Hives!

Today was the relaxing, quiet, uneventful day I was hoping for. The weather was gorgeous; I got up late, did some reading and interneting, even got a little work done on a story I've been meaning to write, got ice cream with friends, and had them over later for pizza, beer, and a movie. And I ate some of these:

Yes, relaxing, quiet, uneventful--except for the fact that at one point I broke out in hives from head to knee.

Man, it's one of the worst possible sensations I've ever had: to suddenly, inexplicably have your entirely body begin to itch. And I was in public, eating ice cream with friends at the time, so I tried to just grin and bear it when really what I wanted to do was tear off my skin. When I started scratching off my eyebrows I decided it was probably time to go home until things settled down.

Which they did, eventually, and as I said, otherwise I couldn't have really have asked for a better Saturday.

I did start writing a story...I was hoping that coming to live in a completely different place would give me lots of inspiration for new stories, and in a way it did, but most of the ideas I have are little "what ifs" based on some small aspect of life, bit of information, or amusing tradition I've come across. Find something weird, and make it just a bit weirder. Only, they aren't actually plots; in fact, most of these ideas take the form of first person encounters. Which is not so unusual for me, I guess, only I feel like they're not very interesting for other people to read. Maybe if I accumulate enough of them and collected them together it would be more meaningful/entertaining.