Well, before I get to Lubbock, here are some pictures of Austin, starting with the Tower at the University of Texas, which is where Clarence works:





(He's up there on the 14th floor. See him waving?)

I took these on Tuesday, when I wandered around the UT campus a bit after having lunch (and interesting conversation, as always) with my friend Peg.

I walked down "the drag" - ie, the student commercial area - until I got to the end of it, then turned left and continued along the campus. I was surprised to see the Texas state house only a few blocks away. (No pictures. You've seen one rotunda, you've seen 'em all . . . ) I was about to go into the Texas History Museum:





. . . when I spotted the art museum across the street:





It got better looking the closer I got:





. . . so I wandered in. I must confess, I saw precious little art: I was pretty whacked out from the heat (I left Detroit in 50something degree weather and landed in Austin in 90+ degree weather), and my toe was hurting, so mostly I curled up in the reading room and read my trashy novel.

On the way to meet Clarence and Kate I passed lots of nice campus buildings, including the gym:





After a wonderfully tasty dinner at a Mexican restaurant, and Kate's violin lesson, we went back to Clarence and Susan's:





Susan and I walked down to the neighborhood pool:











As you can see, darkness was falling, and the lights were on. I got in a nice half mile, which felt really, really good, and my toe didn't even complain. After I was done, the pool attendant turned on the underwater lights, too, so I had to go back in . . . it's rare, any more, to see underwater pool lights up where I come from. This was a very formative fixture of my childhood, oddly enough; we lived in apartment complexes with pools, and I recall many, many summer evenings spent swimming in the lights (and the chlorine halos around everything when I got out . . . ) That was fun, I must say . . .

So that was Tuesday. On Wednesday, I walked around the neighborhood a bit. It's a very nice neighborhood:





And the vegetation is just different enough to be really interesting:





Everything looks very lush and green right now, but I'm told that won't last.

Then I flew to Lubbock, which has turned out to be a very pleasant place. It's really hot here, too - but [a] it's less humid and [b] there's a constant breeze - nay, a wind. Not a bad wind. I'm told that when there's a windstorm it's like something out of The Grapes of Wrath - the air turns brown and the streetlights come on. And when it rains during a windstorm, it rains mud. (Now that would be something to see!) I'm finding the topography of Lubbock (flat, flat, FLAT) to be oddly pleasant.

I've had a wonderful time at the conference so far. Last night I spent quite a while driving around Lubbock and environs with Keith Dorwick and Michael Day, looking for "the strip" - Lubbock is a dry town, so we were on a beer run to the collection of drive-thru beer emporia just over the county line, and these people are not kidding around: The drive thrus are 6 lanes wide . . . And then when we got back we took our beer down to the hotel pool and sat in the hot tub discussing life and the state of the profession and our current research interests (not that I do any research, but I do have interests). (You're not allowed to bring glass containers into the pool area, of course - but sneaking beer into swimming pools is one of those life skills I picked up in that childhood spent swimming in the lights . . . )

Today I attended two really fantastic sessions on audio production. I feel as if they alone were worth the price of admission, here, so the rest of the conference could be a wash and it would be okay. I've got lots of ideas for that multimedia rhetoric course I'll be teaching in the spring . . .

And after the second session I managed to get over to the Texas Tech pool for another swim:





After my laps, I went over and floated around with some people from Utah State, one of whom I've known tangentially for a few conferences. It was nice to get to know her a little better.

I ran into Dickie when I got back (you may remember that Dickie and I went to the bike show in Chicago in March) and he was completely envious (I think he called me a brat!), so tomorrow he's coming to the pool, too. (Like me, Dickie also swam on the high school swim team and used to be a lifeguard at a summer camp . . . )

Then there was another session, after which my colleague Dan and I hooked up with some folks from UNC and went off to yet another Mexican restaurant for dinner . . . (the Mexican food here is great! And ubiquitous.) I got to talk to Dan Anderson, whose work and ideas about multimedia and web stuff I've followed and admired for years (mostly on lists) but whom I'd never met before. And one of the grad students from UNC is working with MY dissertation director, which was just really cool. We traded Linda stories for a while . . .

(This is such an odd profession. I know that the academics who are reading will understand completely why all of this is fun and cool and makes me feel right at home, but if you're not an academic, it must just seem weird. Which it is. But it's also fun and cool.)

So tomorrow's another jam-packed day, and I'm up too late, as usual . . . (I was really going to try to get some decent sleep tonight; I came back to the room right after dinner - partly because I'm tired, and partly because, in the absence of a bar in the hotel, there's just no place for people to congregate so I have no idea how to find the party even if I wanted to - which tonight I did not, weirdly and uncharacteristically enough . . . I guess I'm getting old.)

I'll take more pictures of the campus tomorrow; it's really pretty . . .