On the road again: Boston, day 7

Travel days are rarely fun, and they're usually far less fun when it's snowing in your departure city and airlines are canceling flights right and left. That was the situation this morning, but it all worked out amazingly well, for which I am thankful. The cab ride to the airport was uneventful, our flight was smooth and departed less than an hour after the scheduled time, and thanks to our pilots, I landed only half an hour late. All things considered, it was a superb travel day.

Of course, an avalanche of work hit me when I walked into my home office, and I'm still digging out, but that's the norm for first days back. I hope to catch up tonight and then be back at full speed tomorrow--or at least be very close to that state.

To those tasks I go now.

On the road again: Boston, day 6; Arisia, day 4

I had the very first autographing session of the convention, so it seemed somehow fitting that I would be part of the last joint reading panel today. As you might expect from an event starting after noon on the day when most fans were checking out, no one showed up to hear me or Michael Ventrella read from our works. Staring at an empty reading room is always a bit rough on the ego, but it's happened to me before, and it'll happen again, so I'm reasonably used to it. In this case, it was nice to get to meet and chat with Michael, who as it turns out plans to interview me at some point for his blog.

The daylight hours before and after the reading largely went to work, as you might expect.

The evening brought a fine dinner at the always wonderful No. 9 Park. Most of the meal was excellent, as always. The two foie dishes were amazing, and the cheese course was the best of this trip. The dessert, however, was weak and not up to the rest of the meal. Still, No. 9 Park remains, for me, a must-eat place when in Boston.

More work awaits, then packing, and tomorrow morning is work, then travel home.

On the road again: Boston, day 5; Arisia, day 3

I passed most of the daytime in useless indulgence: more sleep by far than normal, reading, a bit of TV movie watching, and of course some work. Okay, the work part wasn't an indulgence, but I needed to do it.

Dinner again took us to Cambridge, this time for a meal at East by Northeast, whose chef, Phillip Tang, won Boston Magazine's 2010 Best Up-and-Coming Chef award. The menu accurately refers to the dishes as locally sourced and Chinese inspired. We sampled quite a few of the small plates--the whole menu is tapas-style--and enjoyed them all. None, however, blew us away. I wouldn't recommend a special trip just for this place, but if you're in town, it's worth a try.

Because the restaurant doesn't offer desserts and because we've wanted to try the place for some time, after dinner we walked the couple of short blocks to Christina's Homemade Ice Cream. With great ingredients, over fifty flavors available, and a growing national rep, this place was tailor-made for an ice cream lover like me. Sadly, though I enjoyed the flavors I tasted, none had that magic that so many of Jeni's ice creams provide. If I lived here, I'd eat Christina's sometimes, but more often, I'd mail-order Jeni's.

We rushed back from dinner for my 9:30 panel on the singularity and how SF writers should deal with it. This panel sat right in the middle of the other two I've done here, with the audience frequently trying to take over and the moderator gamely trying to wrest back control. We unfortunately had one audience member who knew everything and wanted to lecture on all of it, at one point talking for over ten straight minutes until the moderator finally was able to get him to surrender the floor. The discussion also wandered all over the place and never seemed to muster a clear focus, but most of the audience stayed and seemed to have a decent time.

More than any other convention I have attended, Arisia has many panels that end up blurring the line between audience and panel. Sometimes I think that is a horrible idea, and other times, it seems wisely democratic. Regardless of what I feel, however, if I'm going to keep being on programming at this con, I better get used to it.

On the road again: Boston, day 4; Arisia, day 2

My con activities today included two panels. The first, for which I was the moderator, was about truth being stranger than fiction. The audience, which grew to over three dozen folks, was into the topic, my fellow panelists were entertaining, and all involved seemed to have a good time.

The second panel focused on the uneven distribution of technologies, now and in the future, with a particular emphasis on the digital divide. The rather small room filled to SRO levels and beyond (some people were sitting on the floors at either end of the panelist table), everyone seemed very engaged in the topic, and I know quite a bit about the topic. Despite all the that, the panel very much did not work for me. I ended up shutting down and saying almost nothing, partly from frustration and partly because I was afraid of what I might say about some of the proceedings had I opened my mouth. I'm never sure whether it's better in such circumstances to go deadly quiet, which people do notice, or to turn into a complete asshole, but I almost inevitably choose as I did today and simply shut up.

Because I wanted to catch at least part of the con's masquerade, we headed to a rather late dinner at Hungry Mother in Cambridge. HM specializes in upscale, mostly locally sourced southern food, which is an odd combination to find around here. We sampled only smaller dishes, but all were at least good, and a few, notably the grits (from North Carolina's own Anson's Mill) with cheese and a bit of bacon were a perfect comfort food for a cold night.

I'm still puzzled about my reaction to that panel, and I probably will be for some time. I hope I do better on tomorrow's group discussion.

On the road again: Boston, day 3; Arisia, day 1

The Arisia convention began during the afternoon, but my daylight hours belonged to work. The work was interesting and important, but as usual, I can't discuss it. Some other time, I'll write an entry explaining why--but not now.

The late afternoon/early evening brought my autograph session, which officially started just as the dealers' room space, where I was to sign, opened for business. I don't expect many people to ask me to autograph books in the best of circumstances, and these were about as bad a set of arrangements as a con could have assigned me. I thus was not at all surprised to sign only one book; in fact, I was happy for that chance.

From there, we scooted to dinner at Menton, a fine new restaurant from the folks behind the wonderful No. 9 Park. I'd read good things about Menton and hoped it would live up to its hype.

It did. The service was very good, the dining room lovely and elegant, and, most importantly, every single dish was extremely tasty. A pleasant surprise was the bread, all three types of which were excellent.

Menton is now on my must-eat list for Boston.

After dinner, I worked, wandered the con a bit, and then took part in an eleven o'clock panel on balancing writing with your day job. We were opposite a huge panel on BDSM, so our audience was rather small. Still, its members outnumbered the panelists, so we pressed on. By the end, the audience seemed happy, we panelists had enjoyed ourselves, and all was well.

To end and for no particular reason, here are Shibori and Holden pining for the fjords some days ago.

On the road again: Boston, day 2

Yesterday, I mentioned the trees covered on one side with snow. Here's a shot of them; as always, click on any image to enlarge it. I took this with my phone and from across the street, but with luck it'll at least serve to give you the idea.


Even the signs hanging from the buildings ended up with snow on one side.


Today was mostly a work-in-the-hotel day, thanks to the snow's effect on some proposed meetings.

The last time I'd eaten at L'Espalier, the meal had been so weak--at times, so outright bad--that I'd written that it would take a lot to get me to go there again. Almost all the online reviews I've seen recently have praised the place, however, so I took them as a good omen and gave it another shot tonight.

I'm very glad I did. The meal was topnotch from start to finish. We had the chef's tasting menu, so we never knew what was coming next, which is one of my favorite ways to dine at a good restaurant. Though the chefs kept the shape of the meal largely within classic French boundaries, their creations displayed enough inventiveness that I never found it too predictable. I must now recant my previous post and once again recommend L'Espalier to anyone in this area. (If you go for the chef's tasting menu, though, bring plenty of money; it is not cheap.)

I have more work to do and then must crash so I can get up early for meetings, but for no good reason, I thought you might enjoy a photo of our cat, Lyra, attempting to help with laptop work (fortunately, not mine).


She did manage to trigger the spelling checker; perhaps the sheer numerical orientation of the Excel spreadsheet offended her.