I went to AAA in Seattle this year because I'd convened a session with my PhD adviser Larry Schell and like Seattle. Unfortunately, it was cold, so I wasn't especially motivated to go out and about. For some reason, I didn't dress appropriately. I didn't think to get many photos. I was presenting during my session and up at the table of presenters in front, so I couldn't take them from there anyway.

The session went well. It was on the first day in a big room with only a few people there, so it was a little awkward. However, the goal of the session is to feel out a potential special issue and to meet and hear each other, so it served that purpose. Several of us went out afterwards to continue conversing, including a few attendees from Dmitris Xygalatas' lab at UConn. I am a big fan of Xygalatas' work, so it was flattering that they attended my talk as well.

Thursday and Friday I worked the podcast exhibit, which was a good call by the Dirt Podcast crew. They finagled free registration for podcasters who worked the booth, and it gave us an opportunity to make the association members aware of all the affiliated podcasts. I should have taken a photo of the posters we were encouraging visitors to photograph, but I wasn't that thoughtful to myself.

I had some good meetings with publishers about my next book, which will be about the tattoo project. Vanderbilt and Waveland seemed promising for different reasons. I like the enthusiasm and proximity of Vanderbilt, and the acquisitions editors seemed sharp and with it. Waveland very specifically targets undergrad courses, which I think a book on tattooing might do well in.

Friday was most of the Biological Anthropology Section (BAS) stuff, which is where I see most of my friends. There was a double session put together by Delaney Glass, a former Sausage of Science producer and doctoral candidate at the University of Washington, and Delaney's adviser, Melanie Martin. After that, Larry Schell and Alex Brewis invited me to join them for dinner with local Seattle anthropologist (& former postdoc of Alex) Sarah Trainer. We went to the BAS Awards ceremony after, and that was that.

Larry Schell and I convened this session on "Religious and Spiritual Influences on Human Biology: The Unsettled Landscapes of Bodies in Culture" for the American Anthropological Association meetings in Seattle next week. We'll be giving this introduction to the session called "Theorizing Human Biological Variation Through the Lens of Religion and Spirituality."

It's an in-person, Invited Session by Biological Anthropology Section on Wednesday, 2:15-4PM Pacific Time if you're at the conference. Session includes presentations by Eric Shattuck, Bonnie Kaiser, Joshua Brahinsky, Susan Schaffnit, Susan Sheridan, and Lawrence Schell with Jessica Hardin as Discussant.
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New doctoral student Lindsey Clark & I were invited speakers for a panel hosted by Napoleon Fireplaces on the Psychology of Fire in Atlanta, GA, March 3-5, 2022. 

American Airlines stranded me in the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport overnight and I just made it to the conference in time for the 2nd half of the poster session. I presented wearing the same clothes I'd been wearing for two days and that I'd "slept" in after feeling like a pigeon at the airport. They know people are going to have to try to sleep there--why do they put those armrests to make it impossible. We won't poop on the floor. Anyway, it was an awesome conference, and I got a lot of good business done.