Irony is the Shackles of Youth

Chateau Tsaiko & Miome is surviving Sandy pretty well. The cats have loved the fact that I'm home from work due to illness and a lack of public transportation today. Looks like I can expect similar tomorrow. I am occasionally relishing in the ability to breathe through both nostrils, heavy emphasis on the occasionally.

Will update tomorrow, the power company willing.

miome and I bought a new sofa and chair on Sunday. Our old sofa and chair weren't bad. They both still look decent and are only 5 years old. However, when you have a long, narrow living room painted a calm medium blue and overstuffed, extra wide olive green sofa... let's just say it was time for a change.

The furniture salesman gave us an estimate of 10-14 days for the new sofa and chair. Great! That will give us time to vacuum the chair and sofa and get rid of them (either through Goodwill or Craigslist).

Slight change of plans. Sofa and chair arrive tomorrow.

Yikes.

Picture if you will a business woman - conservative dress suit in charcoal gray with a off-white camisole, sensible pumps, full make-up, hair in a neat bun - riding the train home with a bored look on her face. In her lap is a bag in bright pink with the outline of voluptuous lady in black. There are two strategically placed tassles on the lady's breasts and the phrase "SHAKE YOUR TASSLES" in bold, block letters.

I see the strangest things on the ride home sometimes.

I just saw a yellow and green budgie at the bird feeder on my porch.

Considering that I live in the Washinton, DC area, this is not normal.

Often when something happens in my life (a cold, train ride, visits to another country, etc.), I'm tempted to write down my impression of it to use later for stories.

This is not one of those times. I would not wish this on my worst enemy much less one of my characters. On the rare occasion I come across an author using this as a plot point, I'm going to think "Low blow, author. Low blow."

What event am I talking about?

Coming into contact with poison oak/ivy/sumac and not realizing it in time to wash it off.

I now have a line of raised blisters on my arm and a rash around them that itches worse than anything I have ever encountered. I have had to trim my fingernails back because when I wake up in the morning/middle of the night it's to discover myself scratching frantically at my arm in my sleep. I have every anti-itch remedy I can fine in this house, and it still doesn't completely stop the itch. The blisters are nasty looking and if they pop, they weep and crust over. It's disgusting, but more than anything, it's itchy.

I'm not even 100% sure what I came into contact with. The entire back slope is a mess of vines and weeds. I'm pretty sure it's not poison ivy: I can instantly recognize that. Poison sumac is more shrub like than most of what we have back there. My guess is poison oak, which would be hard to distinguish from all the oak saplings and trees.

And of course, I discovered that I didn't immediately break out so I could then go wash it off. Oh no. My skin started itching and blistering almost 10 hours after I came in contact when the urushiol had had time to be absorbed. Hence the nice blisters. From what I've read on-line, the rash can continue to erupt up to 7 days after it first appears. This started Thursday. ;_;

Then again, maybe I can use this. Only instead of poison ivy, maybe I can give my characters silver poisoning or something. Because I guarantee after this, I'm not even going to want to hear the word poison ivy/oak/sumac for a long, long time.

Today I saw a man on the Metro who was taking his lunch to work in a white bag that read "Testim 1% (testosterone gel)" in large, blue letters.

The last few weeks on the Metro were not as interesting as the first couple. It's turned colder so everyone is wearing the requisite black/brown/navy jackets. But I did want to mention a few things I saw including:

- A guy with a Megatokyo Ninj4 sweatshirt. Man, I haven't read that comic in years. What a blast from the past.
- Another guy wearing a giant dog tail and ears. So cute!
- Lady sat down beside me on the Metro. She had a three ring binder labeled "PWPs 2008-2011" and a folder labelled "WIPs 2011." I wanted to say something to her, but I was afraid that a) I'd find out she had no idea what I was babbling about and that PWP and WIP had some serious insurance/banking related meaning I didn't know about, or b) she'd be involved in some crazy fandom *cough*Twilight*cough* and I'd be stuck for the next 20 minutes listening to her debate the pros/cons of Team Edward versus Team Jacob.

WHAT KIND OF IDIOT SCHEDULES A HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION FOR 5PM ON A FRIDAY?

The scene is us attempting to get out of a shopping center parking lot which, like most of the shopping center parking lots where we live, seemed to have been designed by M.C. Esher and Satan's illegitimate love child.

Tsaiko: Try that exit over there.
Miome: Straight ahead?
Tsaiko: Yes. Right past that historical marker. *pause* Because you know, this parking lot is historical and shit.
Miome: This is the area for it. You pretty much can't move without hitting something historical.
Tsaiko: Kind of like Boston. That tree there? It's been involved in a lot of history.
Miome: This brick? Yeah, it's historical.
Tsaiko: This outhouse? George Washington took a dump there. There's a sign and everything.
Miome: Given what they fed the troops back then, taking a dump was a momentous occasion.
Tsaiko: *cracks up laughing*
Miome: *paraphrasing Terry Pratchett* Find the food a little binding? Don't worry. The terror of the battlefield will get those bowels moving.

Dropped miome off so she could attend the Stewart/Colbert OTP rally (and am still disappointed she wouldn't let me make a sign for her. "Lesbians for Stewart and Colbert kissing" is a perfectly reasonable sign.) I would go but a) it's cold, b) there will be thousands of people in a small area, and c) these things are not my thing. Ah well. At least she found people to go with at the last minute.

Now, what to do? I have a feeling I'm going to spend most of the day either a) writing or b) playing Minecraft.

Yesterday afternoon, miome and I went to see Cirque du Soleil perform Ovo. I bought the tickets for it on discount through a program with my company. When I say I had excellent tickets, I seriously mean it. We were like two rows from the stage. Of course, the tallest, largest man in the entire theater sat down right in front of Miome.

This was the second Cirque du Soleil performance I've been to. I saw Dralion when it came through Raleigh several years back. I liked the premise of Dralion better, but I liked the actual performance of Ovo better. Maybe because Ovo didn't have any actual dialogue I was supposed to understand, which meant it was easier for me to follow. I have a hard time following dialogue sometimes. This was done mostly in buzzes and chirps, with body language being used to tell the story. The actual sound quality was also better. There was no feedback and I didn't feel like my ears were being blasted out with the music. If Dralion comes through the DC area, I think I'd like to give it another shot. I bet it would be better in the smaller venue that is DC

I think my favorite thing was trying to guess what insects there were. Some were obvious, like the grasshoppers (which I was delighted to see did a trampoline act, because of course the grasshoppers do an act where they hop). I also got the ants, the spiders, and the flying beetles (the trapezes artists). I totally did not get the moths until the every end. Once I did, I felt kind of slow for not realizing sooner.

One of the things I liked was sitting so close to the stage, you got to see the performers faces. I didn't realize how expressive some of them could be. It was really interesting to see and I'm glad I got to. At the end, one of the beetles winked at someone in the audience. We think he either a) knew someone in the audience or b) was flirting with someone. :)

The families attending were my least favorite part of the show. The one in front of us had a kid that couldn't have been more than 3-4. He was terrified of the insects. His Dad took him out several times (which kudos to Dad), but every time one of the performers came too close, he'd scream. It was annoying. Another family kept jumping the seats before the show because they were sure that row B was the one in front of them and not the one the usher had directed them to. When the people whose seats those actually were showed up, they were kind of obnoxious about moving. Then the woman turned to me and demanded (not asked, mind you) "What row are you in?" Row A. "What's that row in front of you then?" I looked at her and said in a sharp voice. "I don't know." Then I turned my back on her. I'm sorry, but I'm not Information. The usher told you where your seats were. Sit in them.

Funny story: Concessions at the place were outrageous. $6 for a small popcorn outrageous. But Miome and I needed something to snack on until dinner and we needed drinks. So I got us a small popcorn and two waters (at least the waters came in nice, refillable, souvenir containers). While waiting for the doors to open, I dropped a piece of popcorn on the ground. "No! That was 5 cents worth of popcorn wasted." Miome cracked up and from then on, every time we dropped a piece of popcorn, we'd talk about how we just wasted another nickel.

All in all, I really enjoyed the show. Given the opportunity, will definitely buy tickets to that venue again. Now I'm kind of hoping another Cirque du Soleil show comes through so I can see that one as well.

Yesterday, miome and I discovered an Imperial moth on our apartment door. The one we saw looked a lot like the one in the first photograph: about half brown and half yellow. And no, I don't care that the article insists it's yellow and purple. It was brown. Also, do not let the picture fool you. Those things are huge. The one we saw easily had a four inch wingspan. I wish I had my camera on me, because I would have loved to have snapped a picture, but I was on my way to work and didn't have time to go back inside to get it. By the time I got home, it was gone.

Today I read an article about an advocacy group trying to encourage the use of German over English or "Denglish" in Germany. I think my favorite part was this quote. "I'm not only trying to protect German, but English too... The English language is not just a pile of rubble from which we can pick and choose what we want." As a native English speaker my first reaction was "Why not? We do it all the time with other languages." :D