Well, I’m sitting, hungover, in the departure lounge of the Canberra Airport (possibly the only airport I’ve been in that doesn’t sell coffee. On Wednesday morning I got an unexpected opportunity to get on an airplane, fly to Canberra, spend two days seeing friends, attending the Conflux science fiction convention, and party. It’s been terrific. Highlights include unexpectedly sitting next to Sean Williams on the flight from Melbourne to Canberra; a too brief, but still great, conversation with Nick Stathopoulos (who does the best Red and Blue impression EVER) on Thursday; seeing Garth; a great dinner on Thursday night with Justin, Sean, Deb, Garth, Ellen Datlow, Jack Dann and others. Friday was running around bumping into people, seeing Magic Trevor, doing convention stuff, unexpectedly doing a panel on the best fantasy of the year, and lots of drinking. I think the only thing I didn’t get to do was sleep. I had a wonderful room, but I think I averaged three or four hours per night.

And, after too brief a stay, I’m now headed home. Pretty soon I’ll be in Perth getting ready for Jessica’s sixth birthday tomorrow. I’ll try to do a brief report on Conflux for Locus, though I doubt anything will convey the magic of Jack Dann and Jim Frenkel standing on a stage in front of a bunch of people enjoying the fruits of a free bar talking about that good sheep lovin’. Somewhere in there, I dealt briefly with email, saw a great concept sketch for the cover of the Vance Treasury, and saw a Shaun Tan print called The Waterfbuffallo that I have to have. All in all, a memorable sojourn.