Conferencing and coming "home"

As you all know, I'm prone to signing myself up for "too many" activities.  It's usually possible to do them all, but the running around doing them often leaves little time or energy for studying.  This has never been truer than this term, during which I have done essentially no research, unless you count writing various conference papers.  Why?  Because of the following:

• Rowing
• Chapel choir
• Trinity Hall Boat Club co-women's lower boats' captain [scheduling novices]
• Supervising (teaching) a student on Old English
• Classes: Latin, Old English, Old English literature, Old English informal reading group
• Job(s): conference assistant, proofreading, soon to be library invigilating
• Writing conference papers

At least the last one might sort of produce material toward my PhD.  Meanwhile, I took a trip to the North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) annual conference.  Although it was in Nashville, I first stopped to get my Disney World fix and then visited friends and my brother's family in Greensboro, NC.  My little nephew is turning into quite the little man; he grabs you by the finger and walks you all around the house, or up and down the street, on a mission to find anything that might remotely be called a "choo-choo" -- i.e. anything with an engine, a toy thereof, or any screen that will show him a video of such a thing.

The conference itself was fun (so many people to meet!), though I wish I'd had a chance to go out into Nashville proper.  As it was, my excursions were restricted to a reception in the Parthenon reconstruction, with this gaudy-awful Athena statue:

and a walk around autumnal Vanderbilt:

It was a good trip, but I was also glad to arrive back home in Cambridge.