headed home

Gay and I find ourselves hanging around in Chicago now, after a hectic but not high-pressure week at the biannual Ernest Hemingway conference, which was in Oak Park, Illinois, EH's birthplace.

Heading back tonight to the steamy hellhole of Gainesville, Florida.

We had an interesting time yesterday.  Went into town and met Gary Wolfe and Stacey for a boat ride, an architectural tour of the Chicago harbor.  There are many buildings around the harbor, as you might have guessed.  Then we went up to their apartment, I think on the East Side, and played with their two old cats for awhile, drinking a fine little bottle of Eiswein.  (No, the cats didn't have any.)

We had dinner at one of Gary's favorite neighborhood restaurants, a cavernous rib place, where the fare was indeed remarkable, tender slow-grilled ribs with a fine spectrum of sauces. 

Enough of this high living, though.  I must hie me back out to the asteroid belt, where real men make a living hoisting verbs and adjectives, muttering imprecations as they worry them into place.

Hope I can get into high gear on the novel.  In the best of all possible worlds, to which I always aspire, I would finish it before Worldcon.  But Worldcon is early, mid-August.  So open a fresh bottle of that new high-velocity ink, and write harder!

Joe