I never figured out which cape she meant

Man, someday there will be actual content here again, but I had a splendid weekend and I am fall-over tired; this isn't it.

The New England adventure of the weekend was a success. We got a late start out of Somerville on Saturday primarily due to me and the vagaries of the MBTA (I reject Satan and all his works and all his empty promises including the bus schedule), but when we got to Halibut Point Reservation there was clear sky and ledges of stone and the broken sea-clawed coastline that always looks to me like archetypal ocean, not a warm white-sanded beach, and it didn't matter that there was snow on the ground and some of the trails were trying to grow into the Grimpen Mire, it made me hungry and happy and I am only sorry I did not bring a camera, because I have no photographs of the manuscript blue of the sky and the old cuts of granite reflecting in the flooded quarry like shirred glass or the way the waves poured in green and white over the rocks we didn't climb down to, racked and tilted with abandoned blocks and half-drilled seams, seaweed-slick. Cape Ann granite was a dying industry by the time the Babson Farm Quarry closed in 1929; there is nothing left now of the derricks or the drills or the steam engine named Nella that hauled the weight of granite to Folly Cove but the marks in the stone, bricks at right angles under a scrim of briars, an iron staple anchored deep in the quarry's face like you could lift the years off the earth like a lid. ratatosk had me identify harlequin ducks bobbing unconcernedly over an undertow that would have smashed any one of us. derspatchel showed me the Isles of Shoals on the horizon, the tiny, glinting nick of the White Island Light. Just as we were leaving the state park, we found old, massive, rusting iron beams and flywheels and a boiler, all scattered and evidently not worth either reconstructing or moving, with sapling trees growing through the grate. I hope someone got a picture. It was a day with a lot of time in it.

On fleurdelis28 and Judith's recommendation, we all went for dinner afterward to The Grog in Newburyport. (I ducked into the Middle Street Bookstore first and came away with a copy of Conor McPherson's The Seafarer (2006), which starred Karl Johnson in its original run at the National Theatre. Rob followed me and left with Lloyd Alexander, John Bellairs, and Donald A. Wollheim's Mike Mars in Orbit (1961), which I think takes the prize for some kind of whiz-bang with that title.) There was a lot of seafood. Also, fondue. Also, gingerbread with ice cream. We all agreed that we are going back to Halibut Point when there are more things growing than just the end-of-winter scrub weeds and it might be possible to get near the water without slipping on the ice.

Much of my night was taken up with storytelling. It was a very satisfyingly Odyssean way of doing things.

And even though the commuter rail to Leominster is ridiculous on the weekends—it seems to assume first that you don't really want to go there, and then that you really don't want to come back—I managed to catch the afternoon train in time to have dinner with Matthew and Sarah, who fed me ravioli with butternut squash and carrots (I brought brownies) and introduced me to their two cats of similar coloring and divergent personality. I showed them an episode of The Supersizers . . . They showed me E. J. Barnes' Leatherwing Bat (2001). I seem to have been lent Fata Morgana (1977) by William Kotzwinkle. I got back to Boston around midnight.

I have no idea why I am still awake. I'm going to fix that.

So she rose and she dressed and she pushed back the night

1. I woke up to an explosion of my name on Facebook notifications, which in this rare case heralded a pleasant surprise, because I had nearly forgotten until I saw asakiyume's announcement that a delightfully macabre bit of messing around on cucumberseed's livejournal two Octobers ago had turned into Cinderella Jump Rope Rhymes, edited by Francesca Forrest and illustrated by Adam Oehlers. Contributors include Erik Amundsen, Samantha Henderson, Rose Lemberg, Julia Rios, and other fine writers; I can't wait to see if there are any rhymes I missed. Proceeds go half to charity and the rest to the support of Cabinet des Fées.



Apparently I'm on a streak of good things to wake up to. I would say that I should forget about pieces I've had accepted more often, but I'm sure that way lies some terrible crack-up of paperwork.

2. George Dyson will be at the Brattle Theatre next Tuesday to discuss his new book, Turing's Cathedral. I was already interested for the obvious reasons (and the fact that Dyson was a friend of my father's when I was in high school; some of it was just the windbreakers and living in the Pacific Northwest, but I associated him almost irresistibly with Stephen Falken), but this review is a strong encouragement. Anyone else going to be there?

3. I didn't see this card from 2D Goggles in time for Valentine's Day, but I approve of it nonetheless. Also, that is one sexy Brunel.

4. Courtesy of Dean Grodzins: the Round House in Somerville. How is it I've never walked by this place? Has it in fact been restored?

5. I am meeting lesser_celery for lunch at The Salty Pig. I should leave before the buses of Satan get any ideas.

Seriously, it's like someone flipped a switch in my brain. I am walking around feeling like Alastair Sim at the end of Scrooge (1951): "I don't deserve to be so happy! I can't help it!" I'm used to the toggle going the other way.