On my second day in Amherst, bringing Rachel to Hampshire College, where she is transferring to from NYU. (The final verdict on NYU: too big, too terrible in the way it treats its students, and in New York, which is fine to visit but less fine for day-to-day living, in the opinion of Rachel and her roommate, who also transferred out of NYU and is ( Read more... )

Took the train down to Greenwich Pier this morning for a Thames boat tour that took us to Westminster. Will have to upload pictures late tonight or tomorrow, because we then gave ourselves sensory overload by visiting Westminster Abbey (where you are not permitted to take photos indoors, so we didn't). We are just back in the flat briefly, after ( Read more... )

We are here! In the London flat we are renting for a week, through the cold and wet, but now the sun is shining and the Druids are about to have a celebration of its return ( Read more... )

So--those of you who know London, a question:

If we got tickets to see a West Ham vs. Man City match in East London on a Saturday evening (@5:30) is that a really dicey thing for two Americans to do? (Or anyone, for that matter?)

We're taking Rachel back to New York for her second year at NYU tomorrow, and I may or may not have internet access while we're doing that--it's unclear. (I may have access purely through going to an internet cafe or some other place in public that has wifi if the place we're staying doesn't have access ( Read more... )

So I'm back from Ascendio! I built two extra days into our schedule, for travel, so that we weren't running around like the proverbial headless chickens, as was the case with other cons. Having today and last Wednesday to deal with travel and hotel issues was heaven--and everything went smoothly, of course, since we had tons of time to deal with ( Read more... )

Our Boston adventure has been unnecessarily eventful so far. (Kicking back? What's that?) First the reservation for the B & B was fubared. I thought it might be my fault, but I looked back at the website that listed the B & B and allowed me to make a reservation, and it wasn't me. The website had me enter the dates were were checking in and out, ( Read more... )

Well, it really looks like Irene is determined to cut a swath on up the eastern seaboard. In fact, at first I thought I'd made the incredibly bright move of planning a mini-holiday to Boston when it was expecting to be hit by a hurricane and now it seems much more likely to affect Philadelphia ( Read more... )

Ooh, ow, ouch! I almost ripped off the nail on the big toe of my left foot this afternoon and every step I take HURTS. It's all my own fault, too, so I have no one to blame but myself ( Read more... )

I received this email from my father-in-law today:

The December issue of Asimov's, containing my novelette "Warfriends", is now ( Read more... )