Back at 'er

So I made it back safe and sound to Toronto last night after a few days in Orlando, Florida with the family. It was a brief but fun trip, much of it spent in a car driving to places other than Orlando. These visits included a day excursion east to the Kennedy Space Center (they're preparing to send a shuttle up on April 5, don't ya know) and another west to St. Petersburg, where we got to eat a wonderful lunch at the very charming Chattaway Restaurant. (Decor included street signs named after restaurant staff and a garden populated with fairy sculptures that felt right out of A Midsummer's Night Dream.)

As every Canadian realizes whenever travelling to the States, there are many subtle but unmistakable differences between our two cultures. Things I noticed on this particular trip is that cabs in Orlando have tricorner hat-shape billboards attached to their roofs, advertising everything from insurance companies to girly bars. Driving on the highways, we also seemed to encounter more than one road toll whenever getting from point A to B. Each one is fairly cheap - maybe a buck or $1.25 - but they start to add up after a while as you drive into the benevelent jaws of those public-private partnerships. Oh well ...

In the end I was happy to head home, as I was really starting to miss RR, Toronto's unseasonably warm weather, and the metric system. I woke up this morning to discover that my new novel had done absolutely no work on itself while I was away. I also realize that I owe some time to a number of other writerly projects, not the least of which being my Retro Reading Challenge review. I wrote part of it last night at the Orlando airport. I'll finish the rest of it shortly, I swear.

Until then...
M