Glad to Be Home

Christina and Matt had a much earlier flight than I did, but I wanted to spend as much time as I could with them, and wasn't sure what I could get done in London on a Saturday morning while hauling luggage around with me. So we left the hotel before 6:00, got a taxi to Paddington Station, the fast train to Heathrow, got them checked in an had a cup of coffee before they had to go through security.

I got back on the train and went to my terminal, only to discover that they won't let you check in early there. So I got juice and coffee, wrote my final few postcards, bought stamps, posted them, logged onto an internet machine and deleted spam from my email account, got a sandwich, all while hauling all my stuff around with me. Finally, two hours before my flight, I was able to check in. Then went through security and had a long wait before they announced the gate. Wandered through all the shops there and got a bottle of scotch to bring home and some juice for the flight and some wine gums but there wasn't much there that I was interested in, despite the huge series of Harrod's shops and the British Museum store and all that.

The flight was long but fine, and I got to watch X Men 2 and The Life of David Gale. Got through Immigration quickly but it took forever for my bag to get off the plane. Got to the main terminal and there was Jim! I was so happy to see him! We got my bag back and drove home. I was so glad to be back in Seattle! Glad to pick up dinner at our local Thai restaurant! To see our house, our cats! Clearly I've been doing too much travelling this year after the reading trips to Calgary and Toronto, and then the trip to Istanbul and Bulgaria.

I'm home for a while now, though. I'd like to get up to Victoria to see my parents before they come down for Christmas because I haven't been there since April 2002, and at the end of October we're heading east so I can go to World Fantasy Convention in DC and Jim can visit relatives in Baltimore. Oh, and we also plan a beach weekend to belatedly celebrate our 20th anniversary since the Clarion West workshop made it so we couldn't go at the time of our actual anniversary.

But for now I'm home. Home. Ah.

And I slept well last night, from about 10:00 to 6:30. Hooray.

Peter Watts's Starfish, an SF novel about a future wherein corporations are sending genetically altered misfits to the deepest sections of the ocean to harness the energy there. The story revolves around how the characters adapt to the world there and how the world above treats them. Fascinating.

William Gibson's Idoru is the near-ish future novel about what happens when a rock star decides to marry an AI Japanese pop star. It focuses on a net researcher hired to find out more about the pop star and on a member of the rock star's fan club who is trying to find out if the rumour about the marriage is true. Intriguing story flipping back and forth between the two situations. I liked this, but enjoyed Pattern Recognition (see my August 10th entry) much more.

Lois McMaster Bujold's The Spirit Ring is her first fantasy novel, published midway through her Miles Vorkosigan series (see my July 15, August 19, and August 26, September 16th, September 23, and October 7, 2001, and June 9th 2002 entries for comments on those and my August 25, 2002 entry for comments on her second fantasy novel). This is the story of the daughter of a sorcerer, whose town is captured by an evil duke with his own evil sorcerer. A dark adventure with magic spells large and small and a love charm.

Bailed on Paul McAuley's Pascale's Angel as it just couldn't keep my interest.