Really, it's kind of like being at home

Heh. We are in Walnut Creek - or at least I am. Karen was, last night and this morning; now she is in San Francisco, attending meetings and doing work.

A lot of other people are also in Walnut Creek. Many of them are downstairs, getting a convention going.

I was downstairs, offering to help; but they're so organizedly efficient that they really don't need me, and I am not so almighty good at socialising with strangers. So - as the book I meant to read from on Sunday is decidedly not in Walnut Creek, but Sunnyvale, alas - I came upstairs again and isolated those pages that I'd like to read (I love the internet!) and found a way to print them via a website on the hotel's printer downstairs in the Business Centre (I love the internet!) so I sent them off into the aether and went downstairs and--

Um. The Walnut Creek Marriott is not so organizedly efficient as FogCon, or the internet. It has new construction in its lobby, men in hard hats everywhere. This has apparently given its printer a conniption fit. No jobs waiting! Code not recognised! Go away and leave me alone! it cries. So I spoke to the nice people at the desk, and they will print from a thumb drive if I produce one. Karen might have a thumb drive. Karen is in the city, doing work.

The nice people in the con suite also don't want my help, thanks for asking. So here I am, back in our room, checking the news and drinking coffee and picking at LJ and picking at my new short story, and really I might almost be back in Sunnyvale except that there was only the one mug of coffee possible and when I need another I really will have to go back to the convention.

In the meantime, a question! As you know, Bob, Atlas does not - or at least did not use to - carry the world on his shoulders. That's the heavenly sphere he's hunkering beneath; his job is - or was - to hold up the sky. So. At some point, the heavenly sphere and the globe of the earth became conflated, and everybody now thinks he carries the world on his shoulders. So. Is it wrong in any sense to make casual reference to his doing that, in a story that is contemporary and absolutely not about Atlas? It's not correct - except that he is a mythic figure and that is the modern myth, or the modern (mis)understanding of the ancient myth, or whatever - but is it wrong to do it? Because that is the cultural referent that people will pick up on, it's the note I want to play just here, it makes the chord I need (why yes, the story is about music, how did you guess?). The pedant in me is crying "no, no!" - but I don't have time for a lecture on what he did as against what he's believed to do, and. And, and, and. I am going around in circles here. Help me, O internets!*

*Go not to the internets for advice, for they will say both yea and nay. I do know this. Nevertheless.

EtA: heh, and double-heh

I was going back to the con, but I thought I'd stop off halfway down, go back to the business centre, see if the printer had blown its nose and settled back to work.

For a minute there, it had. It said ooh, I know you! I've got something for you! (I love the internet!) and started printing. A page, a blessed page.

Then it ran out of paper.

Back to the front desk went I, and the nice lady said, "oh dear," and then there was a bit of a battle what with one thing and another but eventually we got the right machine reloaded and resumed, and now I have my chunk of book to read.

And now I totally want to rewrite it, but. That's the name of the game, the rules of the road, what we leave behind is dust beneath our wheels; and besides, I have a con to go to.

*mingles*