It's been an odd visit. A few serious upsets with friends have made this harder than I anticipated. I'm not sure they were avoidable, and things are better now, but still. Troubling. I also got some quite bad news that I can't share yet, for professionalism reasons. Personally very disappointing. It seriously bummed me out, earlier this week. It's better now, too -- or at least, I've gotten more accustomed to the fact of it. More details on that when I can.
Other than that, I've mostly been reading (finished Shandy, working on Foucault's History of Sexuality, vol. 2 now), with some socializing mixed in. David and I made a massive Sri Lankan dinner Wednesday night -- fun. Pretty much filled David's place to capacity, with eleven people: me, David, Tim, Heather, Jed, Susan, Dan, Nadya, Naomi, Kate, Sherman. Somehow, when I run through the names, it doesn't seem like so many, but when I count 'em up, it's definitely eleven. Odd. We're still eating the leftovers. I made too much food, as usual. (Menu: tamarind-shrimp curry, chicken curry, potato/pea/tomato dish, lemon-masala mushrooms, green bean/carrot curry, turmeric-fried cauliflower, David's lentils, raita, coconut sambol, coriander chutney, mango chutney, naan, and rose-saffron rice with cashews and sultanas. I really have to put a recipe book together one of these days.)
I'm trying to remember what else I didn't record. Oh -- Potlatch was good fun, threw a nice SH wine-and-cheese party. May dig up some photos when I get home and put them up tomorrow or some such. Served on a panel titled, "Can There Be a Just War?" which was surprisingly interesting. After the con, on Sunday, had an amazing dinner at Meriko's in the city -- incredible food, cosmopolitan guests (we had Australians, a Scot, a Canadian, Americans, and me. :-) It all felt very civilized, and Meriko has a lovely home -- with two of my art pieces hanging in it! I love seeing my work on people's walls. :-)
I'm getting hungry, so I'm going to just add two more pieces of news, one happy, one sad. Tim Pratt's made the Stoker nominating ballot -- yay, Tim! He's having a very good year. That's the happy news. The sad news is that Mr. Rogers just died. I'd almost gotten used to my favorite old science fiction writers dying, but tv -- isn't tv just supposed to go on forever? It just doesn't seem right, that if I have children, they won't spend time with Mr. Rogers...
Karen reminds me that they'll be playing re-runs on PBS for a long time. I hope so. This is a 1998 Esquire feature article about him -- it's good, despite being riddled with typos. Worth reading. Worth reading today.