Oh my God, there is a HUGE coal barge going down the river—the Monongahela, I believe—outside my hotel-room window. I am really enjoying being in Pittsburgh for this conference of the American Copy Editors Society. Never have I heard so many people conversing with such passion about the plural “they” and the O.E.D. and gerundive phrases. I took time off from grammar today to walk across a bridge, ride up an incline (they have funiculars!), walk along a ridge above the river, take another incline down, and have an indulgent lunch at a place called the Grand Concourse—like Grand Central or the fancy restaurant at the Amsterdam train station, with a stained-glass rotunda and a view of the train tracks running alongside the river. I love Pittsburgh! It’s the Flats of Cleveland on a monumental scale, with better rivers. And stained glass! And funiculars!

Just came across a blog post that a young journalist named Katie Antonsson wrote about the talk I gave yesterday, and it’s so nice that I’m just going to link to it here and take the rest of the day off. Thanks, ACES, for the wonderful reception and for buying those forty copies of my book. And also thanks to the woman who bought me a beer while I was signing the forty copies. I can’t remember your name, but I’ll never forget you. I miss this place already and I’m not even gone yet.