Slouching towards Kalamazoo

I have been given two good pieces of advice about my unwilling trip to Kalamazoo next week. First, to take plenty of work to get on with, so that I don't feel guilty about skipping sessions (and to spend plenty of time skipping sessions). Secondly, not to look at the thing as an academic conference; it's actually a big medieval-themed trade fair. It's true that when I went before I got some really nice earrings.

My other problem is that I can't stand non-dairy creamer. I think it's made of sugar and spare, random fat. But in my brief experience of America I've found that it's not easy to get hold of milk. I am going to put some milk powder in a little pot and see if I can make it through US customs. Hurray!

On the plus side I'm flying back from New York, where there's a lot of swine flu. Catching swine flu is looking more and more like a sensible thing to do. Apparently it's quite mild, but likely to come back and bite us on our collective behind, possibly in a mutated form, this coming winter. It might be worth getting the cowpox before the smallpox comes along. Although probably flu doesn't work like that. And if by some chance it did kill me enough people know how much I didn't want to go on this trip that my funeral would be satisfyingly petulant.

In other news, I've realised that you can only be in a cantankerous mood for so many years before it just becomes a cantankerous personality. But I'm not yet sure what to do about it.