Guess I let a few days slip on by without a blog entry. That’s because
Break was interrupted with a cascade of mishaps, starting with Wednesday’s
hey-this-weather’s-beautiful thaw that led to basement window wells
overflowing with slushy run-off and then a half-dozen streams x-crossing along the
walls and the floor in the basement. Could have been a big deal, but I shoveled
the remaining yard-snows into a carefully engineered scheme of locks, sluices,
and channels for redirecting the surge, and I made sure the
water wasn’t running through anything electrical, then set the dehumidifier and
house fans to do what they do best.

And then I watched a couple of basketball games while the temps outside
dipped again to freezing and iced the crisis to a halt.

Now I’m making final preparations for a train ride on the steam-fueled Amtrak
Puff-and-Huff down to Penn Station later this week. D. and I decided today
to have Ph. join me, so he’ll be making the trip too, heading to the Big Apple
to celebrate his Big 16th b-day at the CConference of CConferences. You’d think
for 300 chips a night the fancy-pants conference hotel would have a swimming
pool, but alas, they do not.

Because I don’t know my way around Metropolis, I went ahead and plotted out a few
points of interest using Wayfaring. Add to it if you care to.I
lifted most of it from the comments and ideas here and
here and added a couple of markers
of my own. It’s a start.

Maybe I’ll blog again before the conference, maybe not. I have a game
tomorrow night, and more b-day happenings on Wednesday. Add to that the
horse race between my conference paper (which enjoys a slight lead) and the first draft of my
dissertation prospectus (which shall be sent to diss-director’s inbox before the
end of the week), and I have plenty enough on hand to keep the blog at bay. Of
course, just like the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAAs, such things are hard to
foresee.