Friday, 24 April

Friday Evening 10 pm

Hello from Ft Lauderdale, where I am spending the night before the cruise begins tomorrow.

The flights from Tucson and Dallas were both on time (15 minutes early actually), and I am very impressed by how American Airlines treats passengers needing assistance—they actually call you by name and help you board early.

The new terminal D at DFW has an interesting NYC skyline sculpture that’s about two stories tall. There were quite a few cruise passengers on the flight from DFW, but I kept my incognito.

I checked into the Gallery One Doubletree Suites in Ft Lauderdale about 8 pm; I have a suite that is about half the size of my house in Tucson with lovely views over the canals. I have already been to the Galleria Mall to buy two ties and have dinner at P. F. Chang.

I started my reading with a novel not on the list I posted: The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin, translated from the Russian (N.Y.: Viking, 2008), originally published in Moscow in 2005. It's a first-person narration by a 15-year-old female fox, who is really 2000 years old. She works as a prostitute in present-day Moscow, and except for her tail which she keeps hidden under her clothes, she passes for a voluptuous teenager. Before you think I am reading something salacious, please know that it is a marvelous satire of contemporary Russian politics and economics. The narrator's philosophizing sometimes disrupts the flow of the narrative, but she gives lots of jolly tidbits; this one is most appropriate for the moment: "to hunt aristocrats you have to travel to Europe (although some believe that the best place is a transatlantic cruise)."

I promise that future posts will be more interesting—or I’ll just stop writing.