Going to Austin

In a few hours, I'm going to be on an airplane to Austin, Texas. I'm going to this gathering of people with websites, and I'm kind of nervous about it. I'm going to spend a weekend with people I don't know!

Well, I've met a couple of them. And I've exchanged email with a pretty good handful. And then there are the ones whose websites I read. So I won't be completely at sea. But it's still not necessarily the sort of thing I'm good at. Frankly, if I had the kind of social life that involved frequent large groups of people, there wouldn't be so much of me on the Internet. Plus, I just found out about "swag". Apparently, people normally make little tchotchkes to distribute to promote their website. It's mostly a social thing, though. I haven't done anything like that; I will have no swag. Oh well.

The airport shuttle will be arriving some time between 4:00 and 4:30 am. That's pretty early, but I'm still not sure it's early enough. I like to get to the airport ludicrously early. It's not all that unusual for me to arrive so early they just put me on an earlier flight. I've spent a lot of time hanging around airports. My advice is to find a terminal with no flights leaving soon; it'll be easier to find a seat.

I'd be a little worried about having to be up before 4:00 am tomorrow, but I got up that early today. It wasn't my plan, but the car alarm in the parking lot had other plans. So I think I'll be able to get a decent amount of sleep before I start my journey.

As is traditional, I spent most of today putting off packing. It's not a long trip, but I still have to make some crucial decisions, like how many books I should bring. I almost never bring enough; I fill up my carry-on bags with so many books that I can barely lift them, and then I finish everything before I even get where I'm going. I'm a fast reader anyway, but when I'm stuck on an airplane where there's nothing else to do, I burn through the reading material distressingly quickly. This time, I'm bringing Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, which I'm still 768 pages from finishing. I'm pretty sure that'll take me awhile, but I still feel obligated to bring a couple of backup books, just in case.

I'm also having trouble deciding what gadgets to bring. I'm going to leave my laptop at home, and I also think I won't bother bringing my wee portable DVD player. So that just leaves my phone (which is also a magical Internet-accessing device), my MP3 player, and a digital camera. I won't be able to upload pictures from the site, which means that when I get back I'll probably forget. But at least I'm making the effort!

Okay, I need to get some sleep now.