Most exciting meeting: I've finally met the historian of astrology who's a friend of my grandmother's!
Just-in-time knowledge: During coffee break, a new friend gushed about an archaeology paper she'd heard first thing this morning. She even pointed out who the speaker was from across the room. There are about a thousand people at Leeds. Guess which one sat down across from me at lunchtime, only two hours later?
Hardest-to-follow Logistics:
There are three people scheduled to be in a session, 1, 2, 3, plus M, the moderator.
Person 1 has to cancel.
Person 4 is found to take Person 1's place.
Person 4 has to cancel at the last minute, but has already written the paper.
Person 4 asks Person 2 to give her paper.
This puts Person 2 in the awkward position of giving two papers.
Person 2 recruit M to read Person 2's paper.
So... Person 3 gives his own paper; M reads Person 2's paper; Person 2 reads Person 4's paper.
Series launch: Brepols is starting a new series of books on the theme of "Medieval Voyaging", meant in the broadest possible way - metaphorical journeys, journey of the mind, journeys made by information or objects, or, indeed, journeys in the more literal sense. In a paper made in a session sponsored in honor of the series' beginning, I finally saw an image of a Nilometer. I've been wondering just quite how they were done for ages, since they show up in histories of invention. Brepols is soliciting, if you've a relevant manuscript or might consider writing one.