Columbian Food

Some of my coworkers are Columbian, and they provided the office with lunch today. One dish was essentially fried rice with chicken; one was fried plantains and bananas. Both of those were okay, and as expected. The one which surprised me was the meat dish, which was bits of pork and banana which had been deep fried until they were dry and crunchy. It wasn't bad, just...unexpected. When you bite down on a chunk of meat, you're expecting squish, not crunch. Once I got past that, it was fine.

Writers write

Writers write. Posers whine about how hard it is.
--John August


Incidentally, this is my 1000th post.

Hurricane Sandy

The storm is southeast from us, expected to curve northwest and come ashore right around Atlantic City, New Jersey. We've got some rain and wind and a bit higher tide than normal, but nothing impressive; if it hadn't lasted continuously since last night, you wouldn't think anything unusual was happening.

New Books

• Cities of Gold: army lists for Africa and the Americas, 1492-1698, for the wargame Field of Glory: Renaissance. 
• Rogue, by Michael Z Williamson.
• Space 1889: Red Sands

Josh arrives

Josh arrived at Dulles on Sunday evening. The main thing of note--aside from "Yay, Josh is back!"--is that there's no good place at Dulles airport to wait for arrivals. People can be coming through any one of several different doors and you can't watch all of them. Apparently the designer had never wanted to meet anyone at an airport, and no one had ever wanted to meet him.

Expat Explorer

HSBC had an "Expat Explorer's Guide", just in case you're planning to move to another country if Obama wins, the US collapses for other reasons, Iran gets the Bomb, New Madrid has another earthquake, or other factors make you want to get out of town in a really big way.

Enroute

Gwen sent two messages this evening:

(6.14pm US Eastern time) "Arrived nice and early, had a delicious breakfast (maccas* for Joshua, coffee & croissants pour moi), waiting for check-in to open :-)" 

and

(7.38pm US Eastern time) "He's all set and passed through security - next stop, USA!"

Eager anticipation.

*Macca's is McDonalds, in Australian