San Fran layover

Now on a 24-hour layover in San Francisco, which, as far as I'm concerned, is one of the best cities in the world to be laid over in. My Air China flight leaves tomorrow early afternoon, and I'll be in Beijing at 6pm local time on Saturday. I almost didn't make it here and entertained a long flight's worth of trepidations about my luggage on account of morning fog in G'ville, which delayed takeoff and made the connection in Charlotte very tight. But CLT came through and got my bags on the plane. Civilized and efficient; the Old South married happily with the New. On the plane I wrote the review of a new book on German theatre (edited by one of my former professors) which I'll send off to CHOICE in a few moments electronically, and then post the book (now nothing but dead weight) back home via snail mail. Later I'll conduct a final oral exam with a grad student via Skype from my hotel room. And then I'll take the BART into town and see where fate and chance take me (as long as it involves dinner with a nice glass of Cali cabernet).