Mortaine’s Blog

Well, WorldCon is this weekend. In fact, it started yesterday, but I still haven’t gone up yet. I’m really dawdling right now– I was working on my costume, but I burned myself with the hot glue gun and won’t have it done in time for tomorrow at this point anyway (as soon as I burned myself, things stopped working well, and the whole thing’s just a mess now–argh!), and I’m just. . . . I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m dawdling on getting up there. I guess it’s partly because I lack overnight accomodations and none of my friends are going to be there, so I kind of worry that I’ll be bored or lonely, which always sucks. Also, I missed the LJers this morning (10 AM– I was taking the cat to the vet).

Sigh.

And did I mention that my finger hurts like a MoFo? I HATE hot glue burns, because I can never get the glue off of my fingers before they cause 2nd degree burns, and then I have to make sure I don’t drop the glue gun on the sofa while I run to the sink. . . . by the time I do all that, I’ve got a pretty f-ing serious burn. Also, there’s nothing you can really do for the pain, aside from cold water and ice, and those only help while they’re actually being applied.

I’m updating now in Chicago O’Hare Airport. Wireless works here– yay!

Security sucks. Lessee:

Having an expired drivers lic. seems to have got me ‘flagged.’ My checked bag was ’sniffed,’ and then I was searched in a ‘random’ search. After I got on the plane, my bag got stuck on an air vent under the seat! Yikes! I had to wait for the flight to end before I could crawl under the seat & unhook it.

Oh yeah. After leg 1 of my journey, I realized I was getting pretty, um, rank. Why can’t airports have showers or, at the very least, deodorant that doesn’t cost a small fortune?

Well, today was the “Day with Mom” on my trip to Missouri.

So, here’s what we planned to do today:

• Hang out together.
• Maybe go to this winery I saw signs for somewhere near Kansas City (K.C.)
• Go to lunch at a Thai restaurant.
• (Just me) Go to the Meetup in K.C.

Before we left, I looked up the Thai restaurant and Meetup online. Meetup was cancelled, so we didn’t need to deal with getting to that anymore. Well, ok. So, one less thing to deal with. I did get the address for the “Tasty Thai” restaurant from BigBook, complete with map.

So first, we headed out for the winery, with plans to stop and get capuccino at the gas station nearby. This was a total bust– the capuccino sucked. It was basically over-sweetened flavored coffee. Ewww. At least I didn’t pay more than $1 for it. Ugh! It was so horrible, we eventually stopped and poured it out.

Next, we drove south for over an hour to see if we could find the winery. We eventaully were heading out of Lee’s Summit, still without locating the sign. After deciding that, really, wineries weren’t all that exciting, and we were just driving towards it because it was something to go to, we turned around.

So, we turned around. I had read in the K.C. Tourism guide that the K.C. Royals were playing Oakland from the 26th through the 28th. Typically, baseball is played in three-game series, so it should follow that they should be playing on the 27th. I mentioned this to Mom, and said “Gee, I wonder where the stadium is?”

“Right here,” she replied. Sure enough, we were at highway 70 and Blue Ridge Cutoff, where the Chiefs (football) and the Royals (baseball, National League) play. Mom explained that Kansas City is so Chiefs-crazy, they don’t care at all about the Royals, so we could almost certainly get tickets. The calendar said that the games were at 1:05, and it was 12:50 when we stopped. Well, Kauffmann Stadium was a ghost town when we got there, and it turned out the game was at 7:05, according to the box office sign.

OK, so we had about 6 hours to kill, right? Next stop: Thai food.

Now, the “Tasty Thai” restaurant is listed at 6509 North Camden Avenue in Kansas City (don’t go there, by the way). When I get home, I will be sure to post photos of 6509 N. Camden Ave. It is certainly not a Thai food restaurant. I don’t know what the good folks at that house thought when I rolled down the window and snapped a photo, but I’m sure they were just a little disturbed!

Anyway, on to lunch. We were getting progressively more hungry, as the search for 6509 took an extra half hour, and getting up there was also time-consuming. We stopped at a conveniently-located Chinese food restaurant, a buffet, and had a lovely lunch.

After lunch, on to Goodwill (for sweatshirts to wear in case it got cold at the game), and then Sam’s Club for some things Mom needed, and a SmartMedia card that I required (I was down to 7 photos in my camera).

Next stop: the Casino! K.C. has “riverboat” gambling, which means anything from a floating hotel/casino to something standing in about 2 feet of water. At this point, I think they just let you build a casino anywhere within a certain distance of the riverbank.

Well, Mom played slots all night and came out $13 ahead. I played carps first and was up $50, then down $25 when I switched to Blackjack. Ultimately, I ended the evning ahead by $1. I felt just like Microsoft (which has beat projected earnings by $1 every quarter for the last serveral years– and we don’t think they’re cooking the books?)

We got to the stadium at about 6:30 and went to buy our tickets. Club cox seats for $22, to see the Royals play the A’s at 7:05. We were right between home and first base. It was great! Not field level, but then we didn’t make fools of ourselves by ducking the foul balls.

The game was OK. The Royals aren’t really a first-rate team, and so it was little surprise that they scored 6 runs, one in each inning starting in the 3rd. In the 8th inning, though, the Royalls rallied– and hard! They scored a double, which was pretty phnomenal for this team that just kept striking and flying out.

So, the game was fabulous– lots of beer, yelling, screaming, food that was bad for us, and FUN! The best part was the fact that going to the game was pretty much spontaneous, so it was extra special. I’m really glad I had that– a really fun, spontaneous, and totally fun day with my mom.

Mom & I are hanging out here on the sofa and updating my LJ. I’m just showing her how to do all this stuff and she thinks she wouldn’t update a journal like this.

Well, I’m in Missouri, still. I wrote a journal entry last night on my Palm, but haven’t had access to upload it yet, so I’ll skip all that stuff for now.

Today we went to Sears and got family portraits taken. Then it was lunch at the buffet– I ate WAY TOO MUCH! The good news is that I took a swim this morning, so I got a little bit of exercise in.

Oh, yes. The swim.

There was a frog in the pool while I was swimming. A little boy was also in the pool he had been “helping” get the frog out (really just lying to Oren about helping and letting the frog back into the pool). After I got the frog onto the side of the pool, he went over to “look at it” and it mysteriously ended up back in the pool.

Near the end of my swim, I found the frog again and decided to get it out of the pool and onto the grass nearby. I mean, this frog had no chance of getting out on its own– it’s too high to jump out of the pool, and the pool’s full of chlorine. Since the frog is breathing the water, it’s basically breathing chlorine while it swims around– not a healthy thing for the frog. Also, it was clearly getting tired.

So, I get it out onto my hand and was about to let it go. Well, then Austin (my little ray of sunshine) was standing at the fence and wanted to know what I had. He’s 4 years old, so you better believe I brought the frog over to show him. Austin wisely pointed out that frogs live in rivers, and so I decided we should put the frog into the lake, where it would be able to wash off the chlorinated water.

Did I get my shoes on before walking down to the lake? Of course not. I walked down barefoot, on gravel, with my little nephew, my sister, and the growth on her hip that is also known as my sweet little niece (the umbilical cord only stretched longer when she was born). We tenderly walked down (tender for my feet, that is), and let the frog jump into the lake water, where it will be quite happy.

After this escapade, it was time for my shower and dressing, and then off for the family photos. In addition to all our prints, I got a “portrait” print, which was done on the spot, of 3 photos of us. I was wearing red, and everyone else wore either grey or blue, so we were very patriotic-looking, and I got the flag background for the portrait print. The other prints will be ready in mid-September, which is when I’ll be able to scan them in, I suppose. We got the proofs on disk, so I might be able to post those from here.

When I got back, it was too hot to take a nap in the trailer, so I turned on the air conditioning and walked down to the store to log on and use the computer.

Right now, I’m at the store, updating my LJ and checking things out. When I left Friday, I had 87 support points. Today, I have 113. I broke 100 without even knowing it! Cool! I also had a few responses to some journal posts, and I’m about 2 pages out of date on my Friends pages. I better go check up and see how folks are doing, I guess!