CCCC 2008

Okay, so I think that about half of the passengers on the Atlanta to New Orleans flight on Tuesday were going to Cs. Everything went smoothly (at least relatively so), and on time! I actually started writing this blog entry (are you ready??) with pen and note paper (really!) during my flight. Yes, yes, I know, but....

I lucked up at the airport and was able to share a cab to the hotel with Kathy Yancey, Sandra Jamieson, and Rebecca Moore Howard. My roommate, Risa Gorelick, Chair of the Research Network Forum, had arrived earlier, so I was able to join her and her friends for dinner as they each celebrated new jobs/positions.

I spent Wednesday in an all-day CCCC Executive Committee meeting, which actually went by much faster than you would think, especially with Cheryl Glenn riding herd over us to get our work done! But I noted something interesting during my bathroom break: A sign on the back of the women's bathroom door, that women could not help but notice as they left the room, reminded us: "Warning--drinking alcoholic beverages during pregnancy may cause severe physical and mental birth defects." Of course, I agree this is an important warning, but I just HAD to know what (if anything) was posted on the back of the men's room door. I ALMOST went in to see, but I though better of it, and I got my "twin" Michael Day to check it out. There was the exact same message--so women would know not to drink during pregnancy, and men would know to make sure women didn't drink during pregnancy (although, actually, the sign could be misconstrued, I suppose). Hmmm. Okay.

We also enjoyed a very "New Orleans" (and very good) lunch together at Mulate's before we resumed work for the afternoon. Michael and I walked back from lunch at Mulate's through Riverwalk, which meanders up and down different levels back to the Hilton. We walked as far as we could outside, enjoying the view of the river, before the "walk" forced us back in to see the food court and shops. I thought it was interesting that, the closer we approached to the Hilton, the more "upscale" (e.g., EXPENSIVE) the shops became....

Now, no CCCC experience would be complete without the de rigeur "elevator stories." If you've ever been to a CCCC, you know exactly what I mean. So, one of the elevators in the bank that went to my floor was an outside elevator with a beautiful view of, well, of another building and an alley with dumpsters and such. Go figure. At any rate, when the usual bunches of us entered the elevator we noticed that several buttons were already lit, but, undaunted we lit up some more, pressing the buttons for our separate floors. The elevator began its ascent and the lights in the elevator went off (I discovered later this was to allow a better view of the dumpsters outside). It caught us all a bit off guard, I think, but, okay, it was just a light, right? However, at each floor we stopped at, ALL of the buttons for the floors we had pushed went out, too. So, of course, we pushed them again. But at one floor, someone got on and pushed a floor below us--and the elevator went back down with all of us wanting to go up (well, almost all of us).

Being rhetoricians, of course, we stayed on the elevator (well, everyone except Nick Carbone, who, since he works for a publisher, had better sense and extricated himself in search of a different elevator), and tried again, pushing buttons, until we finally did actually arrive where we wanted to be. Ah, elevators.

So on Thursday morning, early, I went to set up the booth for the Rhetoric and Composition Journal Editors, a group that doesn't really (officially) exist, but that has a booth in the exhibit hall at CCCC every year anyway. Basically, we're just a bunch of journal editor types who decided a few years ago to make information available to people as a service to the discipline, and we all pitch in to pay for the space at the conference and take turns volunteering to staff it. I always coordinate it, so I needed to set up the space. Everything was going fine until I realized I forgot to bring a notepad in case anyone wanted to write anything down. Ya never know. I never realized just how difficult it could be to find a notepad at a conference of writing professors.... Finally, one of the publishers actually came through with some pads of "sticky notes"!

MORE LATER (maybe). :)