Just you and me. Two alone people. Together. Alone

1. cucumberseed, this afternoon on the bus I sat behind a woman with dead bees in her hair. I don't know how, but this is your fault.

2. Not only does the absinthe-minded bartender at Backbar still recognize me and derspatchel, he supplied the missing ingredient for the Seeräuber-Jenny, which I'd realized had to contain ginger liqueur (mule) and spiced black rum (pirates). Citrus, he said, and then after a moment's thought: bergamot. He didn't have any behind the bar, but if I can bring him some, he'll mix me the drink. Challenge accepted. —Where do I find bergamot?

3. Lorem Ipsum is one of those vortex bookstores where you look in to see what's on the shelves and leave something like an hour later regretting only that you didn't have the cash in hand for Rube Goldberg's Guide to Europe (1954). We stopped in briefly on the way to dinner at Tupelo and came back afterward for our couple of books which were half a dozen by the time we fled. The bookseller threw in a local 'zine for free. Also some bookmarks, which reminds me that I should probably not use the envelope with the tickets for Gojira (1954) for the purpose in George Dyson's Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship (2002). I cannot afford Turing's Cathedral (2012) until it's out in trade paper, so I'm consoling myself with backlog.

4. Three episodes further with Viking Zen, The Legend of Korra is still impressing the hell out of me. The technology is complex and changing, the political situation in Republic City is as murky as in any metropolis, and the character work continues to avoid the obvious, sometimes in ways I don't even notice immediately. (I was walking home when it registered that the character gushing at Korra in a crush-struck way calls her the "smartest, funniest, toughest, buffest, talentedest, incrediblest girl in the world"—she's flattered to blushing and there is absolutely no attention drawn to the fact by either the script or the characters that this litany of compliments has zip-all to do with her physical appearance past the fact that "buff" is a definite attractor.) Someone is also having fun with fictional advertisements: Cabbage-Corp is a punch line waiting to happen (I'll be disappointed if it doesn't), but the timing on "Flameo Instant Noodles, noodliest noodles in the United Republic" was beautiful. And I continue to feel there are historical references I'm not getting, which means they're doing worldbuilding right.

5. I am still feeling a little thin-skinned and selectively interactive, but the last couple of days have involved something more like sleep than not and that's a leg up on the way I headed into last weekend. I will not be at Wiscon, if anyone's curious; I have no particular plans for Memorial Day. I think it will work out.

I walked home tonight in a glow-in-the-dark T-shirt for the first time in years. It reminded me that as a child I had glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling—I marked out the major constellations, as I suspect many people I know nowadays did. I don't think I'd want them again; I am the sort of person who props books in front of or drapes clothes over the computer lights while I sleep. But I miss that sort of casual astronomy in my life. This comment also brought to you by reading Project Orion and about four children's books from the 1950's in the same three-day span. I thought I had a decent chance at being an astronaut when I was eleven.