New Orleans and the CCCCs

Well, I got a last-minute opportunity to go to CCCCs this year, and I had a great time. I met some new people, but I think the highlight for me was seeing old friends I haven't seen in quite awhile--people like Teryn, Marie, Keely, and the woman who was in JJ's Fem. Rhet. class who is now at Arizona. Argh. I'm terrible with names. Help me out here, folks. I also ran into Kelly at the airport. She's starting a new job this August, is almost finished with her dissertation, and has a baby girl. And of course Jan and Bob. But also Steve Lamos, who remembers me, strangely enough. Of course, I do wish that I would have been able to see all of you reading this blog while I was there, but such is life... Next year and many more to come, I hope.

After hearing these horrible stories about muggings in New Orleans, I cleaned out my wallet, took out extra credit cards, my voter's registration card, even my Blockbuster video membership card and packed off for my flight to Charlotte (that's right Wenatchee to Seattle to Charlotte to New Orleans, ugh!). It was all for nothing, though. Of course everything was fine. In fact, I felt pretty safe there most of the time, except for about a two-block walk back to my hotel in the dark one night. I was staying about 2 blocks from Burbon Street, where I had dinner on Thursday night at the Red Fish Grill. It was a pretty nice place, and I had a crayfish bisque and a shrimp and oyster risotto. Both of them were pretty good. The picture above is the view down Burbon Street. I imagine that this is what it looks like after about 5 or 6 drinks. :)

The conference was good. Here's the conference hotel. Harrod's casino is just to the left. You can't beat the free books, that's all I got to say. I even brought some back for a friend in Wenatchee, who encouraged me to go. And I saw some pretty good presentations--some bad ones too, but that's bound to happen, I think. I saw one of the featured sessions, and about half of the audience got up and left in the middle. It was pretty boring and covered a lot of well-trodden ground. I'm writing up the sessions that I saw for my colleagues out here. Let me know if you'd like me to send you a copy. I saw a couple of sessions on assessment, one on teacher training and one on cognition and something else I don't remember right now.