Yesterday morning I arrived in San Diego for the 2011 Historical Novel Society Conference (HNS for short). The Holiday Inn On the Bay is fantastic, and I took a long walk on the waterfront to compensate for the fact that I probably won’t see the outside of the hotel again until Sunday afternoon.
I’ll be live-tweeting the conference on Twitter for those inclined to follow-the-tweets. I’ll also post updates here when I can. I’ll apologize now to my non-writing readers – the next three days will be largely for bibliophiles and scribblers – with exceptions to point out the strange and bizzare (and since I’m an oddity magnet, I expect no lack of subject matter there).
Case in point – breakfast.
My mother spent the night at the hotel with me and headed home this morning. Before she left, we had breakfast at the Elephant & Castle Pub in the hotel lobby. (One of the better conference hotel restaurants I’ve been to, incidentally.) As we studied the menu, Mom said, “I think I’ll have the carb-free omelet.”
Which raised two questions in my mind. First, do they make one that isn’t? (And yes, I know, you could add things to eggs that would make them no longer carb free.) And second…Did you notice they serve it with a side of potatoes and toast?
Must be those new “carb free potatoes.”
In fairness, the menu did have small print saying that carb-free omelets were served without the standard sides, but I got quite a chuckle from the “carb-free” billing in a column with a bold-print header that proudly proclaimed “all omelets served with skillet potatoes and choice of toast.”
The omelet, carb free. The potatoes…not so much.
I’ll be back this evening to post about the first afternoon of the conference. If you’re in San Diego at the HNS Conference and see me around, please stop and say hi – I’m looking forward to meeting as many other writers as I can!