Late afternoon emails and other things.

Like most folks there comes a point in my day where I quit checking email.  Today that means I failed to learn that the apartment complex had scheduled work on the sprinkler and water systems for the complex.  Which means no water at the complex between 10am and 1pm.  On the coldest day of the year so far.  Outstanding.

Something over on Facebook in one of the groups I'm in got me to think about the past, so ya'll get a bit of a nostalgic ramble here -

Way back in the dark ages when there were things called the "Dallas Fantasy Fair", I used to work as con staff. One Con, Roger Zelazny was guest, in addition to the usual DFF guests (One thing about the DFF's you could count on was if you missed say Ray Harryhausen this year, if he was alive next year you could see him at the same quarter's con). Now, I had a buddy at the time who was a big Zelazny fanboy, and he had a huge stack of books he wanted to get signed. 10-15 or so hardbacks. We were both sitting at our designated table outside one of the gaming rooms when we saw Zelazny go by headed to our right. My buddy comments "Ooh, I need to catch up with him at some point so I can get my books signed". I looked at the schedule "He's giving a talk in room X - its supposed to run an hour - go in forty five minutes with your books and see if he will sign them when he's done." Friend "I could never do something like that." As he said that, Zelazny comes from our right and goes off to our left, and then returns from the left with a puzzled look on his face. I looked at him and said "Mr. Zelazny you look lost, can I help?" "I'm supposed to be giving a talk in room X," he said, "but I can't find it." Me - "I've got a map here, lets see what we can do. And while we're looking would you mind signing his (pointing at friend who is gasping like a fish out of water) books?" Zelazny - "Not a problem." Zelazny asks his name and then autographs all the books while standing there as we work out how to get him where he needed to be. I thanked Zelazny for signing the books (fan boy had almost hyperventilated and passed out) and Zelazny thanked me for taking the time to ask what was wrong.