Had a great time at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Then this morning a series of delays (some our fault, most the fault of the airline) caused us to miss our flight, throwing the whole process of getting home into stressville.

For now, it looks like we’ll be overnighting in Chicago and MAYBE getting home only 24 hours late. Depends on our Narita connection, which is not clear at this time. We might not get home until the next afternoon. And I have no idea about staying overnight in Narita Airport–it is hours away from anything, in the middle of nowhere.

Sigh. This sucks.

[  Mood: Confused ]
Made a couple of utopia-related blog entries here, and then posted a notification on my friends & family blog. So now I’ll post a notification here that I’m blogging my trip on that blog.

[  Mood: Happy ]
I just want to plug a website by a friend of mine. Shunya Susuki was my English student once upon a time, and I still run into him now and then. A couple of nights ago, it was one of those odd nights when I just kept running into people I hadn’t seen in awhile, and Susuki-san was one of them. He just emailed me with the URL for his website, Earth Friendly!

Susuki-san is an engineer who is currently the Director of the Earthquake Resistance & Safety Section of the Fukuoka City Housing & Urban Planning Bureau. Considering all the news about earthquakes recently, and considering the country I live in, I am very glad to know that they guy in charge of making sure that buildings are up to code is a super-nice, intellectually curious, and very conscientious guy like him.

Susuki-san reminds me of our own Matthew Bey. Like Matthew, Susuki-san is always trying new things and working with his hands. Check out the site, and you’ll see the electric cars and robots and kites that he’s designed and built himself.