ba ba ba

you know how sometimes unspecified people send email querying favorite flavor of doritos and such. seldom do i reply to those things (and paralepsis...don't even get me started on all the joky jokes that my dad fwds to other people).
something that you may not know about me is my admiration for and appreciation of concrete and brise soleil.


yesterday was good fun. it was my kind of day. i had breakfast at the hotel. and finished polishing my conference paper and coordinating images and ppt. and i printed it. i headed to the conference for the "picnic" lunch and to set the panel in order. i was chairing the workshop, in part, in elsa's stead because regrettably she couldn't come (her mother continues to be unwell). we had two sessions that comprised the workshops and they went off well. i really like two of the papers in the session and all were good. there were five other women: three my senior, and two my junior. the other junior woman (a white woman from ucla) tried to, in the words of one of the more senior women, flex.

what do i mean? i mean little miss thing stepped to me and tried to reorder the panel and insert herself as first on the earlier session so she could duck out of the workshop to go hear a friend's paper. empowered by a newly defended dissertation and heady with a plum tenure-track job in hand, i explained to her conference etiquette. i explained it clearly and firmly. in my this is unacceptable and i have absolutely no time for you voice. without any pantomime of apology or accommodation. only one of the other women on the panel, the woman immediately my senior, witnessed this. (and little miss thing's boyfriend who was in the audience. she and the bf left the room immediately after i swatted her down.)

it worked out. tyra and miss jay and jay would have been proud of me.


after the conference, a bunch of us loitered. i trundled back to the hotel and changed into my sporty spice kicks, grabbed my sketchbook and camera. i stayed out, walking the streets and plazas, drinking a little sangria and watching children play soccer on the pavement until i filled up my memory card with images.
in the words of the kind-hearted, right-thinking, mellifluous fellas on subpop "i'll become silhouettes when my body finally goes."