PCA Conference 2

The next morning (Thursday), I was nervous, but not too much, and reassured myself that nothing disastrous would happen during my presentation, by watching three other people present in the time slot before mine. They didn’t implode from the stress, and frankly, one guy who tried to talk off the cuff ended up sounding so disorganized, I knew I wouldn’t have any problems reading my prepared paper.

And I didn’t. We had a pretty good question period afterwards, and although the only question/comment was directed at the place where my paper and another panelist’s overlapped, I think the session worked well. Best line during the discussion period? “Harold Bloom is an ass!” The Stephen King organizer was on my panel, and told me of a great grocery store with a deli nearby, so a bunch of us headed over there. Even though there was an interesting talk on Tolkein scheduled for the next time slot, I stayed and talked, getting to know a couple of the other students. They even continued to talk to me after I interjected into the conversation at one point to say “I like Dick”, meaning of course, Philip K., but when you say it in the middle of a crowded hotel lobby, I think most people’s first thoughts do not turn to a literary reference!

One of the other grad students who I was talking to was going to the book launch of a volume that he had contributed a chapter towards, and invited me to come along, so I went. We gathered more and more people as the day progressed, and suddenly there were eight of us – six Canadians and two Americans – not sure how it worked out that way.... We were all grad students, so none of us were actually staying at the Marriott, but we still asked the doorman if he could get us a cab. Turns out, he got the hotel van, and we drove across town for the cost of a tip to the driver!

The book launch was interesting, though by the end of it, I was very hungry, so the food at the Thai food restaurant we found tasted fabulous! I’m sure it would’ve been good food either way, but being bitch-hungry helped a lot in our estimation of its quality. We all agreed to walk off some of the dinner and found a Karaoke bar, named “The Caliph” of all places, but shortly after getting there, I realized I didn’t have the night code for the front door of the hostel, and if I didn’t leave shortly, I’d find myself turning into a pumpkin, so a quick cab ride was necessary to get me to the doors on time. Happily, I didn’t turn into a pumpkin, and even slept well that night.