Kitanzi's Colloquium

Just for novelty's sake, maybe I'll post about something other than memes and/or movie nights, hmmm? It's a concept.

I just got home last night from an excellent weekend in Michigan visiting a close friend.

Friday ACat dropped me off at the MARTA which kindly delivered me to Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport in plenty of time to... stand in line for security for nearly an hour, followed by running down escalators and getting to my gate just as they were preparing to wrap up boarding. Whew. Carry-on luggage gains weight in direct proportion to the attempted speed of the carrier.

The flight was fine, and D was waiting for me right where he said he'd be, to whisk me off through the streets of Detroit. It turned out to be a lovely weekend with lots of snuggling, no lunches, tasty dinners, great company, a baby panther in the house, the Comfy Bed, many stairs and a trip to the New Detroit Science Center to see Our Body: The Universe Within. That spawned lots of slightly macabre jokes about the possibilities of haunting and/or zombies at the museum after the lights went out. The exhibit itself is more than a little bit controversial, with some evasive answers about where the bodies originally came from and on whose authority but it's absolutely fascinating. The museum has many other excellent exhibits, but that plus the Imax theater's film on the human body really made my inner bio-geek very happy.

Sunday afternoon D got me to the airport early enough to placate my neurotic certainty that I'm going to miss the plane, no matter what - only to get conflicting information once we were there on when the plane was actually leaving. Sadly, the Detroit Metro airport isn't designed to let you comfortably kill time before passing security, so we said our goodbyes without stretching them out very much, and parted ways. Security on this end was a snap, and of course since I was on time/early they delayed the plane. Twice. Dammit.

I spent the time reading, watching the clock, and speculating on how much of a spectacle we might have been able to make of ourselves next to the security checkpoint if we'd known we had that much time. *ahem* Oh well, this chance is gone - perhaps to grab the next one! *evil grin*

I'm home today, having scheduled it off for rest and recuperation (and unpacking, and laundry, and PT, and groceries...), but it was a really good weekend. Just thought I ought to mention that those do still happen, even if I haven't been posting about them much.

We're back from OVFF,and clearly need a vacation from our vacation. I'll try to get around to a proper con report sometime, but looking back at past sucesses on such things, don't hold your breath. I'll be pretty sketchy on catching up with LJ (No, I didn't use the business center for the purpose, though many others did) so if there's anything I should know, please sing out! (Keeping in mind that, yes, I do know about the brand new Glasser! Wheee!)

Right, it's been months since I posted anything with actual content that wasn't about work. Time to make at least a token effort to catch up, because otherwise it gets harder and harder. At this point, all I can reasonably try for is a thumbnail of the summary of the outline of the highlights of the last couple months, but it's still gonna be long.

( Year end and England )
( Training and NJ! )
( And now... )

In about a half hour we're leaving for the airport. I think I'll probably be able to find internet access during my two week training course in NJ, but just in case, see you all later and wish me luck!

We made it back last night, came in the front door just about 6 pm and did the most urgent stuff (showers, food, triage of paper mail and email) and then had a little time for ourselves before I finally collapsed and went to sleep. That was earlier than I expected, and I figure I'm in a time zone approximately halfway between London and GA at this point, but what the hell. I WILL be doing a con report at least and probably a whole honeymoon report, but it will take a little time. Thanks yet again to all the lovely people who helped make that trip happen, and even more to all the very sweet people who took us into their homes! (In spite of my glorpy, exhausting, disgusting cold which lingered on and on.) I'm not even bothering to try and catch up on LJ, though I may hunt around for con reports. If anyone has anything I should see, please let me know? And now, getting ready to go back to work... yikes.

Well, to me at least - possibly not to everyone else, so....
( let's cuttag it )

ACat has the full list, at least as far as the card tells us -
http://www.livejournal.com/users/autographedcat/126222.html?nc=5&style=mine

Thank you, all of you, for an amazingly generous wedding gift! We'll see most of you in February!

nrivkis just dropped one of the biggest, shiniest surprises on ACat and me that I have ever received.

Apparently she and a consortium of LOVELY friends (you all know who you are - I don't know all the names yet, though I'm told the card with them should arrive shortly after our wedding date next Friday!) have conspired to buy us a honeymoon.

In England.

Covering both of our airfare, both ways, and the hotel while we are at the UK Con next year, and our memberships. AND arranging the tickets, and the transporation, and staying in peoples' homes if we have time to spend beyond the con, and generally spoiling the hell out of us before, during and after.

I am caught somewhere between brain explosion and incoherent with incredulous joy. We've been determined to go, especially since that will be about the right time to see telynor marry filceolaire, but we've been worried about the finances, especially since it's fairly soon after Worldcon which we're also determined to go to. This is just... mindboggling. I knew we have some good friends - I didn't know you all aspired to be angels! :) *BEARHUGS*

*happysigh* You know, I don't think I ever had quite so much fun at a con that I saw so little of.

( What I did with my weekend )

Travel meme from cyan_blue via nrivkis:

What's the last place you traveled to, outside your own home state/country?

Depends on how you define home state, actually. If home state is where I live, the last trip was to MA, which is the state I was born in. If that's actually defined as my home state, then... I'm not sure. Either TN or AL, I think. My last trip outside my country was to England!

What's the most bizarre/unusual thing that's ever happened to you while traveling?

On the way back from England, a passenger died in the toilet at the end of our row, and I had entirely too good a view of the emergency procedings. Come to think of it, we had an emergency landing in Quebec. Technically, the last country I visited was Canada. *G*

If you could take off to anywhere, money and time being no object, where would you go?

Oh my. Um, I dunno... can I make it an overall trip of Europe?

Do you prefer traveling by plane, train or car?

Plane, actually. It's shorter. I don't particularly like travelling, though I like being at the places I'm travelling TO.

What's the next place on your list to visit?

OH, for OVFF, in October. :) Though there may be brief visits to TN or something similar first!