planes, trains, and Joan Fujimura

Just got back from ASA in the last hour. I'm in the office, retrieving my PC, which the computing staff has ride of the blaster worm. Will have more to blog about various things from the ASA meetings later, to be sure. One thing I can say now, however, is that if your flight is delayed so that you can't make your connection and your airline switches you to another airline and then the flight on the second airline also ends up coming in late, the best possible scenario for turning-that-lemon-into-lemonade is to have the consequence be that you get to spend the whole trip traveling with my office-next-door-neighbor, Joan Fujimura:



The only icky-speck-in-the-lemonade is that somewhere on the trip, Joan lost the swanky Armani jacket she was wearing. We think it was at the airport Chili's in Atlanta.

Also: An e-mail in my inbox from Shelley B notes that Kieran Healy was also blogging from ASA--and about Wisconsin, to boot. From his weblog:

The American Sociological Association’s annual meeting got off to a decent start last night, with a performance in the main ballroom by a band called Thin Vita [sic: they spell it Vitae, I think]. It’s made up of, amongst others, John Sutton (guitar/vocals) and current ASA President Bill Bielby (bass). So I think Bill is pretty well top of the list of Heads of Social Science Associations That You’d Want To Have A Beer With. Towards the end of the night, my Ph.D adviser Paul DiMaggio appeared onstage as guest vocalist. Bielby and Sutton are at UCSB, which is a pretty relaxed place, and I’ve seen Paul perform before. But I have to say I got a fresh perspective on the Midwestern tradition of occupational mobility and stratification studies by watching Bob Hauser and other Wisconsinites tear up the dance floor.

Also Also: A quick peek at the TradeSports website reveals that Arnold Schwarzenegger's bid for California governor is now back to trading at 50, down from 65.5 right before I left for ASA. In other words, if you would only have listened to me, you could have made 15% just in the time that I was gone!