I’m terrible at booking hotels. Ask Sydney. I hem and haw for hours, looking at website after website, looking for the perfect fit. And, being something of a hotel cheapskate, I also frequently consider booking rooms at places that, according to Sydney, might have serious nocturnal business. Oops.
So imagine how things went today when I needed to book a hotel in Manhattan. I got a paper accepted at the annual Virginia Woolf Conference, about which I’m terribly excited. An entire weekend of talks on one of my favorite subjects! I hit the Faulkner conference last year, and apparently it’s Woolf this year.
But did I mention that this conference is at the beginning of June? Six weeks after our child’s due date? This is where things get a bit tricky. I’ll be doing full-time childcare during a section of May as Sydney heads to a conference in Ottawa and then participates in one at Cornell. Then he’ll be doing full-time dad duty, traveling with me to the city and holing up in a hotel room with our babe while I try to attend the conference. This could be interesting. Thankfully, I did manage to find a hotel just three blocks from the conference site; I can run back if need be, and Sydney could always walk into a conference in which 90% of the participants are women, carrying a baby in a sling. Quite a vision, no?
Erin
Alan Schmierer