12 string

12 string, originally uploaded by steve_tingle.

Solstice

DSCF0002, originally uploaded by steve_tingle.

spacewalk

spacewalk, originally uploaded by in touch.

decade

Ten years have slipped by somehow or other.....I wouldn't even have noticed, except I happened to wander back into the room where I had set down my data-pad a while back.....I opened it up and read the date.....I had lost track of the date, and of time in general.....the activity indicator shows that it's been seven months since I last opened the pad....I think it's something in the water that makes me so strange....time just seems to slip by as in a dream. But looking back through the history file reminds me of where I am, and how I got here. Human elements of the Grand Alliance were being transferred back out of the Deep Zone....I had been slotted onto a Crystal Spider transport, and placed in stasis.....Next thing I know, I'm waking up in a white room somewhere, I don't know where.....nobody else seems to be around. My data-pad can access a standard multi-specie interface.....I determine that the Spider ship-system has out-slotted me onto a "suitable station for demobilization into Human Dominion." But that was ten years ago....when I tried to establish a link off-station, I got an error message.....Link Not Found. The station system wasn't any help at all.....all the local hard-brain could tell me was that this transfer station had been placed seventeen human years before, and had handled traffic as designed right up until the time of my arrival, but then had lost Link. I was marooned, lost in space. I became very upset.....Multi-Specie Medical Program, noting my behavior, and studying chemical indicators in my waste product, followed standard procedure, and put something in the water to calm me down.......it has been a peaceful decade......

hard as rock

the socks I wanted to wear had been left on my bunk when the hull breached....we lost some priceless atmosphere, and it got damned cold in the ship real quick. Emergency protocols saved our butts, a sheet of nanobots had rapidly sealed the leak....pretty rapidly anyway....and the biotanks had diverted resources from protein and starch production to oxygen replenishment as planned...we had all jammed into the safehole with air in our lungs and only a little frostbite nipping at our heels. But half an hour after the all-clear, I went to put some socks on my feet, because it was still icy cold on the bunk deck.....but my socks were as hard as a rock from the deep space freeze dry they had received.....I had to put them in the microwave, to get my toes toasty....it reminded me of a story my grandmother used to tell, of the Winter on old Earth when the load froze in the washing machine.....

street of eats

Malaysia - 011 - KL - Yummy street food stalls are the way to eat in KL, originally uploaded by mckaysavage.

dreaming food stalls of the future

starting maybe 30 years ago, as best I can recall, one type of recurring dream was this neighborhood of small eating places, like the booths or stalls at a fairgrounds. I would walk in my dream from the college dorm a few blocks away and there would be this street full of these little eateries.....taco shops, burger joints, hot dog stands, pizza, noodles, fried chicken....you get the idea.....and it would always feel wonderful to be on this street....it was where I wanted to be....but of course eventually you would wake up, or the dream would change to some other situation....like a math class, or looking for a restroom.....sometimes it was obvious that this place was part of a carnival or amusement park....maybe the arch-type was Belmont Park, at the beach....or the Del Mar Fair.....sometimes it would seem like it was just off the Sunset Strip, like Pink's. Years later, I stumbled into a job at the swap meet, where there were all these little food shops.....tacos, tortas, pollo asado, street dogs, the Greek place, pizza, elotes, fruit salads.....did I dream the future? Sometimes lately I dream of Cousin Mary's Catfish Fryer in a mall on Mars....mall food-courts fit into the dream.....I don't think I will live to see the Martian food shops.....unless the evil government goes ahead and forces it's health care on us, causing us to live beyond our natural terms......I dreamed the future in one other instance for sure, while still living up north, I had a very clear dream of my place at the Resort....when the girl from the Cafe unlocked the place for me to check it out, the deja vu almost floored me then and there....