Parallax

Bringin' back an old icon favorite. One of these days I'll assemble a huge hockey-icon post. Mostly for celticwarrior82 though I figure oregoonie would appreciate them too. In the meantime I will pine for a paid account so that every emotion and quote which goes through my head can be acted out by the NHL.

The Goonie is one of us now. We saw hockey and it was gooooood. She had no idea what was happening for most of it, but she didn't care. She got excited whenever anyone got boarded and the glass rippled. She agreed with me that goalies are proof God's a woman and she's on our side. (Kick saves. Guuhhhh.) Unexpectedly, they were handing out hockey swag, so now we have little Vinny backpacks, which will be convenient for me, because when I go to games I can shove a hoodie and Vera into one and not have to empty my go-bag.

And? WE SAW OVIE.

It's a long story. Always is, the two of us.

( The last thing we saw was that flashing red light )

During all of this I haven't really been taking as many pictures as I would otherwise. I'm more interested in seeing what Goonie shoots. Most of this - except for Dinosaur World - isn't new to me, but it's new to her. I want to see what catches her attention, because it's usually things I'm so accustomed to I don't even notice.

Oh, and one other thing. On our way out I pulled a lump of Spanish moss off my oak tree and gave it to her, because she's fascinated with the stuff. It is now in her car. She plans to grow it in Oregon. So, yeah, when that shit takes over up there? My fault.

"This is a roadside attraction," said Wednesday. "One of the finest. Which means it is a place of power."



"Come again?"

( Lotsa photos. Dialup beware. )

oregoonie is SO. MUCH. FUN. Holy crap. Oregon, get with the program, and give that girl a fan club. She has one here!

Yesterday I think I Got, as they say, Some Sun. My face and arms feel oddly warm, though I'm fish-belly pale as usual. This is because the Goonie and I are scatterbrained idiots that can remember to bring four cameras between us, but not hats or sunscreen. We're just that special. Oh, wait. Five if you count the one I gave her that went into the trunk, and six if you count the one in my phone. I have two cameras close to hand at any moment. I rule.

Took us well over an hour to get to the thing we went out to do, because I wanted batteries and snacks (which involved two stores, one on impulse) and Goonie needed more 120 film (another two stores, both closed, damn you Sunday) and the directions I'd copied from the internet were less than accurate (my fault, and OH HEY THAT'S A ONE WAY STREET) and the Army-Navy store where Goonie wanted to get a boonie hat was also closed (argh, Sunday). But we finally got to getting where we were going, and although I knew where we were I didn't know how long it would take us to get where we wanted to be.

Thus, somewhere in the middle of carny town I sent Dave a message: "Can you look something up on a map for me?"
Before he had a chance to reply I sent another one: "Never mind. Not lost anymore."
I can still hear him laughing about that, though he saved my dignity by not replying.

Anyway. Where we were going was: MANATEES. Yes, we saw wild mannertees. And herons, and the usual flock of vultures (I never noticed how many of them are around here), and a plethora of lizards, and fiddler crabs, and lots of fish, and a huge shiny tarpon! And a small not shiny stingray! And one of those machines that makes injection-molded animals out of plastic for two dollars. There were also lots of signs. One was scary and had picture of a guy with a big huge gun on it, explaining that TECO will kill on sight to protect itself, or something. Like they're not doing that with the pollution, hyuk. The nice signs taught us that humans should not: molest, feed, give water to (HOW?), swim with, boat near, or in any way interact with the blubrous sea-cows. I heartily approve of that. Leave them the hell alone, and by the way people is a boat ride worth killing these animals, and why can't someone build a cage or something to go over a boat motor's blades? I like vessels with sails for a reason. Well, two reasons: coming about is a lot of fun. TILTY! The other other signs made me sad, because they were all photos of identifiable marks on manatees (to a one, boat scars) and the captions always ended, x manatee was killed on y date by a boat.

The thing about manatees, wild or captive, is they don't really do much. Dolphins are playful. They like to jump around, they snort geysers out the tops of their heads, they show off. Manatees... don't. They're sorta there. They're like underwater blimps. Big round thing, moves slowly. They stick their snouts out of the water to breathe. Their tails occasionally break the surface. Backs too, if they're diving. Otherwise... they're dark blobs under the sparkly-shiny surface of the water. They eat plants and crap a lot. They're sea cows. And we all know how flash a cow is. Do not think for a minute that I was unhappy with this or bored by them, cos I wasn't. They just don't do much. The fish were more active, and I think the fish go there to relax 'cos manatees are vegan. But then again, manatees don't have to do much. They don't have predators - there are only little sharks where they hang out, and the big gators don't like saltwater. It'd be good to be a manatee, I think. A manatee from anywhere before 1492.

The gift shop had these really crazy underwater-fantasy pictures of manatees and dolphins on sale. I couldn't believe it. "Look at that! The manatee is - the only way it'd twist around like that is in a storm surge. They don't do that! They can't! They're not fast enough to look dramatic like that!"

We hung out there until the place closed around us. Some old guy came up from behind us and said GIRLS THE PARK IS -- we turned around -- OH LADIES SORRY THE PARK IS CLOSING. We both squeed about getting called girls, and then I moped a bit about being old enough to get excited at someone calling me a girl. Just a girl from the back. I'm so short I could be twelve.

After this we met up with damn near everyone to see the football game at Colby's, and although my patient (so so so very patient) friends tried their hardest to explain everything to me, I still don't really get it. What about us? We'll always have Paris, uh, the Ice Palace, er, the Newspaper Arena.

Apparently if I spend a day in Goonie's company I pick up her accent a bit. What can I say? We were on a mission from Gad. Bag a ralph. Bag a louie. VEER TO STARBOARD MATEY! NO! THE OTHER STARBOARD, YE BARNACLE-BRAINED ROUSTABOUT!

( ... everyone else ducked. )

I didn't have nearly enough sleep or coffee so I was six kinds of inadvertently funny, Riley got as much love as she dished out (though less slobber), I got to unload a box of clothes, we didn't see a single alligator, we showed off our lack of prowess with chopsticks, we were denied at the bat-house, and I utterly lost it when Goonie spotted a gooberfish.

Though really, this one explains it all:

bleukarma totally made my day by telling me that they're throwing Jeopardy auditions and I am, according to her, "smart enough to get on and win!!!!!!!!!" The problem I'd have with that show is it tends to avoid fun stuff I know like Sex Lives Of Stone Age Europeans (thanks, Simon) in favor of categories like All Things Nebraska. And there I'd be lost, except for the one answer that would go "Who is Bruce Springsteen." I would definitely be able to tell them who's responsible for the exclamation-point shortage, though.

--

oregoonie, meanwhile, is recovering from some form of ebola (not Seabola, they don't have those there) but, miraculously, STILL ARRIVING ON SATURDAY. I have to find out whether or not she's still contagious before I decide if I'm going to meet her at the airport. Cos, Goonie, I know you're entertained when bodies violently eject stuff (stuff that isn't babies anyway), but me? Not so much. She's also got me explaining everything I know about airplanes, because that's how I beat my fear of them. WITH SCIENCE. I figured, if I knew what all the noises were and what's normal on a plane I wouldn't be bothered by it. It worked, bafflingly enough. You can't take the sky from meeee....

--

Dave called me, very excited, to tell me he had a present for me. And then he had to tell me what it was and read from it to me RIGHT THAT MOMENT because it was funny. (Also because the Sidney Crosby Show had come to town and it was crap for us.) He has a wacko fundie co-worker, Baptist by flavor, who had brought in or left behind (har) a science magazine, for creationists and by creationists. "It's not trying to convince anybody of anything," is how he put it. "It's for the people who already believe this crap." So he turns to the page where there's a drawing of the solar system, and he explains to me that there's one thing they said about every planet that wasn't Earth. "Like here. Mercury. Boiling hot on this side, frozen solid on that side. God did not create Mercury to support life. Mars. God did not create Mars to support life. Jupiter. Saturn. Uranus. Heh, Uranus. Neptune. God did not create Neptune to support life. IT SAYS THAT ON ALL OF THEM. And then where they describe Earth? God did create Earth to support life." So he has a nice present for me. I will scan it so we all can have a good laugh. We need one.

--

While trying to remember which storefront across from The Other Thai Place (not as good as The Thai Place, I think) had once sold porn:

Indi: "I don't understand the not breathing part."
grahamux: "I don't understand any of it!"
Indi: "Some people juggle geese!"

Graham, by the way, the incense they had there? Morning Star. Had to be that stuff. With the little tile!
--

Now I have to wash my dog. Yes, at three in the morning. Her fleas are trying to create organized religion and we won't have that. They call me Shiva, destroyer of worlds.