We headed over to Berkeley Springs last night, halfway (sort of) between our West Virginia home and the Frostburg, Maryland stomping grounds of Sydney and Andy Duncan, and had dinner at Panorama at the Peak restaurant (which happens to be the best restaurant in town). It felt good, as Andy put it, to for once see each other without wearing name tags.

There was plenty of great food—braised lamb shank for me, North Carolina crab cakes for Irene, West Virginia pan-fried trout for the Duncans—and great conversation.

We talked about blizzards (because whenever two or more gather, weather must be discussed, right?), NaNoWriMo, whether or not I should finally attend the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Alzheimer’s, cluttering, Readercon, our writing (of course!), Eddie Lawrence’s novelty record “The Old Philosopher” (which I mangled badly trying to explain), Sydney’s recent sale to an anthology of Alfred Hitchcock poetry, and much more.

Here are the happy wanderers after we cleaned our plates and paid our bill.

Do we look sated in both mind and body? I think that we do.