Sara Ryan

Steve and I may have a new career with great prospects.

You probably can’t read that, but it says “Check Left Front Tire Pressure.”
We did. At which point we noted the furious, tea-kettle-esque hissing sound of air rapidly escaping.
Note that this was an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT RENTAL CAR than the one we had last weekend.

Out of idle curiosity I totaled up the number of days this year I’ve been (or will be; there’s more to come before the end of the year) traveling, according to my calendar.
86.
A month of that is parental visiting (split into two two-week chunks, once in spring, once in fall, as longtime readers will perhaps [...]

1. Overheard in an elevator. Business casual woman: “Is this a Sci Fi Con?” Dealer wearing innocuous t-shirt and jeans: “No, comics.” Business casual woman: “Oh, comics…well, I just love the outfits!”
2. Speaking of elevators: there weren’t enough of them. After waiting for one for twenty minutes, we took the stairs up to our room. [...]

I call it the Rockwell Deviance Quotient.
It measures how much one’s holiday experiences diverge from the media ideal.

I haven’t quite figured out the actual numerical part, but it might be like when you’re using a level and you assess how many bubbles off plumb something (or someone) is. So your holidays could be, say, four [...]

Here at the Undisclosed Location (a.k.a. my parents’ house in Ohio), catching up on email, deleting comment spam (Why, why are the spammers so deeply attracted to the post about Rules being a Junior Library Guild selection? It’s harder hit than any other post, by far…) preparing for another small, low-key Thanksgiving, it’s hard to [...]

…and it was a good thing, too.
I thought I was going to take public transportation from the Newark airport.
I waited for the bus to Penn Station.
For a while.
Some other busses came.
Finally the bus to Penn Station arrived and I was climbing the steps to get on it and I must have looked more than usually [...]

Today I woke up at 3 am, convinced that I had booked my flight to New York for the wrong day.
I hadn’t, but I couldn’t get back to sleep, either.
So it was a good thing I had an audiobook. A LONG audiobook. I’m currently listening to George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, in part [...]

Yes, I am just about to take off again for parts known and unknown.
2 pm Saturday, November 10th, I’ll be doing a Teen Writing Workshop at the Lynnwood Library in beautiful Lynnwood, Washington. (Thanks for making such a cool graphic advertising it, Lynnwood Library webfolk!)
Exactly seven days later, at 2 pm Saturday, November 17th, I’ll [...]

September 28th, 1997: I was on a train from Portland back to Ann Arbor. I’d just interviewed for a job. I’d done my first (and so far last) storytime. I read, among other things, Caps For Sale, a story featuring caps (as you might suspect) and monkeys.

September 28th, 2007: I wear Bill Mudron’s cap at [...]

All the travel, it’s catching up with me.
Which is not to say I regret any of it. This summer I’ve been in Columbus (and The Usual Undisclosed Location), D.C., San Diego, Chicago (well, outside of Chicago), Boring (which wasn’t), Ashland, and last weekend, Seattle.
I’m very glad I went up. There’s no substitute for spending real, [...]