Replies

Seaman Anoreth ping, still at sea between Guam and Hawai'i.

***

You'll probably find it [Bill's iPod] in the junk drawer or inside the computer desk in the sunroom or something. Or maybe Shannon [the calico cat] stole it. One never knows. She does things like that. I remember she had my lighter when I came to visit, and was mad at me when I took it out from under the bed where she'd hidden it. Perhaps she's morphed into a superior breed like Agnes [the late calico cat]. She's probably building a rocket ship or something behind the sofa.

Bored still. I got food poisoning, but have recovered. I knew I should have gotten ramen from Guam. I'm living off of handfuls of potato chips, bread and butter, and diet soda now. It's like being in college again, except I'm almost out of chips. Also the sodas are cold. Can't wait to get back to Seattle so I can eat Greek food every night, again. Plus there was supposed to be a Thai food restaurant opening downtown, run by real Thai people. Also a hat store and another comic book place.

I made it rain so we don't have to do flight ops. [She can do this.] The weather, other than the part I fixed, has become predictable and fairly pleasant. In the mornings it's partly cloudy with 8-foot swells, with the East-West trade winds blowing right in our faces at twelve knots or so. Starting at 1400 sharp are 10-foot seas with periods of sun and a good-sized squall every half-hour or so. At nine pm we have small thunderstorms and slightly higher seas until about 6:30 am, when it calms down again. The same weather every day. It's an interesting phenomenon. I think it has something to do with the trade winds.

We keep jumping forward an hour or so every day. We jump a day pretty soon, I think. Pretty sure we're doing Tuesday twice. This doesn't strike me as a very interesting day to do more than once, but ah well. There's supposed to be a pig roast for Coast Guard day ... that's the one we're doing over twice, so I don't know if there will be two pig roasts or what. I lost several games of bingo, mostly because I kept falling asleep. There's orange soda and something called 'milk tea' in the machine on the messdeck. Still out of new books, and I finished Space Marines [the tv series "Space: Above and Beyond" starring the incredibly gorgeous James Morrison] and Season 1 of the Venture Brothers, so I'm now playing through the new Oblivion expansion pack (I found a Gamestop in Guam at the mall, so fortunately I have some new games.)

I got a Star Wars game, but it needed some patches installed and I haven't tried to make it work yet. The expansion pack, however, is pretty good. Maybe it will have a better ending than the original game, where you finish it and go "that's it?" Although there will be some plot resolution as to who becomes Emperor in the expansion, I think. At least, that seems to be what it's building up to. I don't care for Steampunk [a literary and artistic aesthetic style] much, myself. Overdone. Also, it reminds me of the Tattooine scenes in Star Wars. I like historical styles better.

I may get some new shoes in Hawaii. I need a pair of boots that aren't falling apart, and maybe some running shoes. The ones I have aren't the same after jungle hiking up the mudslide on Borneo. Not much call for sandals in Seattle, so I won't bother with those. I can borrow some of yours for the beach [we have the same shoe size, and so does Elen], maybe, or just go barefoot if I don't have to go anywhere. Also I need to get Bill something in Hawaii. I haven't found anything that he'd want, except for some decorative samurai swords in Thailand, but those are hard to ship. I'll send a box when we get back to Seattle, so I don't have to try and get things through the airport.

I saw "Inception" in Guam. It was okay. It reminded me of the alternate-universe episodes of "Stargate SG1," but without Jack O'Neill to laugh at. The people I went with kept claiming that it was really confusing and hard to understand, etc., but I had no trouble keeping up with what was going on, even at midnight. Maybe it's hard for people to understand if they haven't seen all the seasons of Stargate. Also we watched the "Star Trek" remake, which I really liked. It was more fun than the old one. Better fights.

Day 12: Still alone. The darn droning of the skull sized insects is annoying.
Can’t sleep, the rest of the team is missing.
And there’s drums, huge drums somewhere in the distance.
I hope I can get out of here alive.

Day 13: Found water, and some strange gourds.
They taste funny, but they are filling.
Strangely, they remind me of a hearty ale from the tap halls of my youth.

Wow, starting to get a buzz.

Day 14: Hungover from the odd gourds I found.
The drums are in the forest AND my head.
And those insects are truly murder at the moment.

Oddly, eating the gourd relieves the headache some.

What was taht nopise?

Day ???: I don’t know where I am, what day it is, or what has happened.
I have to find more of those gourds.
Gourds..

......

The journal ends here. Apparently, the subject went into inexplicable fits and rantings before clambering up a tree naked as a jaybird and flinging himself at a mass of those curiously droning butterflies.
If we’d been able to locate him sooner, we may have been able to prevent his death as well as the deaths of the stuntmen he landed upon in his fall.
Strange how he left his camp suddenly and ran off muttering like that.

Why did he run off like that?
These gourds he left at his camp are delicious.