My cousin Fish plays Return to Castle Wolfenstein and all sorts of FPSes. I managed to convince him that Heinrich Himmler was indeed a real person, and not a creation of computer game designers. Such is the problem of pulp fiction action hero/villain Nazis. Real history is so easily forgotten.

Fish finds me sadistic for this, but being tortured by lightning-wielding silly-German-accent mad scientist zombie Nazis in a torch-lit gothic dungeon is pretty damn funny. The caged skeletons dangling from the ceiling by rusty chains are the icing on the cake. Camp at its finest hour.

I also play Warcraft III- Fish wonders whether the people have British or American accents. The answer to that is they speak in a dialect of English known as Campy Fantasy Film English. I'm sure a true linguist can look into this. Fish also says that Arthas the paladin is comparable to Bush in his warlike righteousness; we had a good laugh mentally imposing Arthas' forthright knightly dialogue on Bush's simian head; "I stand for the light!" "Feel my wrath!" "Slay them all!" 'For honor!" "Betrayers of the light!" "I will hunt you down to the ends of the earth!!! Do you hear me?!!" I'm afraid this is only funny if you say the above in a grim and determined manner, setting your jaw just so.

Have also done lots of mountain hiking so it's not like I never go outside. I'm outside quite often. Kinda tropical. There's a type of fern that curls up when you touch it, and stairs carved into the rock and tumbled rockfaces and waterfalls that trickle over them (but they look dirty) and small orange crabs bright enough to appear cooked that scuttle away with amazing dexterity when you (unwisely) poke them with a toe. The good thing is that you can see very far into the mountains that fold in a green felty fashion like a giant's cloak in the foreground. It's easy, in the shadow of a mountain, to misjudge distances, until you see tiny white blots that are apartment buildings on the adjacent mountain's rocky spine, and you realize that walking from point A to point B would be the fruitful work of several days. You can see into the densely populated valley with its concrete forest of buildings, and saddles of mountains and the sea between mountain gaps, until the mountains fade into a universally flat haze in the blue distance against the horizon.

It's very strange how halfway around the world the rustling murmur of cicadas and the warm smell of suntan lotion can make it feel so much like home.

I am in Hong Kong. The weather is actually good for a change, meaning that it's cool and breezy. Took a walk in Victoria Park, which has finished renovation and is greatly improved. Have gone mountain hiking. Take that, Malex! Wyoming my ass. Except that it's raining right now, but that's beside the point.

Kinda boring, but that's what you get for living with old people who do nothing but watch crappy Chinese tv.

My grandma is not biting my head off this year which could mean one of several things. One, that she's going senile. Two, that I'm not as obnoxious a brat as I was last year. Three, that losing twenty pounds does affect how people treat you.

People still wear SARS masks, but not as much. In airports. Also, mostly restaurant workers and sanitation workers. Saw a t-shirt, which I did not buy but still thought funny, of Mao in a SARS mask.

Have problems sleeping the entire night, but that's to be expected.

You know what I did on Friday afternoon? I spent fifteen minutes staring at a shrubbery. It was rather extraordinary, or maybe I'm on psychotropic drugs, but as I was looking at the shrubbery, it began to look to me like the side of a tree covered mountain. Each sprig on the shrubbery, instead of being just a sprig, was a little evergreen tree, and I could "see" birds' nests and pinecones. And very clear in my mind's eye were roads winding around the mountain which I half expected to see if I were just to part the little sprigs, and hikers appeared as pinpricks of color occasionally walking along the side of the road, overtaken by cars and buses. They would, if they had really existed, appear as flashes of light as they travelled along the sunny stretches of the road, and then go dark again as they drove under the shade. I saw birds circling over the pines, and, with my mind's eye dipping under the leafy canopy, saw mats of pine needles, underbrush and topsoil, and along the steep sections of the mountain, a grey rock face with loose sections, where occasionally a hiker would, with his shoe, dislodge some pebbles that would go pingpingping! all the way down.

But sometimes a shrubbery is just a shrubbery.

For the rest of the duration of the walk, I'd see other shrubbery, and it'd appear to me as a spreading oak hung with lanterns by which a hundred or so revellers would be eating barbecue and chatting (the children would be chasing each other) on a summer evening (it was about 3 pm after school, in reality), or I'd look at a tree and see a redwood on a knoll that could serve as a house, with round doors and windows carved into the bark, or I'd see a shrubbery that looked like a tree on a patch of hilly and cheerful farmland under which I could sit and read, or I'd see somebody's lawn and see plains shaking under the weight of a stampeding herd of bison. I lost all sense of scale- what was one inch, or six inches, could be the height of a human, or a buffalo, or a tree. It was like I was looking at a bansai world, with my mind inserting special effects.

My imagination riots against the IB.

There are so many deer in Rock Creek Park, but they're rather scrawnier than movies would have you think. No majestic stags or anything. I've been walking there with my mom for the last four days (Saturday, Sunday, yesterday, today) in the late afternoon and evening, and we haven't ceased to see deer.

On Saturday was one that dashed across the path around the middle of the trail and disappeared. I also saw a water snake too, from a bridge. And one dead crow. Yayfor West Nile.

Sunday, three deer slunk through the woods by the middle of the trail, one buck and two does.

Yesterday, there were nine deer spottings, though very possibly they were the same deer. One doe with a fawn eating grass as we went into the park, two bucks later on by Rock Creek in a grove of trees, in about the middle of the trail, one fawn with prominent dapples and another dark-coated, un-dappled deer of some sort further back in the trees, and when we were leaving, one doe with two fawns (not dappled as prominently as the earlier ones.) The weird thing is that they weren't afraid of us; they stood around watching. Also interesting to note that the forest is so much cooler than outside.

Today.. six total. My mom's friend was with us as well, so that may have been the reason why the deer were more cautious this time. As we were going in, a doe with a fawn ran away from us. I think it's the same one... Later, going in, two deer crossed the path in front, and also ran away. When we were coming back, a doe was looking at us from behind the trees, along with another doe behind another tree. It was especially nice today, because it was so windy... it makes it feel like the whole Earth is alive and the trees are breathing.

I like walking home in the rain. It's quite refreshing, because the sky is silver, and it brings out the wet green of the grass and dark trees. And it feels clean, and the rainwater pours past you in torrents over the sidewalk, because I have the privelege of walking through a hilly area home from school.

I was walking to the library, but decided what the hey, and wandered around randomly and got lost in the suburbs and went in circles until I stumbled upon St. John's church, and found my way to Aspen Hill Library anyhow. It's a good feeling, walking around randomly on a summer day. Very time wasting, but fun.

I'm being quite healthy and stuff. Lots of DDRing. Saturday.. walked with my mom through Rock Creek Park to Lake Needwood, which I think we'll start making a weekly habit. I saw two deer in the woods that looked extremely frail and skinny. I really haven't seen deer that close up before. And when we left, there was a dappled deer that crossed the road and by the road, was suckling three fawns. And in Lake Needwood I saw a watersnake that drew back into the water when I came closer. I considered poking it with a stick, but that's the type of thing that wins you Darwin Awards. Oh yeah, that's wildlife viewing for me.

And then there was Alex's party. Lost overwhelmingly to Alex in Apples to Apples.

Andrew is sickeningly good at DDR, but complained about being too big for the pads.

Sunday. Went swimming at the Montgomery County Aquatic Center, which I hadn't been to in a few years. The kiddie pool isn't as exciting as I remember it being. And yes, apparently I still have my phobia of deep water. I refuse to swim in water deeper than 8 feet or so because it freaks me out. The water there got as deep as 18 feet (at the diving section) and it was so unnerving for me to see how dark a shade of blue it was. I honestly don't think that the type of phobia therapy where you're exposed to what you fear really works for me, because I used to learn swimming in water 12 and half feet deep, diving in it and things, I'm still as freaked out by it was I was then. Only now I'm taller, so 'neck height' is higher for me.

It was such a Nice Spring Day (tm) that I made myself go for a walk. And bought a cup of iced coffee. For $3. Which is silly, because first I owe Jen $3 and also because it's too cold for iced coffee and windy. Thunderstorm warning, actually. Gah, it was sunny when I went out.

Wow. Apparently I walked 2.4 miles for a sandwich. Good sandwich though. I didn't know it was that far. Well, it's really not that far, but it just looks like an intimidating number. Also, it's sort of annoying to walk for 20 minutes and get a sandwich and then walk straight back without getting a chance to sit down due to violin lessons. The great thing about Togo's is that they don't mind if I pay them all in quarters. Oh well. This is my lunch. Ahhhhhh. It's also one of my favorite sandwiches ever.



I wonder if I should make this my AIM icon.

(You know you're putting your life online when you put a picture of your lunch on your blog. Next thing you know, I'll be blogging about my toiletries.)

And that was the highlight of my day.

Safety tip of the day: When climbing up a sheer rock wall, remember how to climb down.

This is why I usually climb trees, only the ones in Rock Creek park are fairly sucky, being like straight up for like 10 feet until the branches start forking. But the branches stay where they are. With rock walls, all your foot and handholds that you used to climb up mysteriously disappear once you're 8 feet above the ground. Dammity.

Quote of the Day candidate: "Excuse me! Do you know how I could get down?" -me to a random jogger
Quote of the Day candidate: "Goodness. I'm on fire." -Nick

Nick wins.

You know what's amusing? www.azn4life.com. I think the psychedilic music may be a bit overdoing it.

Got The Color of Magic, Maskerade, and Soul Music from the library. I like not being able to drive. I can walk, and it's nice out. Feels like summer. Nothing quite as reliable as my own two feet even though I have a bike and a scooter. Three Discworld books at once may seem a bit overdoing it until you take into account that I can finish those in under a week. In Color of Magic my Vetinari-poo is fat. He must've lost weight over the years.

Finally downloaded "This is How You Remind Me" from Nickelback. That song was really annoying me because I kept hearing it and not knowing its name or the lyrics except for the chorus line.. this is how you remind me.. what I really am..

My Descartes roleplay was quite ghetto. Just the paper towel frill collar was ghetto. Alex and Lianna understood that it wasn't supposed to be a bib, but I don't think anyone else did. And no, I didn't kick Aristotle's ass. What a sucky-ass week. I did cruddy on my calculus test too, and I haven't fetched my PSATs. It isn't on the list of 'worst mornings of my life', but it was still pretty cruddy. I shouldn't really complain about ghetto costumes. *cough tychobrahe cough*.

But I'm happy now. Because I took a long walk around the block (rhyming!), and Christmas is prettiness. I think the pagans just invented a holiday so that they'd have a reason to be happy during the winter. I'm gonna do my shopping afterschool tomorrow. The world sort of looks all nasty and gray at first, which is why I didn't take a walk until I really needed one, but really, it's pretty in an austere Zen garden way, with bare rocks and bare trees rising straight, and the grass turning yellow but some still green and the pastel houses really cheerful with their Christmas lights and poinsettas and ribbons and tacky American flags. It's not as OBVIOUSLY pretty as the plant reproductive organ craziness of spring, or the fertility of summer, or the artistic death motif of fall, but it's pretty in a subtle way.

I think the sun makes me happy- I haven't gotten a lot of sunshine this week. It must be my.. whatever was on the psych test. Circadian cycle. Because I always get happier after taking walks when I'm depressed. The sun was sort of silvery, not gold like I like, but whatever, I'll take what I can get. And sunset was splendoriffic too, because the sky gets less steel grey as the sun sets (around four, unfortunately), and turns into a deep blue, like the type you only see in the summer. And then the edges of the clouds turn pale gold, and part of the sky turns pink. A winter sunset. I'll have to see more of those, even though I like the bright pink/orange of summer or the deep purple sunsets more.

Mother Nature: Everyone's a critic.

Me: Shut your face. (Can you believe it? I'm fucking reviewing Mother Nature, just like a movie or something)

Maybe it's not the sun. Maybe I just like walking, and looking into the distance, and seeing a destination in front of me as I walk. I like.. motion parallax (*everyone in psych groans*). Seriously. I like seeing how the colors revolve around a single point in the distance and stuff. It has to be a place; I can't just walk on a treadmill. In any case, I'm glad to know that it's nearing the winter solstace. It's reassuring to know that the days get longer after that, and that I only have to bear with this darkening world of mine for a little while more.

I'm in an insufferably good mood. HA.

I like scootering. Because my bike is flat. Alex's bike isn't flat. Homaster. Rock Creek park is really nice this time of year, BTW, because the leaves are all golden and crap. I went under a bridge where cars were going over, and I climbed up the scree under the rafter/support/pylon thingies. It's kinda weird having like a ton of steel and combusting engine oil going at 50 miles an hour 3 feet above your head. It sorta sounds like you're on a beach and the surf is coming in, except it never goes out. I need to go check out
that Lunar Bridge website thing. Alex. remind me. Plus, I got water all over my feet by turning on the wrong part of the water fountain. Maybe it's for washing off dog crap or something.

My October 22 post scares me. I'm editting it. It cuss too much, and it's not very nice. Now I really wanna peanut butter sandwich.