The Viable Paradise party at drumiller's place was excellent!

I'll write more in detail tomorrow, and likely with pictures too. For now though I am headed to bed. Something about spending 8 hours in the car wears a guy down.

We didn't have all the folks who were originally going to show up, and we didn't go to tidepools or fancy dinner, but dammit we had a VP Party.

We even made Scurvy Cure.

It was very, very good to see mac_stone again and to meet medievalist and to hang out with gregvaneekhout and Shweta and Nathaniel. The latter two aren't Viable Paradise peoples, but they're associated in writer-craziness.

I feel so much more like a writer when I hang out with writers on a regular basis.

So much so that I've prepped up The Strongest Wind That Blows to send off into the world. It's really strange submitting fiction on paper.

Now we get our things packed up so we can go to World Fantasy Convention this week. With luck, upstate New York won't be hit by a freak blizzard.

We aren't letting a little thing like fires get in the way. We're still throwing a Viable Paradise party this weekend. If you were invited before, consider yourself doubly invited now. Hotel space might be more of a challenge, due to the number of people evacuated, but that should be easing up. Also, we have crash space here at our house.

The current plan is for people to show up whenever they'd like after noon on Saturday. We might make an excursion to tide pools, though the fires have made the ocean kind of nasty. We definitely plan on taking everyone to Stone World Bistro, where the food is outstanding -- but that will wait until evening.

As for how things are going -- the air outside smells like the aftermath of fourth of July. Somewhere between an electrical fire and the sulfur of burned out matches. I rinsed a nasty layer of dust off our front patio (tiny thing that it is). If I'm feeling extra ambitious I'll clean the patio so grilling can happen.

First priority is kitchen cleaning. Hosting guests for several days has a habit of making the kitchen less than tidy, especially when it's extra warm and hard to breathe. Not, mind you, that it's loads easier to breathe now.

Thanks to unconventional prompting from athenais a firm date has been set for a SoCal VPX party.

Mark your chronological tagging devices and associated calendrical confabulations.

October 27th.

There will be the option of tide pools. There will be booze (it wouldn't really be a VPX party otherwise, would it).

I think we can fit pretty much everyone from VPX in our house, so everyone is welcome!

There will be more details as we figure out how many folks'll be showing up.