Today was the first day of the conference. We woke early, got ready, and headed down for breakfast (baked beans may be our saviour this week, I swear!) and trotted off to the conference venue early to get registered and into 'oh-yeah-we're-working-here' mode.
We registered ($60 + 40 for IVSA membership, in US funds) and got our "package": a Trinity College paper folder with black and white photocopies of the programme, presenter abstracts, venue listing (all three rooms) and a 'things to do and see' list. No bags (something I genuinely look forward to receiving at conferences and use afterwards), clip on nametags we had to write out ourselves, and no lunch. Coffee, tea and cookies were the snack fare. One publisher booth - Routledge - with free pens. The gorgeous poster advertising the event belied the build-up to it, that's for sure...feeling nostalgic for the amazing things we did with R/Evolution with a fraction - a sliver, really - of the money they had...
After convening with my fellow panelists (we were presenting in the afternoon) and learning of the uncertainty surrounding our fourth presenter - who hadn't yet arrived - we were all told to shorten our papers down to 14 minutes (just in case) and so I headed off to find an internet café with printer to slash slash and print a fresh version. A bare-bones, leave lots for the discussion kind of paper with pretty images on acetate. Hoo yeah.
Our panel went really well - it was called "Embodying Clothes, Dressing Body"- and even though the fourth presenter didn't present, it was a fun two hours with some really interesting discussion. Our paper received some really amazing questions, many of them asking for details that were presented at the Oslo conference, so they were easy to field and I got to feel smart and prepared. So good!! The paper seems to incite really visceral reactions from people (thanks to the girls) and it's going to be wonderful working it up into something publishable in the future...and I think that it's almost there. I also had the opportunity to meet some cool people after the presentation, and I suspect they'll become part of the entire conference experience...
Routledge treated us to a wine and cheese afterwards, and we headed off for food (we ate Thai, feeling like we needed veggies!!) and then pints as a group.
Trinity College is gorgeous - an old, ivy-league, very prestigious school that doubles as one of the more prominent tourist attractions for the city, partially because it houses the Book of Kells (a 9th Century manuscript of the Gospels, famous for its illustrations and on display in the Old Library) and partially because it's old (founded in 1592) and large (40 acres all self-contained) and because it is the locale for not only walking tours of the University grounds, but also for literary tours of the area. M and I found a new game: "spot the student" - because even though there are almost 16 000 students registered, we soon discovered that students and tourists look deceptively similar...
While the campus is quite remarkable, there's a women's bathroom oddity that I can’t quite figure out: the advertising plaques over the hand dryers (and on the back doors of all of the stalls - like our 'zoom media' ads) are all from the same source - positiveoptions.ie - and all have the same concern for what they call “crisis pregnancy." Nothing on STIs, nothing on HIV and/or AIDS, just pregnancy. Very, very odd...
Today also marks one year since my dad’s death. Strange that I didn't feel anything...
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