The T's are in full swing on the alphabetical order as the year shades into gone.  And that means it's time for Todd Rundgren and Tom Petty, two of my favorite musicians of all time.  Well, let's amend that.  I love Tom Petty with a great and passionate love, but Todd Rundgren is part of my identity.

So I wait all week with bated breath to see what Noel will write about them.  This week's Popless goes up on the site late this afternoon, and I read through the entries while waiting to be picked up and taken to dinner.  

It was really a foolish vigil.  How could anybody sum up Rundgren and what he means to me without writing a dissertation? Obviously any fan as fanatical as I've been for decades is far too close to the subject to have any chance of understanding what the music might actually mean in a larger context. I have to say, Noel comes much closer than I ever could with this closing thought:

He's recorded a lot of adventurous, even groundbreaking albums, and he's established a public persona as a longhaired mad genius, and yet Rundgren's actual music is often aggressively uncool. He's like one of those sci-fi/RPG geeks who's cultivated a sense of personal style and has become the alpha geek of his tribe, yet is still out of place among regular folk. Then again, a lot of my closest friends are exactly those kinds of geeks, so over time I've developed a sense of affection and even protectiveness towards Rundgren. It helped that I began to hear in albums like Hermit Of Mink Hollow and The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect the sound of the true '80s pop—simple, buzzy, open—from those few glorious years before Trevor Horn, Arthur Baker and Mutt Lange screwed everything up.

There are only a few comments by that time I leave the office to get some Mexican food with the family, mostly about whether Tom Petty is any good or not.  (I had this discussion with Noel around the time he appeared on the Superbowl halftime show; "I hope this lays to rest the question of whether Tom Petty is in the canon," I think I said.)

When I got back into the office, where I've got ninety minutes or so to blog and work before it's time to show tonight's foreign film, there were 133 comments.  I read them.  Nobody mentioned Todd Rundgren.*

Is it wrong to feel rejected?

*40 minutes later, one brave soul has taken a stand, as follows:  

My secret crush and my publicly-avowed musical love. Discovered him in college and never stopped listening, even though I find myself occasionally mentally fixing his lyrics, as I'm sure he now wishes he could do. What complete oddness and sweetness. I adore Zen Archer and Does Anybody Love You? He's a genius producer too.

Thanks for the support, commenter-whose-pseudonym-is-too-crass-to-repeat-here.

Cheese pranish

This afternoon, thanks to some generous kidsitting by my generous husband of twelve years today (happy birthday, hubble!), I was able to finish a draft of the paper I'm going to give at the ISRLC conference in Aarhus next Saturday. It's a little on the long side still, and it's not quite as inspired as the piece I wrote for last year's Society for Biblical Literature Forum in San Diego. But cutting it down to a twenty-minute presentation is easier than having to add material. And I'm confident that I can beef it up by about 50% at a later date to submit for publication.

Which means that the period of time I had allotted for preparing the intellectual content of the trip to Denmark is now over. Which means that the period of time -- two days and change -- for preparing the practical side of the trip to Denmark is beginning.

In other words: Time to panic.

What do I pack? What's the weather like? (Note to self: Get a folding umbrella.) How will I get my luggage from airline to airline in Chicago? Can I find the train to Aarhus once I land in Copenhagen? Should I get Danish money in Chicago or Copenhagen? Will I remember to make copies of all my documents and put them in both carry-on and checked baggage? Will I be able to find my hotel once I get to Aarhus? Will I be able to find the conference site at the university the next day? Can I negotiate the public bus system? What if something goes wrong?

Actually, two days of panic is a lot better than my usual week-long panic in the face of overseas travel. Practically relaxing, in fact. As long as I get the car back from the shop by Tuesday, and pick up my new contact lenses, and maybe get my hair cut (not counting on having time), and leave behind instructions for the second paper assignment for the freshmen, and don't forget my passport ...

Deep breath. I'll be fine.