When you are spending a quality day at home with this:




And it's doing this outside:



What better to do in the time you are actually awake than blog right? (Incidentally, when did daytime TV decide to suck so much? Or was I really just that bored before I got my job?!) I'm at home today and from the looks of things outside my window, it's probably just as well that I decided to call in sick. After a second trip to the dr. in a week my sinus infection has the beginnings of bronchitis in it's sights and I'm not willing to go there. So home I sit, blowing my brain out through my nose (snot farm anyone?) and ingesting as much fluid as I possibly can without peeing my brains out too.

Since I'm sure y'all wanted to know about all that and have continued reading (yeah right) I will reward you handsomely with a few more highlights of my trip to Memphis (which got me into this sniffly mess I'm in now). The conference, overall, was quite good. There were two sessions on sound recording cataloging, one on spoken word and the other on "unusual" formats, which I found very valuable. There was a good deal of discussion about RDA and the plenary sessions this year were the best I have attended in my four trips to MLA. One involved interviewing four members at differing points in their careers. These ranged from someone just starting out to a near "founding" member who will celebrate her 90th birthday soon! It was very interesting to hear how things have changed and yet, how similar some things still were. The other plenary involved Augusta Reed Thomas and the conductor of the Memphis symphony discussing the new work that would be performed that night as part of the commemoration of MLA's 75th anniversary. Both of them were very eloquent speakers and it was very interesting to hear about the genesis of a new work, straight from the horse's mouth.

As usual, the accommodations were very nice. We stayed here:




The Peabody Hotel. Quite the landmark. And definitely in stark contrast to the rest of the surrounding area. The Peabody is famous mostly for one thing. The ducks! They have a fountain in the middle of the lobby which hosts live ducks from 11-5 each day. They march in and out to a Sousa march and it is just the funniest thing to see. My pictures didn't come out all that well because of the lighting but you can kind of get the idea:







Twice a day the crowd that assembled to watch the march was like the worst paparazzi for any Hollywood star you could think of. Just too funny how people lined up, sometimes an hour in advance, to see these ducks do their thing!

You can see much more and read the story of the ducks at the Peabody Website.


I also got to walk down the famous Beale Street:





And even had dinner at one of the restaurants one night. Overall, the food was a bit difficult for someone with my dietary issues to deal with while I was down there. I had a salad one night and it was like a meal from heaven.

I also got to take a quick walk to see this:




That would be the Mississippi River. I've never seen it before. And I've never been west of it in the United States. That's right, I've been to Calgary and Banff and Vancouver (and hell, I've even been to Spain), but never west of the Mississippi in the U.S. apparently I may get my chance four years from now when MLA looks like it will be in San Diego! I'm very excited about that and the upcoming conferences in Pittsburgh, Newport and Chicago before then. At least I'll be able to drive to the next two.

I'm also happy to report that the Snowflake Bag brought a decent price at the silent auction and is now owned by someone who also won a package that included her first knitting lesson! Nice to see others picking up the craft.


I got a good deal of knitting done while I was on my trip too.




The Jaywalkers are for me and the other is for HWJF. Mine is Trekking XXL that I bought when I interviewed for my current job and the other is Regia that HWJF and I picked out at the Superbowl sale last month. What you see here is basically exactly what I did while I was gone. I have barely put three rounds on the Jaywalkers since I got back. Seriously. When I realized that, I knew I was really sick.

And after all that, I think it's time for another lie-down. Hope the end of your week is much less snot-filled than mine...