1. Weight gain only 4 pounds. Should be manageable.
2. It is wonderful to be back somewhere that is pleasantly hot but where going outside does not involve entering a sauna. (This also saves a lot on laundry.)
3. Need sleep, lots of sleep.
Personal
Miss Manners Advises
If you are out walking somewhere hot and sticky such as New Orleans, do not wear pants that change color when wet…
Special note for Texan tourists: when in a famous New Orleans cafe, do not ask the staff for directions to their main competition.
Hang in there, Houston
It is very windy here and we have some pretty impressive black clouds, but we wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t been lucky with Ike. So my personal happiness in getting my vacation is shot through with worry about my friends who are being evacuated. Karen, Curtis, Amy, anyone else I don’t know about, take care and good luck.
Comrade Cheryl Strikes Again
Yesterday I was apparently upsetting sensitive Republicans, and this morning I find Mike Glyer holding me up as an example of the “left wing” of the sf community. I suppose I could make some crack about only in America is someone who is neither a gun-toting Libertarian nor a religious fundamentalist regarded as a raving Communist, but that’s not actually the way it works. Many of the Americans I know have political opinions that are pretty close to those of the Socialists I know back in the UK (most of whom would happily lump me in the same political group as Jerry Pournelle, Mike). But Americans generally won’t self-identify as Socialists, regardless of how collectivist their political views are. And more importantly the right in America has become so obsessed with opposing civil rights that anyone who stands up for women or LGBT people or people of color is immediately identified as a dangerous leftie. The economic debate is completely off the radar.
Fame at Last?
For some reason friend requests are coming in to my Facebook account in a fairly steady stream, mainly from people whose names I don’t recognize. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe they are former Emerald City readers who are discovering that I’m still alive. Maybe they are from the legions of Doctor Who fans that Paul Cornell told to tune in to my Hugo ceremony live blog (thanks again Paul!). Or maybe they are people I have met at cons but can’t remember because I’m slipping into senile dementia. Whatever reason, if any of those people happen to be reading this, thank you very much, and welcome!
In an entirely unrelated development, this morning I noticed a blog post in which an angry Republican was listing those people whose books he or she would not buy because they were raving left wing loonies, and my name was on the list! If I can just manage to find a Democrat who is refusing to buy my books because I’m an evil capitalist monster I will know that I’ve made it. (And it will mean that I don’t have to write any books because no one will buy them.)
Storm Watch
Hey, New Orleans is now outside the cone of possibility for tropical storm Ike – it looks like we might finally get our vacation!
Department of “Needs Doing”
Tax return. Done now. Can get back to real life.
Trip Planning Update
The good news is that New Orleans and its people appear to have got off relatively lightly as compared to Katrina (though the people of Bihar in India have been a lot less lucky). However, the storm did do quite a bit of damage and there are problems with basic services such as electricity. Speaking earlier today, Mayor Ray Nagin asked citizens not come back to the city until services were restored.
Obviously in such a situation the last thing that the city needs is a bunch of stupid tourists getting in the way, but because of this Northwest have been very reasonable and have allowed us to re-book for the following weekend. That’s going to be pretty tiring for me as I’ll be back from New Orleans and have to turn around almost immediately and head to England, but so it goes. The bottom line is that we do get our vacation and we don’t make nuisances of ourselves. That sounds good to me.
Not Dead
Why no, I didn’t post yesterday. It was a holiday here in California and I took the day off.
Putting A Dampener On Things
Tropical Storm Gustav is currently predicted to make landfall at New Orleans on Tuesday.
Kevin & Cheryl’s holiday in New Orleans is due to begin on Thursday.
Or not.
It is only a long weekend, but it would be our first holiday (as opposed to trip to a convention) since 2002. -sigh-
Happy(-ish) Birthday, Kevin!
Today is Kevin’s birthday. For once he doesn’t get to spend it at Worldcon. It also can’t be much fun to spend your birthday sick, even if the doctor does seem to be fairly relaxed about the symptoms.
I have to admit that I’ve not been much help. I still have heaps of post-Worldcon material to process, and I’m also going through a period where I can’t leave my email for more than half an hour at a time between when I wake up and around 9:00pm because of the steady stream of “urgent, panic, must have a reply immediately” questions from clients. I haven’t even managed to get him a birthday card. So I’m doing him a blog post instead. I’m sure that a lot of you will have already sent him birthday wishes through LiveJournal or Facebook, but if you haven’t and you know him please do so here. I’ll make a start:
Happy Birthday Kevin! I love you. ♥♥♥
(You don’t all have to be so demonstrative.)
Not As Planned
The weekend didn’t go entirely as planned. I’d forgotten that we had the baseball tickets, so that was one day less to do stuff. And, as readers of his LJ will know, Kevin has been unwell. Dealing with that took up a fair amount of time yesterday.
Despite the concerns of commenters, I was never particularly worried about his having had a stroke. The symptoms didn’t really match. I’m also very relived that there are no headaches involved. But it is still worrying, and he’s not really safe to drive. As I’m not very safe to drive even when I’m fully fit, this is likely to restrict our activities for a while.
One thing that did interest me is that, despite all of the talk that goes on about how awful the US health system is, a whole bunch of Kevin’s American friends were urging him to go and see a doctor. It is great to know that people care that much, but it was very strange to me because I’m pretty sure that if I had turned up to see a doctor in the UK with the same symptoms he had I’d have been torn off a strip for wasting NHS time and money. One of the drawbacks of having your health care paid for by the government out of a limited budget, as opposed to paid for by the patients as and when they need it, is that there is an expectation (especially if you have been brought up by Welsh Methodists) that you have a duty to only use the health system when you really need it. If people are wondering why I wasn’t rushing Kevin off to hospital at the first sign of trouble, that’s probably a large part of it.
Pining for Academia
When I was at college there was no money at all in oceanography. That’s why I never finished my doctorate. By global warming and over-fishing have changed all that. Now we urgently need to know all sorts of things about our oceans. And now my former colleagues get to go on expeditions like this. Which is exactly the sort of thing I dreamed of as a kid, and why I signed up for the course in the first place.
Ah well, if I was spending my life swanning about the Caribbean in research vessels I probably would never have won a Hugo, or met Kevin.
Bleagh
I woke up with a screaming headache today. I don’t think it can have been the booze – I stayed dry last night until after all the Hugo stuff was finished, and then only had one glass of wine and a margarita. I’m pretty sure it is a reaction to 2 hours squinting at a computer screen in a dark auditorium. Still, can’t complain, don’t have time, Golden Ducks to cover. And the mimeo demo to do.
Shopping
I have finally got up the energy to drag myself to the bank and stock up on cash for the Denver trip. This was aided in no small part by getting a 40% off voucher from Borders in my morning email. I confess to being deeply disappointed by the quality of the selection on offer, but the coupon was only good for a single book and I did manage to bag myself a copy of Victory of Eagles. I was then able to satisfy my Jamba Juice craving as well and sit in the warm California sun drinking mango smoothie and reading my favorite brain candy. If only I wasn’t so darn tired.
Wipe Out
To a certain extent you can get through crazy travel schedules on sheer force of will. You have places to go, things to do, so you go there and do them. The hard bit comes when you stop, because that’s when you crash. And that is where I am now. I have no energy, no enthusiasm, and no brain cells. I still have things to do, but they all exist on the far side of a swamp and I can’t wade through to them. I’m trying to avoid doing anything that involves brain cells because I’m liable to make silly mistakes. I do need to go the bank to get cash for the Worldcon trip, but when I tried to do so this morning I realized that I didn’t have the energy to walk to the bus stop. Fortunately it is the start of a new month and one of the things I have to do is take backups. This involves little more than sitting and waiting for the computer to do things, which is about all I am good for right now.
Not So Secure, Then
One of the things you do not want to happen when you are sat waiting for a flight is for someone to phone you up and tell you that your credit card details have been stolen. Not the card, I hasten to add. I try to take good care of such things. But I got a call from a retailer where I had used the card to tell me that a pile of credit card payment data had been in with a bag of cash that someone had made off with. And what surprised me about this was that this data apparently contained not only my name and the card number, but also my PIN number. So much for Chip and PIN security, then.
I phoned the bank immediately and canceled the card. There do not appear to be any fraudulent transactions on it, which is just as well as the card is from a UK bank so I’d be liable if there were.
Footsore But Happy
San Francisco has been named the “most walkable” city in the USA. “Well,” I hear you ask, “is that because of the hills or despite them?” The latter, it appears. We just have a bunch of great neighborhoods. And indeed I have spent many a happy hour strolling around The City. If only the burbs were as walker-friendly.
Not A Rant
I could write a long post about how much I dislike the NHS, but it wouldn’t do any good. I shall just count myself very lucky that I can afford to pay for the relatively limited health care that I need.
How to Write Obituaries
There are many obituaries for Tom Disch now appearing around the world, several of them in mainstream newspapers. The one that I have been waiting for is in The Independent. As an encyclopedist, John Clute is often called upon to write obituaries, but seldom are they quite as personal as this one. The various dramas that affected Tom’s life, and which eventually led him to end it, were partly known to me because, on my various visits to their house, John and Judith would occasionally talk about how worried they were about Tom. They had, of course, known him for many years, and John’s obituary elegantly illuminates both Tom’s life and his reasons for leaving us. It also gives a rare insight into a man who is known as a friend, not just as a writer:
During these years, he grew into himself physically, both in mass, as he became heavy, but also in gravitas, as his presence became formidable. Tall and bald, he would bear down, colossus-like, upon his visitor, and though his voice was flute-high, he spoke in passages of such pith and wry sapience that a seminar seemed in the offing. But almost always this would change into hilarity. To him everything that humans did about things that mattered – from God to sex, from the Pope to the sestina – was ultimately silly. The heart of Tom Disch in person, gossiping profoundly about the world and its makings, was glee.
It can’t be easy – writing an obituary for a friend. I guess I’ll have to do one sometime soon. I hope I can at least manage half as good a job as Clute has done for Tom.