Wheee.


I looked in the mirror, my face is yellow. I hope this is not permanent...
I lost five pounds, me thinks...but I also think I will gain it back anyway. No soda for four months, wheee.

Okay, a little blub. Egypt was cool. The people on our tour were pleasant. I mostly spoke with this guy who was a choir teacher (and decidely gay/metrosexual/I'm not quite sure) and another guy (also decidely gay/metrosexual) with his dad who was a Buddhist priest. The latter was really nice and called me his 'Veterinarian-to-be friend' and pointed out all the kittens and puppies and larger versions of the aforementioned to me and told me if he could go back and do things again he'd go to vet school. Which I thought was highly amusing, because I never even mentioned to him that I wanted to be a vet...eh well. We went to Botanical gardens, and there were like...3439587394 kittens roaming around. I sat down, and one of them just sat down in my lap. Uber cute. But then, on a 113 degree day, we were visiting some dumb quarry and as we turned to head down the line of shops which resulted in the bus, I saw three abondoned puppies lying in the 'shade' of a couple of rocks. They were yelping like mad and one of them wasn't moving, and it was really sad. They were in the middle of a relatively large tourist attraction and none of the police men or anyone had bothered to give them even some water. There was a barrier between them and I, so I couldn't give them any either...And it was very....sad. So that depressed me for, like, a week. >.<

Um. Anyway. What else did Egypt have to offer but vagrant animals? Well, let's see. The pyramids were rather fascinating. I didn't like the atmosphere, however. The fact that you could drive so close to them and then proceed to be surrounded by venders angered me. We stayed there for about 20 minutes, then went back on the bus. I didn't like the way it seemed these ancient monuments, adorned with history and mystique, were disrespected and simply treated as an 'Okay, get out, take a picture...' kind of stop. I found this sort of thing angered me a lot. In the tombs, we photography is often forbidden, the security guards/workers guarding the entrance will turn a blind eye to a bright flash if you slip some money into their greedy hands when you're done. I found this close to sickening. Their predecessors, 4,000 years ago, had constructed these marvelous structures and momuments that managed to last hundreds of centuries. And now, so many years later, these men would let all that time be wasted, all the color stripped from the walls, all the defining marks smoothed and blunted, for the equivalent of 20 cents. I won't be surprised at all if most of the tombs and temples are closed to the public within a few years, let alone will free access be given to the public to touch the walls. All because of a few years of greediness...why must so many people miss out on the wonders of the ancient world because a few men wanted something with which to line their pockets?

So, predictably, everyone got sick. It was rather reminiscent of the Donner Party; we eagerly awaited dinner so we could see how our numbers dwindled as more and more victims fell prey to the Egypt bug and felt that dinner was out of the question. I almost began to wonder whose heart I would be eating for supper. I, lucky me, got sick on the second day, when no one else had yet endured it and thus were less empathetic. Vomiting on the bus...yeah, that was fun. At least I figured I couldn't possibly do anything any more embarassing. Ick. Surpringly, however, the food was mostly very good, (but probably toned down for us tourists) despite the seafood lunch on the day of my sickness which included a fully-headed fish (which I found quite good, but others did not evidently share my enthusiasm). The main topic of conversation generally centered around what exactly had made everyone sick. Which, of course, was everything in general. But that would have been far too simple and boring an answer for everyone. >.<

Okay, that was a longer blub than intended. Sorry.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince? I won't spoil anything, but meh. Not sure I liked it that much. Typically, it only got particulary interesting in the last 100 pages. But the other 500 were necessary to make the last 100 interesting. Three words: Cute, sad, predictable. Nothing happened that wasn't kind of lead-up to. I read it in about 10 hours, but only four of those were actual quality hours on the plane...the other 6 were spent talking to cousins and watching dumb TV with cousins. So I'm not sure what they count for. I'm thinking the 7th book is going to need to be very, very long.

When will my postcards arrive? Probably about a year, knowing Egypt.

I think I've downed more water in the last two weeks than I ever planned to all summer.

I want to go to the shelter tomorrow. I don't want to wake up and go to tennis. Arg. Maybe I can sleep through it, and break my no-waking-up-past eight-all-summer rule.

You know, I'm getting worried that my face might still be yellow. I'm going to go check on it.

Hello, Hello, Livermore, I love you.