Short Hiatus, Seaside, and Steampunk

 

We are off traveling.

This time its off to San Diego for a short business trip.

The good news is that we will be on the Pacific coast with its lovely beaches, sea mist, and so much more. The weather promises to be warmly moist (maybe with a bit of rain), and a change of scenery will be more than nice.

We adore Carlsbad (links to post for our last trip from August of 2009).  Its beach side shopping area has some “local color”, small stores and independent restaurants - several that serve fresh sea food pizza (surprisingly tasty), and a used book store called Fahrenheit 451 (links to Yelp) which purportedly has some very old books – we are talking 500 years old.

The not so great bit is that we will be missing the Wild West Con - steam punk convention held in Tucson this weekend. We are very very sad.

It promises to be a blast with an interesting venue. Held on a Western style movie set here in the Wild West of Arizona with all those Cacti, dust, and dry weather. I am thinking the attendees just may believe they have stepped back in time. They are featuring several authors, one which we had planned on stalking (Cherie Priest was my first choice). The plan was to get all dressed up in steam”ish” Victoriana style, get some books signed, and afterward to share pictures and whatnot in a blog post. But business before pleasure, as they say.

Pictures included in this post where taken by John from the beach in Carlsbad, and these gorgeous steampunk”ish” Native American statues from Sedona below.  I cannot imagine how much they weigh since they are left out doors all night long and have not been stolen -  they are handcrafted from welded iron and located at the Village at Tlaquepaque.

Our bags are packed, the house/cat sitter is set, and posting will resume in our slightly less than normal fashion by the end of next week.

We have several reviews in the works –  Enough About Love (translated lit fic), The March by E. L. Doctorow (civil war hist fic), Home Fires by Gene Wolfe (sci fi), and a plethora of others we are currently reading, thinking and writing about.

Even though it’s early - never the less have a wonderful weekend!