In transit to the AAA Meetings in DC. It’s been ages since I’ve been to one (5-6 years?) and I always forget how prohibitively expensive it is for grad students and adjuncts and simply anyone without a meagre conference stipend. The panel I’ll be participating in ought to be a fine one: rethinking borders from a ‘volumetric’ perspective, with some lovely partners-in-crime who have contributed to a great Cultural Anthropology series called Speaking Volumes. I write about lag.

It’s crunch time now; the busiest time of the year. Grading, assessing, lecturing, conferencing, meeting, generally scrambling to Get All Things Done before the winter holidays. I am doing a very silly thing and teaching right after I land next week; straight from the airport to the classroom. I normally try to avoid this (Jet lag! Confusion! Exhaustion! Glassy eyes!) but it was impossible this time around. Wish me luck.

Speaking of airports, I will be talking about them a fair amount within the next year or so; a spring sabbatical in Nepal, a round of summer research in Europe (my first time doing research outside of Asia, eek), and at the next Asian Borderlands Conference in Bishkek in late August. And then, writing. Someone recently reminded of Tom Gauld’s course on Procrastination for writers. That will be me.

And my gate is called.