Yesterday we went to Dublin to do any shopping that could be done in the real world. I was moderately successful; Ted was not. He was, however, very, very tired after tromping all over hell and breakfast without finding anything. Poor guy. I had some kind of story I was going to tell about the shopping, but I seem to have forgotten it. Unless it was the fact that when I stood to get off the bus, coming home, the bottom fell out of one of the bags I had,…
We have successfully had American Thanksgiving here, with more than 30 people descending to eat vast amounts of food. This is at least our 6th Big Thanksgiving, and this year we got everything on the table at the same time and with an absolute minimum of difficulties. We’ve become a well-oiled machine! Dad commented on how impressed he was that Ted and I were both in the kitchen without killing each other, but the size of the kitchen in this house helped that a lot (not that we’ve ever killed…
In an unexpected WIKTORY, I got 3900 words written today and am now only a day behind on Nano. Indeed, had I not run out of battery I think I’d have caught up on it, but, well. No battery. Fortunately, Chapters Books had gotten in GREEN EARTH, the revised, one-book edition of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Science in the Capital trilogy, so I had something to read on the train going home and things. For I’d gone into Dublin to have a celebratory drink with a friend who just turned in…
For some reason I was reminded, this morning, of a discussion a few years ago post-Snowden, where an acquaintance of mine who had worked in the intelligence field spoke at great length, and passionately, about why Snowden had been wrong to leak the surveillance information that he did. His reasons were (roughly) matters of trust inside intelligence agencies, safety of intelligence officers, necessity of some secrets being kept, and possibly a couple other things I’m now forgetting. It was well reasoned and well written and I fundamentally understood and agreed…
We are home from a lovely weekend at Octocon, where we saw many friends and had good conversations. I brought about eight pounds of fudge to the con, and passed it out to the attendees of the Golden Blasters film festival on Friday night. Probably the best two bits of that were saying to people, “If you’re allergic to anything except gluten you can’t eat this, but it’s gluten-free,” and having one woman LIGHT UP when she was told it was gluten-free and safe for her to eat. (Eggs, dairy,…