To Sea Once More, and Later a Microwave

Last night's tweets;

Men trained with tigers easily beat cats.
Sushi endlessly rains on a paper.
Perception is boosted by many hats.
But it's never right to clothe a tapir.

I decided to spend yesterday downtown, so I parked on top of Horton Plaza's parking garage and finished writing the script for the next Venia's Travels. I drew the rough versions of the pages in a sushi restaurant across the street.

After having lost three chess games in a row in Second Life the night before, it was rather satisfying beating a guy at the giant mall chess board. He sounded really surprised to be losing, and I could tell he was used to winning. But I'm guessing he doesn't play nightly and probably not on the internet--the guy quite casually left his King wide open, castling on the Queen's side after he'd brought his pawns out on that side in a disjointed manner. I ended up taking his Queen with my Knight because threatening her put the King in check at the same time. I checkmated him two moves later.

Then I won a couple games in Second Life last night, against the same guy I lost against the night before. He missed a chance to take my Queen--I'd gotten in a weird rut of just throwing my Queen away lately. I think luck counts a lot more in chess than a lot of people think.

While I was downtown, I stopped by the San Diego Maritime Museum, which is located onboard several restored antique vessels and replicas, the main attraction of which is the Star of India, originally named Euterpe when she was launched in 1863.



That's a Russian B-39 submarine back there made in 1974.













There was a little history in models of sailing vessels. I appreciated the appearance of the cog--I put some cogs in the beginning of chapter 40 of Venia's Travels.



These creepy mannequins show how dummies were once transported by insane ship captains.














Now onboard the H.M.S. Surprise, which is a replica.


The sky with the city lights last night was weirdly starting to look like an old Hollywood backdrop.


The Star of India from the deck of the Surprise.







And this is the spider I accidentally microwaved for three minutes with my potato. It appeared to be unharmed, but I couldn't get a good picture because it was in a really big hurry to get out of the microwave once I'd opened it. The potato was okay, though for a moment I fantasised about getting a spider/potato, like Brundlefly, the fusion of Jeff Goldblum and a fly in transporter pods in the David Cronenberg version of The Fly.

I guess it should be abundantly obvious by now my life is filled with spiders. I expect them to be coming out of my ears soon. I love my creepy life.