Loose ends from the four days away.
Mar. 17th, 2015 10:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogJust a few quick things I forgot to mention from each of my days on the road last week into Sunday:
*Thursday.
I now realise I never gave Sir Terry a proper sendoff; I saw the news of his death right before leaving Rochester on Thursday. I've read only a handful of the treasure that is Discworld, and found Raising Steam,the last of the lot, to be a little off Pratchett's usual fabulousness, but it was still worlds beyond what any author could ever dream of achieving. I heard today that his daughter will be continuing the series. That will keep him alive in a way DEATH will never be able to touch.
*Friday.
In between a brief bout of work in the morning and my meetup with Islander friends in the late afternoon, I returned briefly to East Meadow and, as I always try to, dropped in on the neighbors who've been in the House Next Door since I was about four. They're 80 now, still as kind and funny as ever, and among the slowly decreasing population of this planet who can call me "Raymond" and get away with it. Two of their kids, a few years younger than me, still live with them (the older of the two temporarily after a divorce). The oldest, now literally my oldest friend in the world, moved to Florida late last year but she's still very much in evidence in that living room that's changed so little in half a century.
*Saturday.
The drive from Edison, New Jersey up to the Thruway got routed, Google Maps style, along both highways and some local four-lane roads. One of them took me to a generic stop-and-rob for Moar Coffee; it was a Kwik Something Or Other, and greatly resembled the most famous of that genre in the Garden State, enough to make me look to see if Dante was playing hockey on the roof:
*Sunday.
I've shared hotels with family, with fellow attorneys, with Mets fans and, at least once, with service dogs on the weekend of their "graduation" from training. This was the first time that I can remember sharing a breakfast room with cosplayers, though. This was the weekend of Genericon, a RPI campus-based convention near Albany. When you've been running on five hours sleep a night for three straight days and are again in need of Moar Coffee, it's a little unsettling to encounter a pink bunny and a walking TARDIS on the way to the toaster. (It only toasted two slices at a time, but may have been bigger than it looked on the inside.)
----
If I remember anything else I forgot, I'll try to add it later.
*Thursday.
I now realise I never gave Sir Terry a proper sendoff; I saw the news of his death right before leaving Rochester on Thursday. I've read only a handful of the treasure that is Discworld, and found Raising Steam,the last of the lot, to be a little off Pratchett's usual fabulousness, but it was still worlds beyond what any author could ever dream of achieving. I heard today that his daughter will be continuing the series. That will keep him alive in a way DEATH will never be able to touch.
*Friday.
In between a brief bout of work in the morning and my meetup with Islander friends in the late afternoon, I returned briefly to East Meadow and, as I always try to, dropped in on the neighbors who've been in the House Next Door since I was about four. They're 80 now, still as kind and funny as ever, and among the slowly decreasing population of this planet who can call me "Raymond" and get away with it. Two of their kids, a few years younger than me, still live with them (the older of the two temporarily after a divorce). The oldest, now literally my oldest friend in the world, moved to Florida late last year but she's still very much in evidence in that living room that's changed so little in half a century.
*Saturday.
The drive from Edison, New Jersey up to the Thruway got routed, Google Maps style, along both highways and some local four-lane roads. One of them took me to a generic stop-and-rob for Moar Coffee; it was a Kwik Something Or Other, and greatly resembled the most famous of that genre in the Garden State, enough to make me look to see if Dante was playing hockey on the roof:
*Sunday.
I've shared hotels with family, with fellow attorneys, with Mets fans and, at least once, with service dogs on the weekend of their "graduation" from training. This was the first time that I can remember sharing a breakfast room with cosplayers, though. This was the weekend of Genericon, a RPI campus-based convention near Albany. When you've been running on five hours sleep a night for three straight days and are again in need of Moar Coffee, it's a little unsettling to encounter a pink bunny and a walking TARDIS on the way to the toaster. (It only toasted two slices at a time, but may have been bigger than it looked on the inside.)
----
If I remember anything else I forgot, I'll try to add it later.
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no subject
Date: 2015-03-18 02:26 pm (UTC)I have little hope for his daughter, though. I'm pretty sure she's had the bigger part of writing the last few books (certainly from Unseen Academicals on), and they lack the spark and sparkle of Pratchett's earlier work. They're altogether darker and heavier (and in the case of Dodger, unreadable). I hate to see it become a franchise. "Tom Clancy's Cold-Blooded Killers presents Operation Death From Above (by Dirk Hilt)"
no subject
Date: 2015-03-19 03:03 am (UTC)Glad to know you're home safe, away from the crazy NJ drivers and no left turns anywhere oddness that is our traffic.
The walking Tardis cracked me up.