Defective Crystal Balls

Coming to you live from San Antonio, where my hotel was nice enough to have free high-speed Internet. Woo hoo! (Why is it that the cheaper hotels offer more stuff as part of the room rate? Pay a couple hundred or more bucks a night for a hotel room and you pay extra for Internet, pay extra for local phone calls, get only a few channels on the fancy "guest TV" service, pay extra for breakfast. Pay 50 bucks a night at the Rodeway Inn and get free Internet, free local phone, about a hundred cable channels and free breakfast.)

Because my crystal ball is cloudy, I didn't foresee when we set up last night's booksigning that it would be taking place at the same time as a big San Antonio Spurs playoff game (since at that time we had no way of knowing who'd be in the playoffs or what their schedule would be). That makes two signings where I've competed with the NBA playoffs in cities that had a team involved. As a result, the store was kind of empty. However, there were a couple of people who came just to see me (yay!) and even kept me occupied, and I sold at least one book to one of the few random people in the store. The staff had me sign a bunch of books to leave behind, with the assurance that they would sell them. Apparently, a lot of the store staff are fans and are hand selling like crazy. They also tell me the latest book is doing very well in their store (yay again!).

I'd forgotten how much I like San Antonio. It's now on my list as a possible destination for that hypothetical relaxing vacation I'm thinking of. There are a few touristy things to do, but otherwise I could get a lot of relaxing done while sitting on the Riverwalk and drinking margaritas. The downside is that it's a rather grueling drive, but I think I could take it slowly, stop to see a few sights along the way, and make it in two days.

Of course, it would help if I didn't get stuck behind a frakkin' house being moved down a major highway, and driving straddling two lanes even though the shoulder was wide enough to move over just enough to let people pass (though the driver must have liked me because the one time he did move over it was to let me pass before he moved back and kept a whole line of traffic stuck behind him).

But because it's a long drive (Texas is kind of big), I'm going to head out now. I need to be sure to make it home in time for the season finale of The Office. What will Jim do now that the cat's out of the bag????!!!!