The trip went very well. I was a bit worried about the fog this morning, but SFO ran like clockwork. A colleague of mine who flew out of OAK said he was an hour late leaving. I think I was very lucky. There were flurries of snow in Denver, but it wasn’t settling.

I took Gene Wolfe’s An Evil Guest with me to read. It is a lot of fun. I would have finished it if I hadn’t slept much of the way.

I’m staying in the Sheraton on Canal Street which, if I remember my history correctly, was one of the main hotels of NolaCon. I hope this is not an omen. Thankfully this is a business/academic event with only around 250 attendees so there isn’t much that can go wrong.

We went to Galatoire’s for dinner, and I have to say that I was not impressed. The turtle soup was OK, and the mushroom side dish was lovely, but the rest of my meal was poor. Two of my three fellow diners were also unimpressed. Our waiter explained afterward that they have a lot of older clients who don’t like food to taste of anything much so you have to ask for flavor if you order a dish that is supposed to be spicy. Not recommended.

Bourbon Street is fairly quiet on a Wednesday in December, but that’s only relative. There were lots of people, but several of the sex clubs were closed and there was no band at Maison Bourbon. Preservation Hall was closed too, but that was because Pat O’Brien’s, an Irish pub, had much of St.Peter’s Street packed solid for a block party with a live band actually in the street. The jazz boys wisely decided not to compete. I did find some interesting live music in one of the Irish pubs on Decatur, but I didn’t have time to investigate.

7:00am breakfast meeting tomorrow. Urgh.