Over the River and Through the Hills...

...to my grandfather's house near Yuba City we go today. Cheryl and I are doing a quick trip up to Yuba City (actually Sutter, the small town outside of YC where my grandfather lives) to deliver Christmas presents to my family. I could do this as a day trip. I used to do day trips from Chico to San Jose to attend con committee meetings. But I'm older, lazier, and have more resources now, and tonight is the final night of a quadruple-points promotion, too, so we'll spend the night at the Holiday Inn Express Yuba City before returning tomorrow.

My Christmas Cards have been badly delayed this year for various reasons, and probably won't go out until Monday's mail.

Semiprozine in the Crosshairs

In the recent discussions of the Hugo Awards, Best Semiprozine is the category that seems to get some of the most complaints, along with Best Fan Writer. However, few categories face as many threats of abolition as Semiprozine. Over at SF Awards Watch, there is a poll about the Semiprozine category. I know you can do polls here within LJ, but we already have the poll at SFAW. Comments over there as well, please.

In the Shadow of Fist-of-God....

So here we are in Yuba City again. Indeed, I'd have to check my hotel receipts, but I think I'm in the same room as when I stayed here at Thanksgiving.

While driving up I-5, Cheryl had some interesting observations about the Central Valley that I hadn't thought of until she noticed it. If you want to reply to her question, please do it over there so she doesn't have to follow conversations in two places at once. (Yes, I know that lately I seem to be telling people to go elsewhere to comment. It's an attempt to keep conversations from fragmenting where possible.)

We spent a couple of hours visiting with my grandfather today, delivered our Christmas presents for my family, and headed into town to check in to the hotel. The small hub we brought with us works fine, so we're both on-line merrily typing away. In a little while, we'll go look for dinner -- there are restaurants here that I didn't know existed, and indeed probably didn't exist until fairly recently -- but we must allow enough time to be able to get a spell in the hot tub. That is if we're up to walking to the hot tub, which is outdoors. It's not freezing here, but it is fairly cold by local standards.