I am back

Perhaps you had not noticed I was gone. Which is how it should be.

Had a lovely few days away from home and kiddies and all. I got asked an obscenely long time ago to deliver a talk at a conference in Ocean City, MD. They asked maybe 2 months after I last delivered this talk, which was in October of 2003. (This parallels the experience I had with an article I recently had published in an unbelievably obscure journal - I sent the thing off last April and heard nothing about it until the review copies showed up in my mail about a month ago.)

Anyway, I seem to be labeled as "archives web guy", so I'm in some minor demand as the guy who can talk about archives web sites. This group was for museums, so I took the same talk from 2003 & substituted "museum" for every occurrence of the work "archives." The talk itself went fine. I co-presented with a guy from elsewhere on Long Island, and our session went pretty well. The hotel was a nice place on the whole, if only for the fridge, freezer, and microwave present in the room. When you have to travel with your own food everywhere, it's a nice help not to have to beg for a fridge. I'm sure Ocean City is pleasant enough in Summer, but it's pretty cold & dreary in February. And a little too much like Miami Beach to suit my tastes, I think. They claimed our room was $360 a night in season, which seemed a bit much even given the niceness of the room. Needless to say, our rate was considerably lower.

As yesterday was the Mrs. & mine's anniversary (6 years - even prisoners get time off for good behavior, but no such luck for my dear wife), we took the opportunity to leave the kiddies in my parent's trusty hands for a few days. After my session was done, we hit the road for Washington, DC and a chance to see some friends. The driving was a little hairy given the storm that blew through, but we made it OK. I have to admit that I'm always surprised driving through new parts of the US. This is a northeasterner's (and mostly a New Yorker's) bias, but I always equate states with the parts I've been through.

The only parts of Maryland I had seen were the highway and the DC suburbs; ergo, the whole state is suburban. I was greatly surprised to find out that everything between the resort area of the coast and the DC area is farmland. Once again, a road trip can teach you a lot about America. Which is a good thing.