aaa 09: installment 1

I bring you this message from a luxurious king sized bed off of rittenhouse square, philly's ritzy neighborhood.

it is practically noon and i am still in bed (though I've been working on a paper for 2 hours) wrapped in a fluffy hotel-provided robe, sipping free Ghirardelli hot chocolate. i have been gchatting my companero who is doing something similar (though at least he's showered already) in the next bedroom of our incredible aka suite.

but yesterday was quite a good one. i woke up before the sun rose and picked up ee for our drive to the city of sibling love. we got in, checked into the hotel, parked the car, and had a terrible breakfast of strangely flavored non-fat-frozen-yogurt and awful coffee (at least that's how ee reported on it. i of course, did not partake).

then off to the marriott to register. ee's first panel was right away, and i tagged along. speaker #1 spoke about Bolivian marketwomen's subjectivity within neoliberal formations (sound vaguely familiar?). It wasn't anything new to me, but now I know I need to get in touch with her. Most importantly, she was recovering from the flu and almost passed out during her presentation, so someone else in the room had to finish reading the paper for her. a few more papers and then tonsilitis-infected ee just gave a brief description of his research before commenting on the awful conference theme/session title employing the "End/s of Anthropology"

After the session, I met another audience member who will be on my panel on Saturday, who studies trans activism in Mexico City, along with Susan Paulson, a long-time Bolivianist. ee & i then walked to trader joe's and got some supplies. after dropping the foods off at aka, i went back to the marriott to see spaulson's presentation on humor and the familia galan in La Paz. she was using some disidentification theory which got me excited. and a few other presenters opened my eyes to some new theory i should look at. but most excitingly, when i walked into the room before the presentations began, she shouted out to me "hi nell!" and introduced me to stuart rockefeller, another bolivianist.

i left directly after that panel for e patrick's performance of sweet tea at Penn. there i also ran into jackson5 (with whom i re-exchanged phone numbers) and riley from radical intersections. as i waited for the perf to begin i glanced through the aaa program and found siu gerry's name. a few text messages to my wife later, i was in contact with him, and now have plans to meet up (after 5 years). i saw the perf, drank some free wine, then headed back to center city to meet mcneil for some whiskey. upon arriving in the midst of a torrential downpour, i discovered he was well into his 5th hour of drinking, and some painful karaoke had just begun, so we decided to brave the elements and walk back to aka to drink some free booze with ee. some watermelon vodka and 4 mini-bags of popcorn later he trekked home (to the travelodge) and ee & i passed out in our respective king size beds.

day 1=success.