trip countdown

Headed to Manchester early tomorrow, staying for 6 days. Taking the laptop along, but will probably be too busy to blog much. There will be a number of friends there to catch up with, and quite a few interesting speakers.

I’ll be back just in time to teach the next morning, but the first day of class is usually just a matter of drawing shy freshmen out of their shells and so forth, rather than any strenuous mental labor. The administrative post has always looked interesting, but now the issues are much more concrete and that makes them quite fascinating.

Back in Cairo less than three weeks, then off to Paris, then no more travel (as far as I know) until lovely Maastricht at the end of November. Everyone assumes that the unnamed city in Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zann” is Paris, and I suppose that’s the best match for it. But I always imagine it as Maastricht, even though there aren’t many hills there and even though the language of the city is obviously Dutch rather than French.