Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Tuesday, May. 13, 2003 - 1:11 a.m.

Excellent Quote(s) of the Day:
"Yesterday it took every ouce of my self-control to keep from stabbing one of my students in the head with my pencil." --D'land diarist Ris-que, on teaching whiny babies. Or one whiny baby; whatever.

The single best lead-in of any entry, ever. I just discovered Ris this very eve. I'm not sure yet if she's a favorite, but she has a wicked sense of humour, and that, I like.

Ask Katie - AKA, Reader Mail
Thanks for the font requests, gang, but they are not my fonts. I apologize for being remiss and not tagging them with links. My very bad. The banner reading "It's 10:00...do you know where your lipstick is?" is a font by Nick Curtis called Dymaxion. Nick specializes in fonts from days goneby and does great work. All of his I've tried work very well with Win98, which is my OS. The second banner, "Because there's more to life than lipstick" uses a font by Ray Larabie called Dyspepsia. I also like Mr. Larabie's fonts quite a little bit, though they don't always read perfectly in Word. They seem to print okay, but I have a little trouble with weird symbols appearing when I hit the carriage return and sometimes when I resize. Mr. Larabie can probably solve that problem if you have it and ask, I just haven't found it a huge problem yet. I will go back and fix my remission with links, and as you can see, there are links in this paragraph as well as to the left, there. Both men do freeware and commercial fonts and have fun sites to surf thru, if you want something to jazz up your documents...or want to create a spiffy new banner. :) And for those of you into creating fonts, Mr. Larabie's site has a page with links to the various programs, which one he uses, and some helpful information on how to do it.

Okay; enough with the geeky...

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Go to...
I had a pretty slow weekend except for dinner, so really, I have nothing to report. I am still wishing for a killer job and getting discouraged. But I also decided to take some of my savings and blow them on a two week journee to France! :) Now all I have to do is work up the nerve to step on the plane... See, I am not a good flyer, by any means. I am the sort of person that starts freaking out the night before, said freaking getting more and more severe as departure time draws nigh. I start to cry in the room with all the chairs, even before I hug The Boyfriend and kiss him goodbye. I HATE flying. And then that damned September 11 thing had to happen, and I have not flown since, except for a little puddlejump I took to San Jose to meet my best friend for a weekend jaunt last summer, and that took some girding of loins, boy, lemme tell you. The only thing that got me on the plane was the consolation thought that terrorists probably wouldn't bomb something with that minimal an amount of fuel, leaving from a lesser-known airport (aka one not LAX). That, and I didn't fly United or American.

So anyway, you can imagine the not fun anticipation of getting onboard a jet for intercontinental flight. One which will last 10.5 hours minimum AND take place much of the way over water, which opens a whole new can of worms in that IF the plane crashes, and IF I survive the impact and resulting fireball/disintegration of said plane, THEN I have to float around in shark-infested waters praying the rescue guys find me before the big teethed guys do.

Do you see my dilemma?

So, the first thing I do once I get my luggage in the overhead, gather my shattered nerves, and mold them back together like some sort of gelatinous silly putty, is to find the safety card in the upright seatback in front of me and locate the exits, which I count to see how many rows away they are so I can find my way to them in the dark, and size up the yahoos sitting in front of them to decide whether or not I think they're capable of ripping that damn door open and then getting the hell out of my way. Seriously, not a good flyer.

I don't drink, because I want to be hyperconscious when the plane goes down; have you ever tried to find an airplane exit door in the dark while inebriated? Neither have I, but it's got to be harder than when you're sober, which is probably hard enough.

I don't ask for any particular seat, because I figure fate will put me where I need to be to survive, and it would be just my luck to ask to be seated in a certain part of the plane instead, and *that* would be the part that got destroyed, when if I had just stayed where they'd put me, I would have survived. Every once in a great while, however, I like to laugh in the face of danger, tempt the Fates, and ask for an aisle seat. Danger, thy name is Gerbil.

And I always take Pete the Awesome Battle Bear with me, because Pete has never let a plane crash once. You can depend on that bear, and that's the troot. This guy next to me mocked me once about it, and I said mock away, pal; when the plane goes down and me and Pete walk away, we'll be real sorry you're gone. Then when we landed, I told him he owed Pete big time.

Once I actually had the stellar good fortune to be sitting right next to the exit door over a wing. Which actually unnerved me a little, because what if the damn thing came off during the flight, and I got sucked out the hole? But I decided that was reasonably unlikely, however slightly possible it *might* be, and I said to myself that at least I'd be the first one off after superheroically dodging the big giant fireball when the plane went down. Then some big burly guy told the stewardess he didn't think I could handle the door, so she came to ask me could I manage it. I said you hold here, move this lever and lift up, move it in and lay it against the seat, right? She said yes. I said trust me; this plane goes down, that door's coming off. She told the guy she thought I could handle it. But I understand that guy's doubts, because the last time I flew, there was an 11 year old boy sitting next to the door, and it was all I could do not to insist they put someone else there. I can't remember if his dad was next to him, or not. I would think not, because I am not completely paranoid, just healthily so (I heard that), and if his dad had been next to him, I'm sure I would have figured dad would be the one doing the opening of the door. But anyway. This is the stuff that goes thru my head every time I get on a plane. Not a pretty picture, is it? But I'm goin' to France, and I'm gonna see the Tour de France, and hopefully Lance Armstrong will kick butt again, and I'll be there to see it, and I've never been to Europe, so this is gonna be cool.

Now all I gotta do is learn French...

Peace out,
Katie

0 comments so far

I don't like flying because I'm afraid of crashing into a large mountain; I don't think
Dramamine is going to help.

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