It's hard to believe it's been a week since the conference, but it has, and I haven't blogged about it yet.
Thursday night, I didn't get any sleep and ended up driving all the way to Austin on no sleep - 460 miles. I left at four in the morning. The drive wasn't too bad. For some reason I was thinking I had never before driven that far in one day, but once I was on the way, I realized that Austin is very near Crawford, where I'd been for Camp Casey with Cindy Sheehan in 2005, so I must have driven that far on my own before.
Just outside Baton Rouge, my radio was picking up Catholic mass in French. Then over the Atchafalaya Basin and all the way to the Texas border, it was Cajun music. Finally, almost as if on que, I hit the Texas border and lost Cajun music but instead found some really cool Mexican music. What a country! Early lunch was at Waffle House.
I started getting really stressed driving through Houston and it took me a while to figure out that it wasn't just the traffic. I had, until last Friday, forgotten that my Katrina-week meanderings had led me through Houston. Some part of my brain, apparently, remembered quite clearly - that prehistoric part of the brain that hides yet stores trauma. So, driving through Houston was very distressing since, apparently, that part of my brain thinks that "driving through Houston" equals "holy shit, New Orleans is underwater." Saw an IKEA store, which we don't have in Louisiana, and decided to stop in on the way home.
I got to Austin about two hours early for the conference and managed to find my hotel in city traffic (hadn't thought about having to find my hotel AND read a map at the same time; I'm obviously used to having someone with me). I got to La Quinta (brand new, very nice hotel, nice breakfast included) and checked in. When I got to the room I realized it was the first time I'd ever had a hotel room to myself. I've shared rooms with the husband, the kidlet, and my mom before but this, finally, was MY OWN ROOM!
I managed to find the University of Texas, which is in the middle of downtown Austin. Obviously, the way to make sure a town's Main Street doesn't die out is to have a university in the heart of downtown - wow! Parking was a nightmare on Friday though. I ran into the drugstore and got a notebook (of course, I'd forgotten to bring anything to write on for a three day conference). I managed to find the conference room, which began with a "5" but was on the third floor (okay, New Orleanians don't generally think that the bottom floor will be level "3" because we don't have basements).
There were introductions all around. I had brought two king cakes from New Orleans and had to explain what they were. Apparently, many people were rather frightened by purple and green sugar - who knew? In fact, they seemed to find that even weirder than my warning about watching out for the plastic baby. I introduced myself and explained that I'd always been a feminist, had been raised to be a liberal feminist, but that years as a military wife had turned me into a radical feminist. Everybody laughed and nodded and someone said, "That'll do it."
Next was the slideshow about pornography, presented by Rebecca Whisnant. I'm going to stop here and write about the slideshow next time (have to get some sleep for Mardi Gras weekend).
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