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This is the sort of trip I never felt able to schedule before retirement: put together several purposes and just take a couple weeks to see people and do things.

I flew out on a red-eye because I always have this dilemma when flying east that I can either get up at an ungodly hour of the morning (which means either leaving my car at long-term parking, or getting an airport hotel room the night before), or I can arrive later in the evening than I want to be dealing with unfamiliar transit systems, or I can take a red-eye and have the logistics at both ends done at a reasonable hour of the day...at the expense of losing most of a night's sleep. I did sleep for several hours, but then spent most of yesterday vegging around L's appartment. (Which worked out because she had several online things to do.)

Today is L's big-number birthday celebration (one of the aforesaid "several purposes"). Then I have five days in NYC in which I have two items scheduled, which gives me a chance for more spontaneity than I usually have on trips. After that, it's up to Maine for the family part of the trip.

I was able to get all my blog/podcast stuff set up for the rest of the month--only need to switch things to "live" on the web--so any "work" I do on this trip can be on less urgent (i.e., actually writing on book projects). I think I've been managing better at avoiding having short-term deadlines rule my creative life, but somehow the non-fiction projects have called to me more strongly than the fiction. I suspect that's because the non-fiction is more in the revisions phased than the "creating text out of nothing" phase.