Posted on No Comments on Sunburn

Sunburn

Sunburn is actually a really interesting feeling, I think. Not a pleasant one, but there’s that tingling, faintly sparky undertone to it that you don’t get with other burns. Probably because it’s hard to get a burn as mild as a sunburn can be.

In other news: the Caribbean is salty as a mouthful of homemade disinfectant. Rougher than the bit of the Mediterranean I went to once; I got pulled technically-past-the-barriers twice. There was also a pelican diving unconcernedly amidst the tourists, some silvery-pale fish with shading as dark as a speckled gull, many-many gulls, and a lot of sun.

I don’t miss having an internet connection when I’m at the beach.

Light of my life and I had dinner at the Brazilian steakhouse last night, and afterwards we went and sat on the beach. (They mow the beach after dark, you know. Line up all the chairs and run something past on the sand to put neat straight lines in the sand.) It’s very calming to remember that the world is still big, sometimes. Every place I might want to get to is measured in hours, and I can send messages instantly, and talk to people anywhere with an internet connection, and…

And the sea, the sea in the darkness rolls, and it does not care.

It makes it easier to sleep.

Posted on No Comments on In transit!

In transit!

Currently in the airport, due to board in five minutes. Airport restaurants are horrible as ever, but airport Starbucks provide perfectly acceptable drinks! I was going to cast on a cowl, but I brought a very long needle, and am thinking of knitting a shawl instead.

No-one has played Gloom with me, but this is okay.

There will be another knitter on the flight, and I pointed two people towards a Starbucks. And my ereader apparently turned into a German brick, which I found out twenty minutes before we were going to leave the house, but it’s okay because as I previously mentioned I have a tablet!

Light of my life needs his laptop back now. Excelsior!

Posted on No Comments on Airport thoughts

Airport thoughts

I may have overpacked for con. I brought my laptop, and while it was reassuring for chat and the Skype was awesome and I was very happy to be able to play “Put Out the Lights of London City” several times, I just did not have time to use it much. Could have used phone and Bluetooth keyboard to much the same effect.

I may have underpacked for travel (just a backpack for carry-on). That’s a comfortable amount of clothing for four-ish days, but being here longer than that meant either hand-done laundry or hotel laundering. I am fine with hand-done laundry, FTR – something something knitting, after all – but I was very busy and the sink was tiny, so I used the hotel laundering and Jesus bleeding Christ that was expensive. Could have saved by packing just a little more.

(I may do that next time. There was actually no trouble on the flight out at all, which has made me worry about checking things rather less.)

I’m running on eight hours sleep since Saturday morning, though, so I think further articulation will need to wait a bit.

Posted on No Comments on No cape, no tiara

No cape, no tiara

Written eighteen hours ago on the plane, published now.

Moon with orange reflection.
The actual moon, and the reflection. I didn’t have a flash on, so you can’t see the wing.

The moon is reflecting off the wing outside my window. The reflection is harvest-orange, but the actual moon is white as bone. I can see the wing, but my camera cannot.

Back when Usenet (a time marker I actually think is perfectly adequate–distinct from most social media currently in vogue in that it was a real PITA to edit your posts), there was this term I ran into on one of the newsgroups I spent time on, and that term was “Gothic Super Hero”. It referred to someone who worked a well-paying job that could pay for all of their awesome clothes and makeup, and whose workplace was totally fine with them showing up in full regalia, which was convenient because they always had time to put it all on,  and…

(Yes, I spent time on alt.gothic.fashion. Hush.)

Anyway. The point was, you did not need to try to be that person. It was, in fact, quite possible that that person did not even exist. And it was okay to not be that person.[1]

My point is, I am sitting here, with my phone, and I feel that if I had the wherewithal, I could actually write a moderately pithy, incisive, anecdotal post which would entertain. I feel, obscurely, that I should be able to.

But I’m not that person. I’m tired and sick and mostly I’m okay with that. So this is what you get: the moon’s reflection is a harvest moon, and I remember first learning that it was okay to not be as cool as the people online seemed to be, and I’m going to try to sleep.
—
[1] Tangentially, when I first got onto the internet, when I was very young and visiting an aunt’s, I read several short horror stories.[2] One them involved a usually exquisitely dressed goth who was murdering people that saw her in frumpy glasses and pink knock-around clothes. PINK. The horror.
[2] This comes as a surprise to precisely no-one.

Posted on No Comments on In transit!

In transit!

Currently sitting in Detroit, watching everything go by. The Gadgets To Go store where I was going to try and get an SD card for the camera had been replaced by a Coffee Beanery, so still no joy on that.

I had a bagel. I’m not hungry, but I know I’m not likely to get anything except possibly airplane breakfast for ten hours, by which point it will be lunchtime, and I suspect the not being hungry might be a touch of a headcold. Will probably eat and get a warm drink on the general principle of it being good for me, even if I’m not feeling it.

The windows are a little tinted (actually, it looks like they’re ZipToned, but you know what I mean, right?), so it’s hard to tell exactly, but it looks like there is some serious rain coming in; there are slate-gray clouds overhead, and they’re reaching all the way to the treeline in one corner of the window. I will not be surprised if there is a delay; there is always a delay, and the fact that there hasn’t really been one yet (we got in to Detroit ~half an hour late, but whatever) means I am waiting for the hammer to fall.

If there is a delay, I will cope. I have my laptop, my phone, thirty new magazines plus a Wasteland novella on my ereader, and knitting that I might feel more up to addressing once I get yet more orange juice. I’ve had four glasses of it since lunch. Also a complete willingness to ignore all these and doze if that is what will make me feel better. So, you know.

(I realize this is kind of boring, but typing helps me relax. So.)