Diary #223

Maggie McNeill

11 years ago

I realize that most people wouldn’t struggle with the process of figuring out a way to designate the individual entries of a new recurring feature. I’m sure many probably wouldn’t bother with it at all; they’d just call this feature “diary” and delineate the individual entries by date (if they gave it even that much thought). But most people don’t view blogs as monumental projects, either; it takes a special kind of obsessive-compulsive thinking to maintain daily posting of (mostly) full essays for four years, and to insist on a fairly rigid format and schedule. You want a window into my crazy librarian brain? Read the intro to “Links and Changes“, then watch the first video in Sunday-before-last’s Links column. Anyhow, I’ve decided to just use the blog week number (as explained in “Links and Changes”) and call it good. This is the second day of the 223^rd week (WordPress starts its statistical weeks on Monday) since I’ve had the blog, hence the title.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, here’s an update on my travels. Everything’s all set for New Orleans the weekend of the 25^th, and I know two of the other speakers (Thaddeus Russell and Angela Keaton), so it’ll be fun to visit with them again. I’m finalizing the details of my Seattle tour, and everything should be paid for by the end of the week; I’m staying with friends there, so the only lodging I’ll have to worry about will be my few days in Portland. As of right now, here’s what it looks like: I’ll drive to Kansas City on Tuesday, November 4^th (it’s the nearest Amtrak hub with halfway-decent connections), then take a train to Chicago on the 5^th to speak at Loyola. On the afternoon of the 6^th I’ll depart by train for Seattle, arriving the morning of Saturday the 8^th, then around the 12^th-15^th I’ll do a little side-trip to Portland. I’ll leave Seattle on Tuesday the 18^th, reach Chicago on Thursday the 20^th, take the train back to Kansas City on Friday the 21^st and drive home on Saturday the 22^nd. I’ll probably have more details on my appearances next week, so if you have any ideas please contact me as soon as you can!