Dinner with George on Sunday. Everything was delicious — I think my favorite was the Chilean sea bass and the smoking lapsang souchong cocktail, but honestly the dumplings were also great (crab siu mai and chicken / lobster), ditto Peking duck and the other two cocktails. I am not normally a three cocktail person, but spread out over a leisurely dinner, it felt just right. 🙂
Really glad Alec Nevala-Lee could join us too — we ended up spending quite a bit of time talking about his terrific book, Astounding!, and getting the inside skinny from George on what he knew of those people (Asimov, Heinlein, Hubbard, and Campbell) and those days.
Alec has been doing a lot of biographical work (his last book was on Buckminster Fuller, and I’m not sure if it’s okay to talk about his current book, so I’ll leave it to him to add details in comments if he wants), and we spent a while discussing Marion Zimmer Bradley and the need for a fair and thorough biography.
He doesn’t think he’s the person to write it, and I had a brief flirtation with the thought that I probably could….but even if I had the time (hah!), I don’t think I need the tsuris.
I’d rather be writing my own novels. Speaking of which, back to it — I’m working on an essay on Joanna Russ right now (due this week), but after that, back to fiction.
Plan for today is to alternate reading / writing / crafting / launch party prep, and yardwork because it’s a STUNNINGLY warm day, but will be freezing temps tonight and tomorrow. With an exercise swim from 10:15 – 10:45 — and oh, dealing with the water heater estimator guy at 11, because ours started leaking this weekend, which is just what we needed. Sigh. Feeling a little cash-strapped at the moment.
After doing some research, I think we’re probably switching to tankless, but feel free to put your opinions on pros and cons in the comments!
