Well, tomorrow I am off to meetings (tomorrow evening and Friday, but like everything in this state, it's 2+ hours away from me, and I don't want to arrive mid-rush-hour, so I'm planning on leaving at noon or shortly after).

I don't know. I have mixed feelings. I like going to meetings, I like seeing people I know, but I don't like having to cancel class left and right for things. And I really don't like being in the car 6 or more hours over the course of two days.

I still need to pack - minimal packing; pajamas for tomorrow night and some kind of nice clothes for Friday when I give my talk and moderate a session. I'm sort of hoping - although a colleague who knows the area describes it as "oh, it's all new construction" - that there may be some kind of interesting place to stop either after the meetings Friday or between the time I get up there and my first commitment Thursday evening. (I suppose I could hit the campus bookstore, though lately I've been disappointed by the few I've gotten to visit: do students not READ, I mean other than their required textbooks, any more? When I lived in Ann Arbor (yes, back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth), a good way to spend an idle hour or two between classes was to wander over to Ulrich's or the newer Michigan Book and Supply and just browse the trade-books section. Often times you could find some good unusual stuff there.

Of course, Ann Arbor also had the flagship Border's Books, with their very tempting tables-of-closeouts in front of the store. And there was Afterwords, a cavernous store solely devoted to selling books that were "overruns" or were unsold returns. And I lived within six blocks or so of no fewer than five used-book stores. And, callow youth: I thought it was so everywhere, and thus didn't appreciate what I had. I mean - there were used book stores that had SPECIALIZATIONS - there was one you went to particularly if you wanted to browse for mysteries, and another for non-fiction, and yet another if you wanted snooty first-editions or spendy "rare books.")