Dispatch from Portland #1 -- of flights and friends

Two hours late in arriving in Maine. One hour spent waiting in DTW, one hour of waiting on the runway... Then an hour of turbulence in the air (my Georgina, aren't you looking green...).

Muscle my bags up the steps of the old hotel (with its loud environmental systems and such low ceilings that Matt would need to duck and I can feel my claustrophobia switch being jiggled). Find my grad school friends, plus our adopted buddy, almost immediately and get big hugs. The four of us hold off all the others to escape to dinner with no outsiders. We told them it was a "working" dinner and they all fled. We "worked" on a lovely meal and a bottle of Malbec 'til the restaurant closed.

Surprisingly, in the flurry of talk, we did not get down to the usual all-cards-on-the-table assessment of our lives. R told the most, but then her divorce just went through mediation and her life has changed the most since we all were together last. I told them maybe 1% of what is happening my life and I got only slivers of the rest of theirs. Just so much ground to cover not having seen them since Phoenix last year and this being a professional conference so professional talk takes up lots of our time.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will give my talk and then see a bit of the city and taste many of their brews with V. The two of us will talk about it all.