We’re on the plane home now. When we checked in, the attendant said solemnly, “This flight is very full, so…we’ve upgraded you to business class.” Oh, darn! We’ve eaten, and watched “Out of Time” (Denzel Washington), which was reasonably good. It’s only 6:42 a.m. LA time. Ack.

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Things I’ve forgotten to mention:

We did buy a few things at the Andromeda Bookstore in London: two books that are hard to find in the US, and a video of “Free Enterprise”, which Ken has seen and I haven’t. Silly stuff.

At the LotR exhibit, they had a booth in which you could sit in a “cart”, and they’d do the digital effects to make one person look large (normal-sized) and one person look small (Hobbit-sized) with an appropriate background, etc. For £3, they’d take your picture like that. I sorely wanted to do it (yes, I’m a geek), but the line was too long (and the crowd too heavy, etc.). Maybe when the exhibit comes to Boston. Now I know what time to go, etc.

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So, “We Will Rock You” was truly surreal. We all agreed that “surreal” was the best way to describe it. It was wonderful, fun, campy, silly, rocking—and surreal. I passed up the chance to buy a Flash Gordon t-shirt, and I’ll have to see if they have a website. I do love Flash Gordon. I’d love a video of the production, and hope they do one someday.

We got up yesterday, abluted, and finally got moving. First we went to Greenwich, because Ken wanted to see the clocks and stuff. We hiked through the park, which was gorgeous and grey with stark trees and a blocked-up door to Faerie (I took a picture). I wish I’d had more energy to enjoy it—instead, I was mostly concentrating on making it through. We took pictures of ourselves standing on the Prime Meridian Line, etc. The museum was interesting, but not quite my thing, and my brain got full very quickly.

We stopped at a little café for lunch. The food was good, the servers brainless. I had a goats’ cheese toastie and salad, and Ken has basil chicken, and I warmed up with a pot of Earl Grey.

Then we went to the Museum of London, for several reasons. One was that we’d never been, other than to buy stuff in the store. The other was that a friend, Eowyn, had asked that we look up the accession numbers of two embroidered bags in the Stuart and later exhibit. Well, we tromped all over the exhibit and couldn’t find them. I asked a guard, who looked in a few cases, then called on his walkie-talkie. No-one else seemed to recognise the description of the bags, and I was sent p to the information desk. Who sent me to the security desk to call the Secretary of the Later Exhibits. Who finally put me in touch with the right curator. Turns out the bags were only on display for a few months, as part of a special Samuel Pepys exhibit. But she found the numbers for me. We went through part of the museum, but ran out of time, so we’ll have to go back the next time we visit. Lots and lots of cool stuff there. The remains and sarcophagus of a wealthy Roman woman, found in London (we saw the excavation on “Time Team” a few years ago), for example.

We bought postcards, and labelled them, but we ran out of time in the airport today and never wrote them. How pathetic is that? We’ll have to mail them when we get back…

After the museum, we met up with Melisende and John, who took us to an SCA-favourite restaurant, Savoir Faire. I had a chicken liver starter (very yummy) and boeuf bourgenon (or however you spell it); Ken had some sort of pâté and the lamb. Melisende had a garlic mussels starter that smelled wonderful. Anyway, after that, we all went to the show, then headed home, whereupon Ken packed and I finished reading one of M&J’s books (Murder at the War, set at an early Pennsic—one of those books I’ve never gotten around to picking up. Amusing, but weak writing. The author is still being published, and I’m curious to check out her later work—Murder was her first book.).

Today has been uneventful. A long cab ride to the airport. An early lunch at TGI Friday’s in the airport—mediocre food, not up to their usual standards. And onto the plane.

Once we get home, we’ll do laundry, sort mail, and probably go to bed early. We head out tomorrow for a weekend-long SCA event. It’s one that’s extremely hard to get into, and this is the first year we’ve managed it. Should be interesting.

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Home now. Very, very tired. I thought about napping, but decided against it. Now, it’s not quite 7:30 p.m., and I’m regretting that decision. I don’t want to go to bed now and then wake up at 1 a.m. But I’m too brain dead to do much of anything.

I’ve sorted some of the mail, and have a pile of things to deal with in the morning when I’m coherent again. Several more holiday cards/newsletters arrived, and my new In Design, so I can design the February GP in a whole new program in OS X, whee! On the downside, two rejections. After this weekend, one of my top goals is to get my submission tracking file into some semblance of shape. Anything that was sent after early September is something of a mystery; I have no e-mail or Word files to indicate what was sent. I’ll have to go through hard copy folders to check for rejections. For the stories that I’d already typed in all of the submissions and rejections over the years, pfft. I recycled the hard copies of the tracking sheets. I can re-create where things were sent from the rejection letters, but not how long the responses took. Which isn’t a huge issue, really.

Anyway. Laundry is going (thanks to Ken) and we’re mostly unpacked (largely thanks to Ken). There are still a few piles of stuff around, but the suitcases are empty, as is the big box.

I wish I had the energy to do _something_. I kind of want to write, but when I actually think about it, my brain reminds me that I have the beginnings of a headache… I didn’t write this entire vacation, I confess. I thought about it now and then, and did scribble down some notes for the next scene(s) in AETW. I want it done before Sarah visits. Ideally, I’d like it to be done about two weeks before she visits, which would allow me time to go through Rowan and make some changes to it. But we’ll see. The annoying thing is, of course, that the _next_ new novel, after AETW and ALNM and Rowan edits, working titled Adirondack, has been hammering at my brain lately. I’m just trying to get the notes and ideas down, so that when I _am_ ready to start it, I have enough to go on. I’d like to do it as a novel dare sometime mid-year. But again, we’ll see…

Right, I’m going to post these last few entries, and then get caught up with the Paris entries tomorrow. Which of course you won’t have noticed are missing, depending on when you read this. Or something like that.