Dateline: Toronto

It’s your intrepid reporter, checking in from Toronto. I’m staying at the Fairmont York Hotel downtown. It’s not the nicest or least nice room I’ve ever been in (no mildew and the elevator works!), but it’s serviceable and the bathtub is comfortable. You know how I love my evening bath with a book and a snack. So much the better if the tub has a nice reclined back! I flew in on Tuesday. Dave and I spent an extra hour together in the morning over breakfast at Foolish Craig’s and then went to work. I worked until 12:30, when Lynne (my boss) picked me up and we headed over to Deborah’s house to get her. (Deborah is in the marketing department at the press.) We took the Northwest Parkway to the airport, something Dave and I never do because of his ideological opposition to toll roads and my inherent cheapness. It’s a nice new road without much traffic, but not much faster than the highway. We had to check a couple of boxes because it costs so much to send packages quickly to Canada. The Air Canada flight was quite pleasant: nonstop, with comfortable seats with individual touchscreen TVs and electrical plugs for computers! I didn’t use mine, of course, because I slept most of the way. I did read some of The Trumpet Major, by Thomas Hardy. We arrived in Toronto around 9:00 p.m. local time and spent some time getting our checked boxes and finding the wheelie cart in Room B (it had been unloaded separate from the luggage). We took a cab to the hotel and checked in. I was still on MST, so I didn’t get to sleep until pretty late, after talking to Dave and taking a bath.

Wednesday I met Lynne in the hotel lobby at 10:00 a.m. with the boxes and we walked the block and a half to the convention center. We opened the boxes and made a few piles, as well as getting the Freeman convention services guys to finish draping our tables, drape the book risers, and raise a couple of the tables to make a level surface with the other two. Then we had some lunch at the food court across the street. I had very good spicy noodles and tofu. It took about 2.5 hours to finish setting up the exhibit, and we hadn’t had much to drink, so Deborah went to buy some much-needed water. I was dehydrated and ended up with a headache. After setup, Deborah and I walked down to the waterfront and then through some of downtown, ending up at her hotel. I came back to mine and worked on a flyer I had promised to make for Rally Day and then went to dinner about .75 miles away at Spring Roll, a delicious and inexpensive Thai restaurant. After dinner, I finished the flyer, talked to Dave, took a bath, and went to bed around 10:20 p.m.

I didn’t sleep well, so I struggled out of bed at 8:10 a.m. I did some ironing, got ice, took a shower, wrote Dave an e-mail, and got dressed all before 8:45 p.m. (Lots of practice getting up half an hour before catching the bus for high school!) I had a 9:00 a.m. appointment and then various meetings throughout the day, many of which were quite good. The highlights were a new friend and potential author, Tony, who I met at this conference (APSA) last year. He’s writing, among more academic books, a graphic novel. The first chapter is excellent! (I’ll link to it when I get back to the office.) I did suggest that he use contractions. I also met, for the first time, a guy who’s putting together a Russian foreign policy book that’s going to be very good. Lynne and I met with the author of a Women and U.S. Politics book that we’ll be publishing soon. She’s also going to do a reader, so that should be a great combination. The last conversation of the day was the worst: boring and I had to fight a yawn every few minutes. I stopped by the Loose Moose for a ginger ale with old Rowman & Littlefield friends, took a hot shower and wrote an e-mail, and then took a cab to Little Portugal with the same friends. The meals were delicious. Joe asked about a sausage he likes, which wasn’t on the menu but was available. Yum! I had sautéd pork, with potatoes, olives, pickled vegetables, and a sour sauce at the bottom, plus fruit for dessert. Jana had house steak, and Jod had cod. It was a great find! As ever, I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s dinner…

Tomorrow is my busiest day, full of meetings. I’ll write more soon!