Lafayatte, I am here

Bet you were wondering where I was. Or maybe you weren’t, which would probably be better.

I’ve been on the road for the last week: First to a Star Trek convention in Bellari, Italy (about 90 minutes out of Bologna), followed by several store appearances in Paris. Nowadays traveling with a computer is just too much hassle (from an airport check-in point of view) to warrant bringing one, and I never stumbled over an internet cafe to get on line. Curiously, the internet seemed to survive without me for a while.

This was the one year anniversary of our wedding, and considering that Kath and I brought the kids along on the original honeymoon, it seemed that after a year we were entitled to one just for ourselves. So when an all-expense paid trip to Europe presented itself, we couldn’t turn it down.

Julie Caitlin Brown of NaToth fame put the gig together. Greatest convention appearance agent ever. If anyone reading this is connected to an SF series and wants to start hitting conventions, and wants to have Julie handle it, e-mail me and I’ll put you folks together.

I’ll be doing a detailed write-up in “But I Digress,” but for me the absolute high-point of the trip to Italy was getting to meet Leonard Nimoy. I still have just enough of the fanboy in me to be completely thrilled by the notion itself…but get this. *He* wanted to meet *me.* Apparently John deLancie had mentioned me back when they were working on “Alien Voices.” I dunno, maybe he just wanted to check and see if I was as horrific as all that. At any rate, I actually got to hang for a couple of minutes with Mr. Spock.

I’ve just read the previous graf over three times and keep thinking I should delete it since it makes me sound like nothing but the grown-up fanboy I am. But…nah.

My parents took me to Paris when I was ten years old. Back then the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Arch of Triumph…all those places looked huge. Of course, now I’m an adult, so they appeared much smaller. Okay, not really.

I had the opportunity to haul out my high school French, and actually was able to make myself understood, and comprehend what people said back to me. What was truly shattering for my entire belief system was that we didn’t run into a single rude Parisian. Everyone was helpeful, polite, and seemed genuinely pleased that I was at least making the effort to speak French. The only people who were rude and pushy were tourists from Germany and America. Go figure.

PAD