Makin' me Disney, my head is spinnin'

I'm at the annual GroupForEarlyModernCulturalStudies conference this weekend, which is at Walt Disney World for some reason. I'm staying in a spa and resort, which means I could get a much needed haircut on my arrival (the back of my head looked like an exploding chicken) and eat lunch by a pool in weather so nice that it's almost terrifying to the pale-assed northerner that I've become.

A completely unrelated thought: why does every flight attendant on every anglophone airline not only use an inordinate number of unnecessary auxiliary verbs, but actually emphasize them? I think it can only be a conscious attempt to drive me to murder. "At this time we do ask that you do make sure your seatbelts are securely fastened until the captain has turned off the fasten seatbelt sign..."

Ahem. What this weekend really means, however, is that I get an intellectual spa treatment. Hot rocks on my brain with deep penetrating heat, taking me away from the semester, from my students, from my plagiarism cases, from my tiny world where no one thinks about the stuff I think about. I have papers on Jonson and rogue pamphlets to listen to today. I have friends I haven't seen for months to drink and dance and talk with. I have professional contacts to make and new books to flip through. I get to be Professor Me for the first time in public. It's very cool.

Thanks to several previous-conference-acquired friends, I have a nice solid base of "good-lord-I-haven't-seen-you-in-ages" people to catch up with, and we're already starting to accrete more to the collective social conference entity. I have inserted my Wisconsin grad school roommate into the hive mind already. Saturday night should be fun.

Okay, back to watching the sunrise over the horizon of Mickey Tack. Tonight, again, we'll hear the fireworks from Pleasure Island, where every night is New Year's Eve.