And your sister's unaware that she's floating in the air

[austin_dern]

We returned to the hotel and the water park --- coincidentally getting the same locker we'd had the previous day, though we had to maneuver around some other folks with an adjacent locker; apparently they hand out numbers as nearly in serial order as possible without considering there's no reason to crowd everyone into the same corner --- and there were even some rides we hadn't yet gone on. One was the yellow slide at the funhouse, which we caught in a moment of its being open to find that it wasn't actually as good as the green slide, but we're glad to have the experience anyway.

Another's the tropical tube slides, which start from about four storeys up and go through a long, winding path mostly outside the building (but still wholly enclosed). The result is a ride in the dark during which you have no idea what's coming next, when the turns are coming, or when you're going to be spat out into the pool at bottom and, in my case, drop far enough into the water to scrape against the concrete. This was how I got little abraded bits of skin; nothing Action Park-caliber, but still, a badge of silly water park honor. Probably not a good thing if you're quite claustrophobic. There's three tubes, each with a sightly different path, so I kept going up and trying the others out in-between tossing inflated balls back to the kids swimming in Creature Cove (with basketball nets and, more fun, a giant serpent pool toy).

We had wanted to go to a marina restaurant on Cedar Point, not properly part of the amusement park but close to it, for a nice formal dinner. It turned out they were closed for the season, a first as far as bunny_hugger knows. Possibly business has been weak; possibly they figured with the construction going on around Cedar Point's front gate (as part of the new GateKeeper ride) it's not worth the hassle of staying open this time. But we did get out of the pool and dry off enough to get to the hotel's TGI Friday's, instead, where we noticed they had a lot of vinyl album covers on the wall, none of them the Buggles.

We swam a bit more, and poked around the gift shop, which didn't have any early GateKeeper merchandise, but did have a cashier who was delighted to hear how far away we'd come for the weekend. Somehow we got onto the schools we were from: I think it was a point about sports teams, since I mentioned, Rutgers football managed a really, really deep mediocrity when I was there, although she reassured me that Villanova's got nothing to be ashamed of. Maybe I was unclear.

And bunny_hugger and I sat by the hotel's huge, gas-driven fireplace, growing ever more towards the heat and talking and noticing that the cashier was wearing of the gift shop items: a brightly-colored plush tail, just like you might wear at a furry convention. bunny_hugger and I had talked about the tails in the gift shop and how wondrous it was the furry subculture had got prominent enough to be subculturally appropriated; somehow we hadn't noticed the cashier had it on while we were talking with her, though.

Trivia: Edward Emerson Barnard spotted craters on Mars sometime around 1892-94, but never published his observations, for fear of being ridiculed. Source: Planets and Perception, William Sheehan.

Currently Reading: A History Of Venice, John Julius Norwich. (I'm really hoping bunny_hugger isn't tiring of my reading choice segments to her.)

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

a giant serpent pool toy

are there pictures (o_o)

And yes, there's a dramatic increase in the tails-wearing and the fuzzy-hats-with-ears-and-giant-flaps-wearing, which seems to be spinning off to people who only have a tenuous contact if any with the furry fandom. It took me eight years until I bought a tail and wore it to a con. Now college kids wear them to classes. ..of course, college kids now wear pajama bottoms with "PINK" wriggen on the bottom, so I can't say this is fashionwise progress.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

There's serpent pictures, yes, and they'll be forthcoming.

Furry costume becoming popular with normal people might be just the thing to send the fandom into a dizzying spiral of self-doubt and inner-directed recriminations, although it's been there for a couple decades already. At least it'll make the time in-between cons different.