"And I'm not doing any more travelling until March!"

This was how I was talking just a few hours earlier when I called to wish my Dad a happy birthday. He was telling me how the house is going to fill up with folks which he thinks will be mostly fun "plus I got a radio controlled helicopter so that will help some..."

I said what I said, but there have been a few caveats. One of them is that I was travelling today, but it's just a small trip down to MA and back to do some Thanksgiving-y stuff with my Mom and sister. The March trip is the big one to Australia, Perth this time, and I'm giddy even thinking about it. I'll be going with Kate who is also pretty excited. I might go someplace for Christmas, then again I might not. I was also just today invited to go to Kansas and talk about the Web 2.0/Library 2.0 thing and they just happen to want someone during school vacation week. I don't talk about it much but my local job is at a vocational high school, so school holidays are also my holidays. This is often handy.

So I might go to Kansas, I probably will. Then I was also asked to give a talk to a library group in New York. This is great because it's nearby and I often find that New England/New York audiences seem to have similar senses of humor to mine, though the Lansing Michigan crowd seemed to enjoy a lot of my dumb jokes. They asked what I wanted for a speaker's fee and told me they were an organization without "deep pockets" etc. I took this to heart and quoted them a low number. The guy I was talking to on the phone said "What!?" and I was thinking "Too high?" and then he quoted me something 2.5 times what I quoted him and said they'd pay that.

I clearly do not have the hang of this. I don't want to wreck the world for other library speakers by undercharging, but I just feel that there's some reasonable limit to how much you should get paid for an hour of speaking and a day of travel. Add to this that I just personally feel that while I'm a good speaker and knowledgeable on the topics I present on, it's not like I'm writing an original research paper each time... In any case, there is still much to learn.

I've got the place to myself now. I wrote a little blurb about Ola leaving over on Vox. I've been getting up to speed running the house on my own and while there is a lot to get used to, there is also a lot to like. I have two (2) big guestrooms now. Please swing by if you're in the area.

jessamyn, abada abada