I suppose I could continue my beach dreaming, and order the polka dot swimsuit, and try to find sunglasses. _

I think the weather has destroyed my brain. That and mentally preparing for a presentation I gave this afternoon, which I was worried might turn into a catfight. (When I sent out something about it on Tuesday, I got yelled by one of the assisstants for letting people come up with a system like this. As though I had anything to do with it.)

It didn't turn into a fight, yay. I was so nervous I sort of raced through it.

But. It is Friday, it is rainy and cold, and I just want to go home and watch something mindless on the TV. And knit my pixie hood. _

All right, people who know such things (Remi and Liz, this might just be you): I am watching Sports Night for the first time (my sister tried to get me to watch it once years ago, but the laugh track put me off); is Dan the Sorkin stand in this time around? _

The problem with memorization is that sometimes things stick in your head pointlessly. I remember the principle parts of the word fero (fero, ferre, tuli, latum), but I don't remember what it means.

So...anyone? Anyone? I suppose I could get out the Latin dictionary, but that is less fun. _

My sister has asked me for help with book advice for a 10 year old girl who is starting an interest in science fiction. Sci fi, not fantasy, so I am at a loss. Suggestions, anyone? (She and I have thought of A Wrinkle in Time and Hitchhikers' Guide. We eliminated Anne McCaffrey due to sex and dragons.) _

Meanwhile, on the plus side for "probably lost, not stolen" no one has purchased anything for it. So there's that? _

I hate losing things. I don't even know what it is that I wanted to read that was on my Kindle, but now I don't have it and I'm stressed out. I have downloaded the Kindle app for my phone, but that is just not the same at all. _

Amazon has deactivated the Kindle, anyway, and I will have to contact them to re-register it. And if anyone else tries to use it, they will get a notice to contact Amazon, and Amazon will try to get it back and will contact me. So. There's that at least? _

My room is now clean. I have gone through all my bags and suitcases, I have looked under my bed, and on my desk, and my Kindle is still missing.

I am now sitting here chatting with an Amazon rep to see if they can help me do something in case it was stolen. (I am starting to suspect that I had it out on the dining room table and now it's not there and someone has people over sometimes who might have slipped it into their pocket.) _

Had a fight with my AC this morning. It has a timer and temperature controls, so I can make it be cooler only when I'm going to be home, but it was stuck on 61, and I was freezing.

I suspect it needed batteries because once I put them in, it started working again. _

I baked an experimental cherry upside down cake last night. I couldn't find my regular cake pans, so I used a springform pan I'd forgotten I owned. Who knew that there's a reason people doing do upside down cakes in springform pans? Juice seeped out of the crack, got all over the bottom of the oven, and filled my house with white smoke before I realized what was going on (I was two rooms away, so it wasn't until the smoke got from the kitchen to the living room that I realized anything was going on. I should test my smoke detector.)

I hope it's tasty. It took at least twice as long to cook as the recipe suggested, but I suspect that might be at least in part because I'd stuck the cherries in the freezer and then dumped them in the pan still very very cold. _

Tori's office pen theft prevention tip: write with a fountain pen. Apparently they freak people out. I don't know why. _

On Glee, a carefully measured and deliberately set table was a sign of the OCD character's neurosis.

On Downton Abbey, it is in the credits as though it is expected. _

I have Pandora playing me swing music and I'm dancing around my kitchen while baking Liz's blue cheese fig things.

An ad came on, as they do with Pandora, for Hallmark prepaid cards and I went "oh, shit, it's Father's Day!" and called my dad. My stepmom just laughed at me. "It's next week, hon! But it's always better to be early than late."

(Yes, she is from Baltimore.) _

I am considering getting this in this fabric.

The pros and cons are:

• I think it's super cute, and I love the vintage look
• But will it be cute vintage, or granny vintage?
• Will the red and polka dots knock out any granny look?
• I have a bathing suit, do I need two?
• There's nothing wrong with my bathing suit
• Two is nice when you're at the beach for a week
• Beach! August! Beach! (Actually, beach in August is kind of a recurring theme in a lot of my thought processes these days)
• It's kind of expensive
• But it's cute! And all retro-y!

So. Help. _

Sam spent most of Saturday on my lap, or close to my lap. (Or on Moss and Julia.) He spent most of  last night, sitting in front of the cabinet with dog treats begging for one. I gave him like three. I think they need to move. _

That is the longest blog entry I think I have ever written. _

Skydiving Adventure!

From Skydiving

Today, I used my birthday Groupon for skydiving. I had a few cycles of absolute panic where I was convinced I was going to die. On Friday afternoon, I was sure I was going to die. And I'd pull out of it and be like "well, everyone dies sometime, and I'll be attached to someone, and there's the emergency back up parachute, and percentage-wise, more people die crossing the street than skydiving." Also, the idea of free fall fascinates me. Fascinated me, I guess, since now I have done it.

From Skydiving

There are, as one might imagine, about a zillion legal forms you have to sign saying things along the lines of "I will not sue them ever for anything ever ever times a thousand and if I do, I will pay all their legal fees and we will have the hearing in this county. But I won't sue, and my estate won't sue, and..." And then there was a quick video where they explain everything (which, well good) a lot of which ultimately ends up with "get in this position and let your tandem guide person do all the work. Also, it doesn't feel like falling. The only think you will really feel is the wind blowing as the plane drives away."

From Skydiving

And then you wait forever, I swear, as the little airplane goes up and down with all the other people and you look up and watch them falling, and you watch it come back with the door wide open. And you start to regret the whole long sleeved shirt idea, and forget the whole idea of the sweatshirt, and you take dramamine, because ohmygod you are about to get in a teeny tiny plane and sit backwards and that will make you so sick and...
I did my hair like four or five times while I was waiting for them to call me up, switching between one braid or two or two french braids going down the top of my head into one braid. It was definitely a nervous habit thing.

It's worth noting at this time that I didn't go alone, alone. A friend of my mom's in her LLM program joined me, we decided to do this at Thanksgiving (she is from Nigeria, and so she didn't go home for Thanksgiving). She had wound up thoroughly disappointed with the grade she got in one of her classes, and was talking a lot about it while we waited. We told them we were going together, so we were on the same plane. There was also some guy wandering around in a Speedo. He was a bit nuts. He jumped out of our plane in his Speedo, a bike helmet, and a parachute. There were also a ridiculous number of tattooed people around; there was a woman working there who had a butterfly tattooed on her chest, down under her shirt, and there was a jewel thing in the butterfly looked like a piercing but was probably stuck on; it was like she had a stud earring sticking out of her chest. Super weird, and distracting, and I couldn't ask. There was also a woman wandering around in a TARDIS tee shirt.
And then they call you and you go up. They give you a jump suit thing so you won't muck up your clothes on landing, and a helmet that seems like the least useful helmet ever and they strap you into a harness that will be clipped to them. Your videographer, if you decide to get a videographer, takes you off to talk, and I got hit by stage fright and oh, seriously, why are you talking to me, I just want you to take pictures of me while I am in the air. I was more nervous about talking to the guy with the video camera than with the idea of the skydive, by that point, which I said to him when he asked if I was scared.

From Skydiving

Stupidest helmet ever.

The guy with the speedo and some girl jumped out of the plane earlier than the rest of us, somewhere at about 7,000 feet, holding hands and spiralling. We were meant to climb to 10,500, but there were clouds, so we didn't go up as high. I learned about clouds and why we jumped out early once our chute was open -- you can breathe, you can talk while you're in free fall, but there is so much wind that you can't hear anything other than wind. You can also jump through clouds, of course, that's not a problem. But you can't see anything in the clouds, so you can't tell if there's another jumper or a plane or anything, and that is, well, less than ideal.) Our altimeters had single numbers that marked of the thousands. My videographer closed the door behind him and nearly fell out of the plane then and there (he was wearing a parachute. He would have been fine. There are also reserve chutes in the backpacks, in case you pass out or something and hit 2,000 feet and haven't pulled the other one, if you have passed out or something. The videographers are even more nuts than anyone else, hanging onto the side of the plane and making sure they video you well.)

I just read that paragraph like four times to try to make sure that I have the right number of open and close parentheses. I got up in the middle to get a towel for my roommate's houseguest. (Friend seems really nice and normal and sane. She is starting a Masters at MIT in the fall and was apartment hunting this weekend at the last minute. And I have hosting instincts that clearly the roommate doesn't have.) I think I am good. Cicero broke me young; I use way too many subordinate clauses, and parentheses can help make that more manageable in English.

From Skydiving

The video they show you tell you that it doesn't feel like falling. The other people tell you it doesn't feel like falling. It doesn't feel like falling. There is a moment when your feet leave the airplane and your stomach drops to the ground as the plane whooshes away and you can feel that pulling you. And then it is just amazing. It is like flying. Of course you are falling, and you can see things getting closer, but it doesn't feel like it at all. You are falling something ridiculous like 120 miles an hour for something like 7 seconds, and it may be the longest 7 seconds in your life. (I have just sat here and done ridiculous math in my head. It's more than 7 seconds. The emergency back up parachute releases at 2,000 feet, which is about 1/2 mile. You are falling 120 miles an hour, which is 2 mile a minute. 2 mph = 1 mile every 30 seconds. If your plane had gone up to the 10,500 feet it was supposed to go, that's about 2 miles. You would get ~ 1 1/2 miles in free fall, which would take about 45 seconds. We jumped from about 8,000 feet, and my guy pulled the ripcord for the normal parachute, so we probably got about 30 seconds. I was never any good at math with numbers, so if anyone wants to check my arithmetic, have at it.)

From Skydiving

When the parachute goes, you go from 120 miles an hour to 20 miles an hour in no time. I said "did we just go up?" And he sort of laughed and explaind that no, of course not, that would be physically impossible, it just feels like it. There is no sensation of whiplash, just a sudden lift. And then you do realize you are falling. You can talk, but we didn't talk much. It is stunningly beautiful, all the green. I watched a purple parachute corkscrew around with a person on it, very pretty, much speedier landing than we had. There is steering to be done, but one of the things that is fun about the tandem jump is that you are basically along for the ride. At some point, he said "okay, we are going to do a sitting landing, just hold your legs out in front of you." I did. "Okay, great. You don't have to do that the whole time now, just when I say, do it."

Apparently there is a thing called "ground rushing" that people get sometimes, as you approach the land, and it looks like everything is rushing at you really fast. The instructional video warns you. I suspect it has to do with trees. I didn't get it, which is absolutely fine. The landing is apparently the point when most people injure themselves, you go in for the wrong landing and you stumble and break your wrist or twist your ankle. We did none of these, we just slid in, sitting down.

From Skydiving

And then the videographer comes back to get your reaction. I am one of those sorts who gets into a very sort of zen state when my adreneline really goes, and it will take me a bit to get into hyper manic state, so I was probably really disappointing, I was just like "yes, that was fun, of course I would do it again." Then I acted a bit for the camera, but the jumpiness and the heartracing didn't kick in until I had joined back up with my friend who was wild.

I am in a bit of a crash right now. I had eaten just about nothing at all, before going. I am not really a breakfast person, and the only place to pick up a coffee at South Station is McDonalds, ugh (I took the bus to Manchester where I met my mom), so I hadn't even had coffee. While we were waiting, we got food. Deji and my mom had ridiculous breakfast sandwich egg things, and I was like "I will just eat this banana, thank you very much." So we went out for pizza, then, because the only restaurant my could remember in Manchester was Bertuccis, and a Thai place, but I wasn't feeling like Thai, and it was 3 on a Sunday and Manchester dies. So, caffeineless Tori was then dealing with a major adreneline crash, and my sister was sending me chats about River Song that I was trying to ignore and I was just sort of curled up on the bus on the way back and spaced out. I was too wiped to start "The Candle in the Wind," which is probably going to take some mental prep anyway, so I listened to podcasts and played Solitaire all the way home. I am not sure if I actually smell like plane exhaust, or of I am just imagining that I smell like plane exhaust, and I am just going to sort of curl up and eat some more food because I am still hungry, and watch something mindless. _

My Kindle is still missing. I am despairing. I was sure it was on my desk, or in the pile of books next to my bed. It is in neither place. It is also not on the table in the kitchen or the table in the dining room, which were both also possibilities, since when I switch purses and try to lighten the weight, I tend to leave things on the table. I have also looked under the bed, on the windowsills behind the couch and the armchair (I tend to leave things I am reading there) on the coffee table, under the couch, and in every laundry basket in my bedroom.

I am vaguely convinced that at some point, I put all my stuff from the living room and dining room in a bag to take it into my bedroom, but I can't find that bag.

I hate losing things. _

Owing!

_