Time to take this one
… and time likewise for you to put it on yours.
My good and beloved friends L. Neil and Cathy L. Z. Smith found themselves taking an unexpected trip to Tucson, which brought them through Burque today. I got an email alert from El Neil a couple days ago. I’ve not seen them for a couple years, which is that long too long, so I was happy for the chance to see them.
Early this afternoon Neil called to let me know they were on the road. He’s suffering laryngitis and asked if I did text messaging. I told him I didn’t. He said, too bad, since he used it all the time and it would save his voice.
So after I hung up I got out the User’s Manual for my Tracfone to look up how to do this here new-fangled texting thing. Yes, as I told Steve Kubica in my reply to his comment on my keeping stuff straight post, I’m boldly striding forward into the past and finally learning!
This delighted me. The upshot being Neil and I whiled away the afternoon texting each other like 12-year old girls.
Eventually we met up at the Happy House Chinese restaurant, which I was introduced to by my friend Roslee a couple weeks ago, and which I really liked. Their daughter Rylla wasn’t along, which was too bad, since she’s a great kid, but her Mom called her (after Rylla had texted Dad a couple times) and I got to say hi.
To my happy surprise Neil had brought presents for me. One was an advance copy (which he was kind enough to sign) of the aforementioned graphic novel, Roswell, Texas, about to be released by Big Head Press. How great is that? Having heard him do readings from it while it was being written I’ve really been looking forward to reading the whole thing. It’s available in its entirety online, but since I’m still on dial-up reading it that way wasn’t really an option: those pages make large downloads.
Anyway, it looks great. Neil co-authored it with Rex F. May. Artwork’s by Scott Bieser – who also did the wonderful artwork for the graphic novel of El Neil’s The Probability Broach
As if that weren’t enough, and more than, Neil also presented me with a bound version of Scott’s SF satire comic The Last Sonuvabitch of Klepton Archive, which I’d read in serial form at The Libertarian Enterprise, and which I’m quite delighted to have. I’ll have to get Scott to sign both when next I see him, which I hope is soon.
(In an aside at once amusing and exasperating, over at Wendy McElroy’s blog, Wendy is chronicling Scott’s battle for freedom of expression with the amusingly named Dutch Ministry of “Justice”, which, horrifically and evilly, is arresting cartoonists for expressing heretical views.)
Of course along with all of this I got to have dinner with a couple of my favorite people. Happy House came through; they enjoyed the food, as did I. And I really enjoyed the company.
