You've made up your mind, go down the travel agency and book a ticket on the plane

I'm off! At least in a few hours I'm on to the airport, to fly through Chicago and on ultimately to Singapore. So far there's no indication of trouble in Singapore and no grim news from there, although I'm racking my brain trying to remember if anyone was going to Phuket. I'm less sure the longer I think.

Sir Arthur C Clarke's biographer reports he's alive and well, but there are a lot of dead and missing around him, including people from his staff.

Back to my trivialities, I spent most of today putting Christmas stuff away -- my parents are on vacation for New Year's and the week after, so this was the last good chance -- and then looking for the Peanuts strip-a-day calendar, which I put on my Christmas list every year, and don't get, and spend the week after Christmas looking for. Something about the notion that I want the daily calendar for the comic strip that's been my favorite for 32 years running strikes people as a joke, I guess. I did see some entertaining other calendars, including one with a neat dragon-fairy, but not the one I wanted. Rats.

Trivia: ``Deer'' meant any sort of animal until the 16th century. Source: The English Language, C L Wren.

Currently Reading: A Woman of the Iron People: Changing Women, Eleanor Arnason.