That's what I typically do. I used to have it in the footer until someone indicated they couldn't find my email address on the site. They thought I didn't have one on the site at all. So I made it more prominent.
If you are using Wordpress, it has a "text" box. You can put your dirty html in there. That's what I did on several sites recently. If you want to mung the address, feel free to borrow the javascript from any of my sites (assuming you dont already know how -- you might know lots more than me, if so: nevermind).