Sacramento conference

A month ago I traveled to Sacramento to present my first paper at a history conference (other than a grad student conference ten years ago that doesn't really count anymore). This was good for my CV, and was the first thing I'd "written" toward my dissertation so far. (I'm still sorting through my research but plan to start writing very soon. Finally.)

I arrived Thursday evening, and after dropping off my bag I went for a walk past the California State Capitol and down to Old Sacramento by the river. It wasn't quite as warm as I'd been hoping, but it was nice to see sun and blue skies!

That first night I attended the opening plenary session on California history, and while skimming the list of conference attendees I found an old friend from my masters program. We got in touch (during the plenary) and met up afterwards for a drink. We hadn't seen each other in ten years so it was nice to catch up. Also, she and I have the exact same birthday, which was the next day!

Friday, my birthday, I went out for breakfast and visited the Leland Stanford Mansion in the morning. Then it was time for my panel to present! There were only about ten people in the audience, but that's okay. Overall it went fine. My boss was there as our panel's moderator, and he said I read a little fast and he could tell I was nervous, but hopefully that didn't convey too prominently to the rest of the people there. After our panel I attended a session on westerns. Then I met back up with my fellow panelists for dinner. It was a bit of a bummer being far away and, other than my boss, essentially alone on my birthday, but he gave me a birthday toast and overall it was still a pretty good day. After dinner I attended a packed session on Confederate monuments.

Giant, warm, delicious strawberry vanilla birthday scone.

An orange tree and the Stanford mansion.

Saturday I attended two conference sessions, and went back to Old Sacramento to visit the California State Railroad Museum.

A cute little sculpture I saw on my walk to Old Sacramento.

More cute sculptures.

Enjoying the old-timey western feel of Old Sac.

So that was that. First conference paper done (two more coming up this year), and a nice little trip to Sacramento.