Category: Travel
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MidAmeriCon II, Day 3!
Saturday was a light-schedule day for me. I had a swim and a reasonably-priced breakfast at the Silver Spoon Diner across the street from my hotel, then went to the convention center to do a reading. I read two stories, "Parsifal (Prix Fixe)" which ran originally in F&SF, and "A Right Jolly Old . .…
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MidAmeriCon II, Day 2!
I got up early and had a swim in the hotel pool and a substantial breakfast (the breakfast menu at the Kansas City Marriott Downtown is an exact duplicate of the breakfast menu at the Boston Westin Waterfront hotel, which implies they both buy from the same food-supply company). Then off to the convention center…
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MidAmeriCon II, Day 1!
You may wonder why I refer to Thursday, August 18th as Day 1 of the convention, when there were several events on Wednesday the 17th. To answer that I must refer you to Southwest Airlines, which decided to cancel my Wednesday morning flight so that I didn't arrive in Kansas City until Thursday. So for…
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MidAmeriCon II, Featuring ME!
On August 17-21 I'll be a participant at the 2016 World Science Fiction Convention. The convention moves around and has a different name every year — this year it's called MidAmeriCon II, and will be held in Kansas City, where everything is up to date. If you're anywhere in central North America that weekend, stop on…
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Vacation in France, Day 10
We spent our day in Paris by walking. First we passed the (rather untidy) grounds of the Paris Observatory, then crossed the University district, went around the Grand Mosque, and finally arrived at our destination: the Jardin des Plantes. Originally created as a place to cultivate medicinal herbs for the King's health, during the age…
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Vacation in France, Day 9
On July 7 we packed up our clothes, had a final breakfast at the Chateau Bellevue hotel, and drove back to Bordeaux. After a little hunting around in the neighborhood south of the railway station, we found the rental agency office and handed in our Corsa, then dragged our bags into the Gare St. Jean…
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Vacation in France, Day 8
We spent a relaxed morning hanging about Cazaubon, doing laundry at the local Intermarché supermarket, which has coin-op washing machines right in the parking lot, so everyone in town can evaluate the condition of your underwear. (To get change I had to make some purchases, and discovered that, at Intermarché anyway, beer is cheaper than…
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Vacation in France, Day 7
On July 5 we woke feeling better — Diane wasn't completely well, but she said she was about 80 percent recovered, and didn't want to miss that day's planned expedition. So we piled into the car and headed east, following a rather zigzag route because the roads didn't want to go the way we did.…
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Vacation in France: Days 5 and 6
About 3 a.m. on July 3, Diane started feeling bad. Her abdomen hurt, she threw up several times, she couldn't urinate, and nothing we did made her feel better. At about 6:30 I asked the hotel manager where the nearest emergency room was. She told me: Hopital Landye in Mont-de-Marsan. Oh, and the French word…
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Vacation in France, Day 4
A note on the photos: I didn't even take a camera on this trip, and if I relied on the pictures Diane took these posts would have nothing but pictures of bones and beetles. The world is well-documented, so I've been using freely-available pictures rather than our own snapshots. Welcome to the new millennium. On…
The Cambias Digression 