Whoops, it has been a bit since I’ve written. Let’s see, since the last time Rudder found out / decided that he would b leaving this past weekend after all – they couldn’t get him a flight next weeked so he had to take the one that was already booked. We had steak dinner at the place with the excellent food and the annoyingly slow service Friday (I mean, the even more than usual here slow service) and killed a bottle of red. He rowed Saturday morning,then since the weather was bad we had a nice snuggly day until he had to leave in the late afternoon.
(cue soundtrack of leaving on a Jet Plane and all the other terajerker songs about leaving)
It didn’t go as planned. After arriving at Schiphol (Amsterdam, a couple hours away, too far to come back home) he found that his flight was delayed until 10PM, then until 1AM. They finally got him to Bangkok, where of course he’d missed the connecting flight (or it was cancelled; I didn’t get the whole story) and he got a couple (literally) of hours of sleep in an airport hotel until he was called at 4AM to get on a bus back to the airport. I spoke to him this morning (my morning) and he was in the taxi to our apartment. I estimate the whole trip took just under 40 hours. I’m pretty sure he’s likeing this separation even less than I am.
Sunday I rowed, then did some retail therapy, having figured out how to avoid the problem of getting it home (replaced some underwear that’s getting tatty, bought a magazine I’ll throw out or give away after reading, bought some pajame pants and a T I’ll probably leave in my bag here).
I’m delighted by the birth of a first son to someone I’ve known since he was 4 (and I was 13 – he’s not too young to be a parent!). His parents are good friends of mine and I’m sure they are utterly besotted with their first grandson. I’m also worried about my Dad, who was worryingly groggy on the phone yesterday. Hopefully Mom is getting him to the doctor today. And I’ve been hanging out writing and critiquing lots of poetry on Absolute Write, though I need to back off a bit or I’ll be churning out too much easy facile stuff and checking every five minutes to see if someone’s commented. (Er, did I say “will be”?) I’ve also been enjoying my Jane Austen discussion and realizing somewhat to my surprise how much I’ve learned about good writing from all the SF writers who talk about their craft on LJ. I’m no surprised at all by how well Austen’s work illustrates some of their points.