Thanks, everybody, for the words of encouragement here and elsewhere.  It was really nice to wake up the morning of my presentation and see your friendly comments in my email!

My talk went well, even though the panel chair managed to cause some delays and technical difficulties — almost setting the room on fire by overloading an outlet and causing sizzling sparks! —  before we even got started.  She is now prominently featured on my Enemies List for that as well as for the fact that 30 seconds before the panel was to start she asked each of us what we wanted her to say when introducing us.  My response, when she kept pressing me after I demurred, was to say “I can’t come up with a bio on the spot, so please just say I am an instructor at Wordsmith and that’s all.”  Sheesh. Anyway, that bit doesn’t matter, because I had fun presenting my paper and listening to the others, which were all very interesting.

Tomorrow it’s back to work!  I’ve got midterms to grade (significantly less painful than papers, except for the occasionally appalling handwriting) and classes to teach.  I’ve also got to get my butt in gear on the job market — yes, I’ll be back on the stupid job market this year, looking for some fool university to double my salary and offer me instant tenure based on nothing more than my witty banter and killer rack.  What? It could happen!

In other more exciting news, the TV world has been exploding with greatness lately, which leaves me a lot to post about over on the media blog.  Time to go get caught up there.