UMTravels

Up at 5am and out the condo door at 5:30, butt on light rail at 5:48am, and off to the airport.

Considering the crush at security I was surprised at how quickly the lines started moving once they shut down the damn full body scanner. What a boondoggle that is.

I really must have been still asleep… got to the Board Room only to find I was missing my Driver’s License and Board Room card.

Back to security. As I’m close, a TSA guy says, “Mark?” Yes — go see the guy up that set of stairs, the guy on the phone. They were in the process of paging me. I thanked everybody repeatedly and headed back to the club. Had I not needed to check in at the club, I would have been in Boston before I realized. I travel with my Nexus Card and Passport Card so it wouldn’t have been a huge thing trying to get back on the plane in Boston.

Uneventful flight — 14D, the non-reclining exit row. After the long night last night, I probably slept half of the 4.5 hour flight. I did get most of a digital edition of the New Yorker finished on the trip. So much for low-carb with the bagel and cream cheese in the Board Room and the half a slice of French Toast and the cinnamon apples (the eggs and sausage were fine) on the plane. Hitting 205.0 yesterday morning is sort of a milestone since I started back on the low-carb stuff when I’d inched back up to 232 (which is still down from my all-time high of 242).

Flight arrived 20+ minutes early and Fernando was still in meetings when I texted him. The plan was that he’d come to the airport and meet me and we’d go to Harvard Square for dinner and a long business talk about creating a win-win situation with regards to Studio 403 and Libboo. It looks like at the end of a 3 hour plus dinner at Daedalus that Studio 403 is going to be a test case for backlist publishing on the Libboo royalties’ engine. One of the positive outcomes will be all the Sign of the Times individual issues and anthology, along with the Piglettè and Bobo series will be available as eBooks on Libboo and Amazon, possibly Barnes and Noble as well.

As for dinner, I had the steamed mussel appetizer (huge, could have been an entrèe) and the haddock stuffed with crab, Fernando had the soy marinated steak bits over a tomato risotto, which looked good as well. Add a likable bottle of Sangiovese (Italian) which was light enough to go with my fish, but not too light as to be overpowered by risotto. Good food — entrees in the high teens, low 20’s, great service, hot long-haired food runner.

After dinner it was more talk and more cocktails. It was amazing how three and a half hours passed until Pucci was due to show up. It looks like I’m going to be busy for the next couple of weeks prepping materials for Libboo along with redo (once again) the Studio 403 website to reflect getting back into the publishing business. Fernando is a big fan of Sign of the Times and even brought up re-launching the magazine as an eZine using the Libboo engine. Interesting concept. The Libboo engine would solve one of the problems with the old engine, how to track rights and payments (not that it ever made of profit unless you consider a “tax-loss” as a profit).

Pucci showed up at 9:15, but with his best (and most expensive) bass in the car, he wasn’t about to leave it parked on the street to come up for a drink. It was back to his house to settle in for the rest of the night, chatting and drinking whiskey.

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