More highfalutin' planning

One of my not-very-exciting perversities is that I get motivated about organizational details. So I'm starting to actually look forward to fall after the conference acceptance and now this latest bit of news: a Prominent Scholar whom I invited to speak at a departmental lecture series has accepted, pending enough of a stipend. I'm actually glad that he was upfront about his fee (it's not ginormous, but it's enough so that we'll have to ask for co-sponsorships from several other departments), so that I can start right emailing around for funding right away. His email also confirmed the impression that comes across in his books -- he's quite funny in a self-deprecating way (he was afraid both that his stipend would be "too grand" for us and that the topic of his talk would be "not grand enough"!). He's done work all over the place -- one or two of his books are pretty canonical, and a couple others are smaller and more focused, almost intimate perspectives on what he studies. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that our other funding sources come through, because I think the talk would be a big hit.