Pubmeet report

I had a lovely time at the pubmeet yesterday. We met at the Pub At Third Place in Ravenna this time, rather than at the Blue Star in Wallingford, where we had lost our reservation for the back room two months in a row. The Pub At Third Place is not as good a space for us as the back room of the Blue Star, but it was comfortable enough and had good food and good beer. It even has cider on tap, although they had run out of it and were serving bottles of Spire instead. The fact that it is connected to a bookstore makes it particularly fannish, I think.

I caught a ride to the pub with my new neighbors in Fremont, holyoutlaw and juliebata. We found Elinor Busby in the parking lot having a car tire changed by a guy from AAA who, she had discovered, has read a bunch of Buz's books. Down in the pub, we were soon joined by exotic foreign visitors daveon (actually long past his exotic phase, although just barely still foreign) and his wife, Maryse, whom I had last seen (and first met) when Sharee and I stayed at their house in Bath in the summer of 2005. Oh wait, that's not right! I knew I'd seen her again since then, when she visited Seattle at least one other time, although I'm forgetting when that was, but I remember an expedition to the Elysian and another to the New Orleans. Were those separate visits? Anyway, Dave and Maryse are here looking for an apartment in anticipation of their move to Seattle next month, when they will be transformed into humdrum locals like the rest of us.

A newly mustache-free jerrykaufman told me he has been enjoying Science-Fiction Five-Yearly, especially the John Carter piece unearthed by Rich Coad. I believe he also made special mention of the piece by the high-heeled fishlifter. I chatted with Karrie Dunning about the new Beatles album, Love, and promised to burn a copy of the Beatles mash-up Revolved for her. Karrie told a funny story about one of her NOAA trips to the Arctic, which involved a random encounter with my old girlfriend, Robyn, in Alaska. I'd forgotten that Robyn had worked up there for a while. It's a wonder I remember anything anymore. I'm sure it's just that the memorybanks have filled up over time and are dumping old memories to make way for new ones. Ahem.

Later, I probably belabored my concerns about an ongoing social problem I'm having, but I needed the perspective of the wiser heads in the group, particularly kate_schaefer and akirlu. Many thanks to both of them -- and to Grace, who was discovered upstairs in the bookstore, unaware of the pubmeet below -- for their thoughts and advice. Hope I wasn't too whingey. As things wound down, Kate and Glenn kindly agreed to give me a ride home, and it was all good.

Let's do it again next month!