Meanderings: May 4, 2000

Thursday,
May 4, 2000

"I do not drink. . .wine. But I will take a Lucozade."

"Oh, my God! Do you want to see a doctor?"

That was Lyndon this morning, as soon as he saw my eye. I was right about the oozing -- it kept up all through the night, and now the entire lower left side of my eye is filled with blood, right up to the outer ring of the iris. This just looks so gross (and no, I'm not posting pictures of it, mainly because I was a goof and forgot to take any. Just take my word for it, this was disgooosting).

At least it doesn't hurt anymore, which I'm choosing to assume means that the leak has finally stopped. I turned down the beloved's offer to hunt down a doc -- there's nothing one could really do for this unless the bleeding continued to spread throughout the eye, and I really, really don't want to be taped into a white gauze eyepatch right now, thank you very much. Although it would certainly be a conversation piece for Andy and Anna for years to come as they show friends the wedding photographs.

"Oh, look -- I didn't know you were married by Long John Silver!"

Arrgh, matey. Now I just have to go out and find an appropriate dress for a Wiccan priestess. Wonder if Evans does Dianic garb. . .

My GOD, they DO! Well, it'll be Dianic garb as soon as I slap some sleeves on this peacock blue floor-length tunic (hey, look, YOU try to find some medievalesque garb in larger sizes in Stockholm. I'm just grateful I don't have to wear the one piece of garb I do have -- a lovely velvet and crinklon dress. Problem is, it's black. Fine for a priest, not too cool for a Wiccan officiant). Now I just have to figure out where the hell I'm going to find a coronet. Or a wreath of leaves, whatever. And get my hair cut -- there is a definite need to get the mane trimmed back to acceptable levels before I scare Anna's guests.

Oh, and now I know what downtown Croydon looks like. Whee. The hotel was about a fifteen minute walk from the town center, and twenty minutes from the Whitgift Centre, the local shopping mall, all of which would have been a lovely walk if it wasn't so frigging HOT out. I still can't get used to the idea of a really warm English spring and summer -- it's supposed to be temperate, rainy and maybe just a bit cold right now, not "let's go down to the beach and rhumba!" weather.

What's really weird is being able to buy bags of ice at the supermarkets (yeah, laugh now, but this wasn't available when I first went over to England -- the clerks would look at you funny if you asked where they kept the ice) and seeing the signs advertising "air conditioned" restaurants and theaters. There haven't been signs like that in the States since the 50's -- it's taken for granted now that any public building will automatically have A/C built into it. But a lot of English buildings don't have a cooling system (hell, a lot of them don't have a heating system, at least one that works), and they never really felt the need for air conditioning until about five years ago, when the weather changed and the summers started getting really warm here. It's kind of nifty seeing all of these establishments being dragging kicking and screaming into the 20th Century of Environmental Comfort Control, just as we're moving into the 21st Century.

Of course, our charming garret room doesn't have A/C, so I'm chugging water like it's going out of style and we're leaving the window wide open whenever we're out. Any acrobatic wallclimber of a thief who can make it up to our window deserves our stuff, I figure.

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