Acting on impulse

[fivemack]

I've just accepted an invitation to a New Year's house party.

In Montreal.

I'm to leave Heathrow Boxing Day, and arrive back 8th January; this is an arbitrarily extended interpretation of "New Year", I realise.

Looking forward to seeing papersky, zorinth, rysmiel, redbird ... and more, I'm sure.

Does mean I won't be at Minicon in 2004, but since the place I'm living is on a six-month rent expiring on Maundy Thursday, being in Minneapolis at Easter wasn't really a practical option.

It's very odd to feel able to do this kind of thing; I can hardly call it a grown-up or an adult thing to do, casually leaving the country on an invitation, on three weeks' notice, after half an hour of thought. I suppose it means I'm in the young professional rather than graduate student box ...

I suspect I could learn to like this box.

Comments

[reenigne.livejournal.com]

*looks back through archives* Yes, I thought your name was familiar! Our paths did cross, on ucam.chat, the one time I delurked:

Thomas Womack wrote:
> In article <9094cc849%jtb20@[...]>,
> Julian Brown <jtb20@[...]> wrote:
>> In message <h3b*kn10n@[...]>
>> twomack@[...] (Thomas Womack) wrote:
>>
>>> In article
>>> <pine.os2.3.95.990527005708.402b-100000@[...]>,
>>> Andrew Jenner <amj25@[...]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Has anyone here ever heard of Sucralose? It's a new sweetener which
>>>> tastes exactly like sugar. In fact, it's made of sugar, but with
>>>> some of the OH groups replaced by Cl.
>>>
>>> Ah. Big complex molecules containing covalently-bound chlorine.
>>>
>>> Am I the only one to have read Zodiac recently, and now to be very
>>> scared?
>>>
>>> Tom
>>
>> Elaborate?
>
> OK.
>
> Zodiac is Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash, The Diamond Age,
> Cryptonomicon)'s novel written before Snow Crash. It concerns a
> Greenpeace-style activist in Boston, and includes amusing diatribes on
> the Small Molecules Principle ('Nitrous oxide is best - only three
> atoms. Then ethanol.') and a note, in Stephenson's trademark
> hyperkinetic style, about organic chlorine compounds.
>
> Go forth, buy a copy, and read it; I'd say it was probably a better
> book than Snow Crash or Diamond Age, if only because it's set in our
> universe and therefore the sensawunda is about objects which the
> reader's able to relate to.
>
> Tom

I still haven't got around to got around to reading Zodiac...