I am once agan confronted with the old travelling salesman/Jessamyn problem where I have to get myself from here to DC somehow. The good news is, this is easy. The bad news is, there are a ton of options. If I were going to LA, the answer would be simple "Fly! Find a cheap ticket!" but to DC the possibilities are all over the place. Drive? Bus? Bus + fly? Drive + train? Carpool? Rideshare? Trip + visit? Through NY? Boston? New Haven? Amherst?
I settled on a short drive + train + train plus a quickie stop in Brooklyn to see some friends and their baby who I haven't seen since she was about a week old. When I get to DC I'm staying in a hotel that costs more than I pay for a month of heating oil, but it's covered by the conference committee. I am going to be giving a fun talk on how to make Firefox (the browser) do the things you want it to do including make searching easier, make pages easier to read and putting more resources at your fingertips. I've been spending a lot of time mucking about with it this week. The real reason the train won out, of course, is that I can read on the train.
I can, of course, read here at home but there are a lot of other thigns to do as well. lately I've been watching James Burke's Connection series and relearning some of the science and technology history that I had long since forgotten. I have also been watching some old Hercule Poirot mysteries with David Suchet, many of which the library has.
It's supposed to snow here tomorrow. I suspect there will be cherry blossoms in DC.
4/11/2007