***Weekend Words***

Saturday was suppose to be a relaxing day. I was to get up early, work out, then take R.'s car in for an oil change. We'd then meet to go out for lunch before working on errands throughout the day.

Then Ben Bova arrived.

I found out the venerable author was signing last Wednesday. R's been wanting to meet him for years. Well, he was visiting SoCal for a conference in L.A. and was making a special trip down in San Diego. We scrambled to get his books and woke early Saturday morning.

I was a bit surprised at the low turnout. Bova's a well-known member of the sf community and part of the early beginnings of modern sf. But all the attendees are fans of his work and he was a pleasant gentleman, telling wonderful stories of his peers who are major names in their own right (e.g., Jack Williamson, Frank Kelly Freas, etc.) His books sounds intriguing: optimistic hard sci-fi in a field getting pushed aside more and more by space opera, cyberpunk, and "soft" (primarily sociological) sci-fi.

We later checked out our regular bookstore haunts near Adams and the Hillcrest area before returning home before midnight.

R. was on-call Sunday. I, too, woke early to check out a local auto auction. Ugh. Dents, decay, and coughing engines nearly justified why they were on the auction block. I was surprised, still, by how high some of the vehicles were sold. A 2001 PT Cruiser with over 175k miles for over 5k? You've got to be kidding! (I also confirmed why I see so many folks driving high-end cars like Bimmers when they look like they can barely afford a basic used Kia.)

I checked out Carfaire, of course. It had been a few weeks. There was a goodly batch: a 2005 Jaguar XJ8, a 2003 Cadillac CTS, and a nice MDX. Even the Chrysler 300C looked good.

Sigh.

It was roughly this time the rains began to pour down. Yup. Rainy season is upon SoCal. I spent much of the evening prepping for NaNoWriMo and figuring out (finally) major plot threads for my current work-in-progress.