I've arrived in California after travelling most of the day yesterday. I don't enjoy flying, but the trip was tolerable. I arrived at the 
Sofitel. It's a better class of hotel than I usually choose to stay at and I'm enjoying the amenities. I particularly noticed that the towels are large, cottony, and fluffy, but there aren't any towel racks: when you're done with a towel, you are to throw it on the floor, I guess. In many hotels, there is a conciousness about conserving water, where they encourage you to put towels on the rack if you want to keep them and only throw them on the floor if you want them replaced. To not even have towel racks seems excessive and profligate. But the towels were really nice.
On the flight, I read Steven Brust's Lord of Castle Black and enjoyed it prodigiously. One of my favorite books has always been The Three Musketeers and Brust captures of the style of it awfully well -- its a bit over the top at times, but really takes me back and lets me feel like I did when I read Dumas for the first time. One particularly interesting riff is his take on the distinction between royalty and gentles. I think Dumas treated the royalty with more reverence than Brust does: making them seem more than human. This isn't to say that Dumas's writing also shows their human side: their loves and hates, but I think he treats them differently than the other characters in a way that Brust brings them together. Brust has the perfect vehicle for this, as the story is about someone who is just one of the regular characters becoming the Emperess and how this affects them all.
I speak this morning around 10. It's not a new talk, but I'm trying to think of the places where the talk has been a little flat and figure out how I can spruce it up.
StevenBrewer