Ran

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"Spare some money for gas?" Elly called, as a smartly-dressed man approached her on the sidewalk, head tucked down into his collar against the cold. The smartly-dressed man gave no indication that he had heard her, and she sighed inwardly and pulled her jacket a bit tighter. It was starting to snow, and she wished yet again that she had on something warmer.

For about the millionth time in the last couple hours she glanced back over her shoulder, checking that her car was still parked by the curb. Not that anyone could steal it with the tank dry as it was, of course. She'd run it till the very fumes were used up. Run it as far and as fast away from home as possible. "Or what was home, anyway," she muttered to herself, and then made a sound something like a laugh. Not that the situation was particularly funny.

"Spare some money for gas?" she repeated yet again, as two women passed by. One of them gave her an odd look, then quickly turned away; they both sped up slightly, as though wishing nothing more than to escape from Elly's request. One of them tittered brief laughter as they disappeared into the thickening snowfall.

Elly shivered, then uttered a series of deep coughs. Stupid to have left without coat or hat or even a pair of gloves; stupid to have left with a dollar sixty-three in her wallet. Stupid to have even done this in the first place, but she'd had to do it, she just couldn't take any more...

Making that not-quite-a-laugh sound again, Elly felt gingerly at the latest bruise on her face, the one that had been the reason for her sudden flight. "Never again, you bastard," she said through a humorless grin. "I don't even care if I freeze out here, as long as you never get to hit me again."

Meta: Post Slowdown.

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At least I'd posted more recently than the Viscount Stokington. I mean, geez.

I blame the slowdown of plugfics partially on school, but -- it must be confessed -- mainly on knitting. Yes, the art of moving bits of yarn through other bits of yarn. I have recently taken it up, and am now obsessed. There is simply so much power in looking at a basically formless lump of yarn, telling that formless lump that you have decided it will now be something else, and then actually bringing about that metamorphosis through sheer force of will.

My guess is, this is what it's like to be God.

Fortunately(?), the God of Moving Bits Of Yarn Through Other Bits Of Yarn is still interested in writing about Pluggers now and then. Thus this is not a blog abandonment, but only a post slowdown.

Feel free to enjoy reading about towels, below.

Towels

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I never go anywhere without my towel.

All right, so that's not entirely true. I go plenty of places without my towel, mainly because it's sometimes rather inconvenient to lug a lump of terrycloth around. But it's always in my backpack, which is always with me on campus, so I at least only sometimes go anywhere without my towel. It's one of those life lessons you pick up from such people as the late great sage Douglas Adams.

The towel I carry is one that could easily be considered an antique, as bath towels go. I've had it in my possession since the last century, and before that it belonged to a friend; the pile was already worn to nubbins by the time I gained possession some time around 1997. I have no idea how long its previous owner had it. It could well be older than some of my fellow-students at Good-Sized Midwestern University, on whose campus I happen to be sitting right now.

Its design was, at one time, a swirl of brightly-colored musical notes, though by now everything's sort of munged together into a vaguely purply-blue-reddish-yellowish blur. Its seams are holding up wonderfully well, though I should probably take a needle to it at some point, because it's not going to last many more washings before something gives. If I could do something to make it last forever, I probably would.

The thing about a bath towel is that it isn't necessarily only for bathing with. You can soak up other things with it -- a spilled can of Coke, for instance. You can wrap a book or an mp3 player in it on a rainy day, so that said object stays dry, safe, non-warped and non-shorted-out. You can whip it out when the temperature's below freezing, lay it on a cement bench, and thus sit down without acquiring frostbite of the butt. You can lay it on the muddy ground by a beautiful lake, sit on it with the person you love most in the world, and enjoy one of the very last days you will ever spend by that person's side before they suddenly die without warning.

These are just some of the things I have done with my towel.