• Mood: accomplished
• Music: kittens purring

On a Jet Plane

I've met some really wonderful people in the past few days and gotten some great photographs. Yesterday I got to meet Fred Pohl (who's 90 now) in a ceremony which I imagine is a lot like meeting the Pope. He said hello, shook my hand, and went back to work. I was rendered a bit useless by the thought that I was in Fred Pohl's writing space, but it was just as good. I didn't want to interrupt. He's finishing a novel and says he has ideas for two more. It was as though you were ushered into a room where Einstein sat scribbling furiously on a pile of papers, as fast as his hands could move,, looking a little bedraggled, and someone said "Here's Kyle Cassidy, he wants to ask you some questions about your neckties" -- I'm glad I got to meet him, I hope he's forgotten about me now. The questions I neglected to ask were later answered by his wife, Dr. Elizabeth Hull who treated me with patience and good humor.

After that we went to meet Jennifer Stevenson aka smokingpigeon -- which was wonderful. While things at the Pohl's were like the workings of a venerable great machine in which Things of Incredible and Delicate Importance were happening, Jennifer called to say that she was making us brownies and did we like roller derby? Author of four novels, including The Brass Bed (which is about a man turned into an incubus and imprisoned in a brass bed who is doomed to, er, please every woman who sleeps in the bed -- hilarity ensues) Jennifer is a ball of energy and beautiful chaos careening around effusing energy and joy. We got some great photos. We ate brownies.

Then I had dinner with Ysabeau Wilce, her husband and bubby at a thai place where they gave me four times more food than I could ever hope to eat.

This morning I'm getting on a jet plane and zooming back to my darling trillian_stars -- as much as I like going places, I really like coming home.

It's been great, Chicago, Wisconson, and surrounding places, but I'm headed home.