Fire in the Hole

In Germany, that is. Also, am sick. Pain in my throat, even when I'm not swallowing and no, dear sisters, this is not normal. It hurts like hell and I could cry continuesly just at the thought of having to go to work with this on Monday (which, BTW, is a national holiday. As in the national holiday. Think about this like having to work on Fourth of July in the US. Thank you, you assholes at scheduling). I'd wanted to go to my ENT doc with this today because they usually open on Saturdays... just not this Saturday. It's nice that the docs wanted to give the practice a long weekend but I might not have one because of that. I think I'm going to cry a bit more.

Or I'll see if this will solve itself until Monday morning (because it's oh so normal, as my sister reassured me) and if not, I'm going to call in sick and go to the doc on Tuesday. I just want this pain to end, please. Now.

On a more positive note: Het Big Bang is live! My story can be found here and the art for it that was made by the awesome yappichick can be found here. I will also get to publish it here in the next couple of weeks but right now, I'm just too messed up to even begin posting :S

Because there's less than one hour left of today and I still need to write my daily travel posting. What the hell.

Okay, here goes. Today, didn't do much. Basically boarded the L train to San Francisco Zoo, saw the zoo, stuck my feet into the (freezing) Pacific waters and went back to the hostel. Saw the koalas (koalas! KOALAS!) who were sleeping (as per usual for their species) but OH SO CUTE. Bundles of grey fur sleeping in trees somehow make me go all squee. Oh well.

I also saw their giant anteaters (OMGWTFANTEATERS! Sorry. That's what those weird animals always do to me. I just can't help it), lemurs (mehehe, funniest animals ever, probably), hippo (I'm in love with misshapen animals, just like my mum...), big cats (it is a little disconcerting when parents hold their little kids up to see an Amur tiger with the words "hey, kitty, kitty"...), penguins (they seemed to enjoy themselves very much), bears (the polar bear looked a little... unhappy, to be honest) and the children's zoo. I have to say I really liked the way the children's zoo was laid out and organized. And God, is was so empty (the entire zoo, that is). I'm really not used to empty zoos, seeing as both Berlin Zoos (yes, we have the decadence to afford ourselves two zoos, the Zoo and the Tierpark... in fact, we have lots of things twice. It's a relict of almost 30 years of being two cities instead of one) are rather in the city and both always draw crowds. That was nice.

Thanks to SF Zoo being a little farther out, I now also know where Evan's parents from the Protect and Survive universe live in SF (either Parkside or close to West Portal Station, if that tells you anything) and that only Laura Cadman can think of wanting to go swimming in the Pacific close to SF. Cold, oh God, so cold! But very beautiful, of course.

Anyway, I'll now go back to that "how it all began" fredlet to distract myself from the mess they made of Delicious and try to keep telling myself that everything will be alright again tomorrow. Gah.

Blergh. Just a short post today, mostly because I desperately need to get into bed and because the cold that was approaching me yesterday, is starting to take shape and because I did next to nothing today anyway. Basically, my day consisted of catching up with ancient_leah via MSN, translating a bit of the newest Minor Characters chapter, trying to ignore my sore throat, dragging myself outside to buy something to eat and something to fit the sore throat with (I just should have taken the hammer drugs, painkillers or not... guys, why does nearly everything in the US contain fucking painkillers when all we'd need are germ killers?), reading at least one of the books that mackenziesmomma brought me (they're short, one can very easily read them in one day) and editting the hell out of the big bang story. Which, by the way, I just sent away. An hour before the deadline is over. Yeah, that's me...

Anyway... I FINISHED EDITTING THE BIG BANG STORY AND SENT IT AWAY Y'ALL! It's as good as published! YAY!

That is to say, mackenziesmomma and I didn't. Instead I was at the airport three hours too early because I mixed up mac's departure and arrival times (don't ask...) but at least I could start translating the newest Minor Characters chapter. It then took us at least an hour to actually get to our rental car (apparently, today, everyone who arrived wanted to rent a car at Hertz) and another half hour to get to our hotel, the Rosewood Sand Hill. I was a little...erm... crept out by OMG HOW FRIENDLY everyone was but I guess it's a German thing (we don't take well to someone being friendly to us... no, seriously, we think it's impolite if a sales attentant for example asks as how we are when we enter a store. The best way to treat us is to completely ignore us until we get to the cash out, purely for research purposes of course (I will get into that later). And it's... err... amazing.

We also went to Stanford - mostly in search of food but we also would have taken a couple of undergrads or probably grad students in my case - but they didn't like us there (mac says there were rude hand gestures involved which unfortunately I didn't see, seeing I still didn't have sunglasses at that time). In the end, we found food at the local shopping mall. Also, I found sunglasses there. Yes, seriously, I did. I will now be able to walk through San Francisco without constantly having to shield my eyes and look weird. Yay! I did not, however, get either tea or a coffee mug that said "Fear the Tree!" (not joking here) because mac kept me from spending money on those items. Thank you, mac.

The evening ended at the Rosewood's restaurant, the Madera were we spent *mumbles unintelligibly on a really good dinner. No room for desert, though. But enough time for a dip in the pool and the hot tub by the pool. Can I please just stay here for the rest of the trip? Yes?

Oh, wait, I nearly forgot. Research purposes. We actually stumbled over this when we did research for a wedding in the Protect and Survive 'verse that was supposed to be really fancy and ended up with the Rosewood. Mac was so nice as to give me a night here for my birthday then and this is how we ended up here in person and now we're, you know, having a closer look at it for that wedding. And lo and behold, the bunnies are multiplying by the minute. Can anyone say "shower smut" and "How is it that someone who's able to fly a million dollar plane can't open a simple bottle of champagne?"?

(one of the best headings ever, isn't it?)

Damn, I really need to buy sunglasses. It's summer here, y'all and the goddamn sun is actuallye shining and it's so fucking bright (this makes a lot of sense if you were in Berlin or most other German towns this "summer"... it still feels as if the last time we saw the sun was sometime around May...). And it's obviously virtually impossible to find reasonably priced sunglasses here. Yes, this is a serious issue, guys! (and no, I didn't find a dollar store here yet, mackenziesmomma. I'm starting to thinks this city doesn't have any)

In other news, went to Haight Ashbury, the Golden Gate Park and the California Academy of Science today and it was awesome (the Academy, that is... Haight Ashbury rather got on my nerves because all that "counter culture" hippy stuff does (sorry mom, your eldest daughter is a conservative at heart) but the Golden Gate Park is fun). Lots of that edutainment stuff I love so much and an aquarium. Having an aquarium is always a plus for me. The rainforest thing was nice, too buit I kept thinking I like the one in Tierpark Berlin better. But, okay, there were chamelions. Chamelions are even as much my favorite animals as ant eaters are. Yes, I like WTF!Nature animals, why do you ask?

Oh, and I bought a coffee mug. Those among you familiar with my mug habit (such as schnelmi, heitidei and berlinamadillo) will probably go "What? Already? That was fast..." and the rest will go "And what's so interesting about that?" The answer: I have a mug issue. I just can't go on traveling without buying at least one mug. But this one was so pretty! I just had ro buy it! Maybe I'll make a picture once I find a suitable cable to charge my camera (let's just not talk about that right now)...

What else... oh yes. What's with the "VAT not included" thing? Why do they do that in the US? What's so hard about putting the real price of something on the price tag? They can do it in Germany (and most other European countries, if I remember it right), after all...

Because, see, I've been awake for over 24 hours now and arrived in San Francisco, three hours ago but can't go to bed yet because I need to trick the damn jetlag. Also, there are four other German hostel guests sitting here and I honestly have never heard so many stupid commonplace phrases with not content whatsoever in so little time ever before. Honestly. They're all trying to sound so very travel wise but they're just talking rubbish (what? I flew via Heathrow and I had to kill five hours there and both flights were British Airways). Because holy hell yes there are chocolate chips in German supermarkets. Tons of, okay? Jesus fucking Christ, I think I'll just stop being a German for the remainder of my stay.

In other news, Heathrow is awesome but their wi fi sucks. Overprized and practically non-existent. But at least I could use those five hours to write a couple more Minor Characters paragraphs (I was just starting to make Tom suffer when the netbook reminded me of the fact that it needs to be fed now and then and that I don't have anything to feed it with (in Heathrow, that is... why can't you just use the same plugs we use, Britons?). And the entire ten hours on the flight I was looking forward to get to writing that... and now I have difficulties trying not to feel too much vertigo. Argh.

Anyway, my SF adventure just began. Let's see what it holds in store for me.

Yep, it's a collection of daily meaningless rambling...

• 14:46 RT @MilitaerRSS: bundeswehr.de: Frauen an der Waffe: Europa schreibt Bundeswehr-Geschichte: Frauen in Uniform... bit.ly/7irdvV #
• 14:57 RT @NavyNews: Now THIS is a joint family ~ right? @USArmy & @US_Air_Force bit.ly/5qrsvq #
• 15:06 Where you lead, I will follow... Oh God, I love the Gilmore Girls. Seriously, if you want to make me rly, rly happy, give me a complete box. #
• 15:18 I can't believe I just got wet eyes while watching the new Werthers Original tv ad. That's not my biological clock ticking, right? RIGHT? #
• 15:35 RT @SPIEGEL_English: SPIEGEL Interview with General Stanley McChrystal: 'Killing the Enemy Is Not The Best... tinyurl.com/ydwx2k2 #
• 22:46 Dear Berlin: You royally suck at keeping your pavements free from snow an save for pedestrians. No love, me. #
• 22:47 Dear Berlin S-Bahn: You suck, too. In general and in specific... in just about everything. #sbahnfail #
• 22:48 Dear Deutsche Bahn: YOU suck most of all! OF ALL! #bahnfail #
• 23:04 Dear @MilitaerRSS, I'd really like to watch the vid about the soldiers... is there any reason the link leads to virtual nirvana? Thanks... #

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You know, I have no idea how I manage to take the time to do so much reading but when I finish this review of three books there will still be three books left I need to review. And they keep piling up. Seriously, no idea where the time is coming from...

( 'Wild, Wild World' - 'Into The Wild', Jon Krakauer )

( 'German Lesson' - 'Mit dem Rücken zur Wand', Klaus Kordon )

( 'A Rose Is a Rose...' - 'The Remarkable Life And Times Of Eliza Rose', Mary Hooper )