I just arrived in beautiful Flagstaff after a longish-but-fineish flight from Brooklyn. Got a lot of work done on the flight to Phoenix - doing some final prep work for my panel tomorrow on constructing a book collection, graded some student work, yadda yadda - then had some great conversation on the layover with a retired American Airlines employee named Kelly (who seemed excited to read my work - Hi, Kelly!) and on the short flight to Flagstaff with a man named Chris who was on his way from Memphis to go elk hunting. Then I rode a taxi in with some wonderful people on their way to the conference, and I could just feel the three-day Code Red Nerd Alert rising.
I just got a run in, and geez, the altitude! Lungz was burninz. Now getting a shower and headed over to the convention center to do some last-minute panel planning and World Series watching with my friend Jericho Parms, whose recent first book deal almost excuses the fact that she'll be cheering for the Mets.