On Saturday, I’ll be in Anchorage, AK. Not that this is a big deal, I work there, and live fewer than 40 miles away. The big deal this weekend is ceremonial start of the Ididarod. I’ll be less than a block away, suffering from the traffic, parking, and crowds. What I will not be doing is watching the start. I’ll be in a conference. Turns out that this week is also the Alaska Anthropological Association annual meeting. Normally, this would be little more than a footnote in my year, and simply signify a slightly reduced period of e-mails and phone calls (It’s usually a time I can focus on stuff I need to get done, without interruption) However, this year I’ve been prodded into giving a paper*. Of course, this means that this weekend, I won’t be writing, and the last couple of days I’ve been completely focused on putting together my presentation instead of writing. Now, I’ve given the presentation before, and so it shouldn’t be a big effort, but I always spend a lot of time rehearsing before these. Anyhow, I’m not sure where I’m going with this, except to say that if you’re in Anchorage this weekend and don’t want to see the Ididarod, come to the aaa meeting, there’s going to be a lot of really good information about subsistence research in Alaska.

* I’m not an anthropologist, I’m an analyst and database manager.

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