9:34 AM
I live.

No pictures yet--our Net connection at the hotel isn't working, so I'm posting from an internet cafe up the street.

Yesterday was a tiring but fun blur. Much work at work, followed by a rush to the airport and several flights. On the trip over the ocean, I was lucky enough to have one of the few empty seats on the plane right next to me, so even if the seats didn't offer plenty of room (they did), I would have been fine. Finally got a chance to dig into The Secret Parts of Fortune on the plane, and it's a great as I'd hoped it would be. I also got to see a couple movies on the cool little monitor built into the armrest of my seat. A bit of sleep, too, but not enough.

But you're not interested in all that, are you?

Okay, England. We landed, made our way through Customs, down into London and to our hotel. Local time: 11:30 AM. Time according to my internal clock: 5:30 AM. Hours of sleep in the last 36: six. In a bid to beat jetlag, we set out into the city. Had lunch at a nearby pub, then tubed over to the Cabinet War Rooms. I toured them with my family last time I was here, but they're significantly expanded now. Recently, apparently, as the flow of the tour is still a bit disjointed. But it was still cool to see.

Then we walked up through Trafalgar Square up to Leicester Square, passing through some of the great bookstores on Charing Cross along the way. On Bear Road, home to a lot of intimidatingly cool tiny little bookstores, I picked up a great old copy of Rudyard Kipling's Kim--so old that the publisher's logo on the spine is a swastika.

By now we were having problems having coherent conversations, let alone witty ones. But we were determined to stay awake until at least 7:00. That was still three hours away. We needed a destination. So we set out to find Forbidden Planet, a great comic and bookshop. We had both been there before, but it still took a bit of dazed wandering before we got there. I did a lot of browsing, but didn't find anything I wanted to haul all the way back. We did pick up the latest copy of Edge magazine, though. I can see why Bezzy likes it--it's a magazine with an editorial viewpoint very much like his own.

Then, back toward the hotel at last. A quick meal at a Chinese restaurant, and I was in bed before 8PM for the first time in seven years.

I could tell you about our adventures this morning...but there has to be something to write up tomorrow.

Until then.