Rat Attack

One of the nicest things about my new haircut is that showers are so much easier. It's a matter of minutes to get clean and dry, and messy situations are easier to handle. Like, for example, when I am covered in the exploded remnants of a rat. There was something of a babysitting mishap, to say the least. I was just reading a feminist fairy tale to the Disney nerd I babysit, when there was a peculiar noise from outside her room. It was kind of a drumming grate, like a carrot in the garbage disposal. I told the kid to stay put, snatched up her little aluminum baseball bat, and intrepidly investigated the situation like a good superhero. Long and disgusting story short, I wound up covered in a fine mist of blood particles from some unfortunate rat that wandered into the air conditioning unit and got its own personal horror movie carnival ride. The blood splattered all over the walls of the house, up to a couple feet above my head. I turned off the air conditioning and reassured the kid, but ten bucks an hour only covers childcare, not cleaning up rodent entrails. Her parents were less than pleased. Eight showers are not enough to make me feel clean again.

Candyland Fail

Babysitting. The kid is asleep and I'm just poking around on the internet until the parents return. Since this isn't Myke's place, I feel secure that nobody is hijacking my internet connection to listen to every word I type. Or read every word. Whatever.
I was playing Candyland with the kid earlier. It's been updated. Since when is Queen Frostine a princess? Seriously, she used to be this awesome queen with the world's coolest blue cupcake dress and transparent blue hair. Now she's just another pink Barbie-wannabe on ice skates. And she's blonde. What the hell? She had a killer, trademark look, and then she traded it in for sparkly snowflake barbie, now with fluffy earmuff accessories. Way to downgrade there. Crap, gotta go. Parents just pulled up.

Laurence Olivier Wants You To Upgrade Your iTunes

Wow, it's been a busy week. For starters, I have a new computer. It survived the electricity thing, and then I kinda more or less drop kicked it. Into the pool. It was an accident, and not really as hard to accomplish as one might think. Anyway. My new computer is tiny. Like, about the size of a hardcover book. It was cheap. It didn't come with much memory at all, and the reason I haven't posted for a while is because Mycroft kidnapped it for some sort of upgrade. Maybe a bulletproof casing. Even though he could do that in like a minute, I think he's been holding on to it in the hope that I'll decide I don't want a computer after all. He seems to think giving me a computer is morally equivalent to letting a rabid hyena babysit a toddler. He finally mailed it to me this morning, and I've been monkeying around with it. It talks to me. The computer, I mean. It constantly nags me to approve esoteric functions and back up my data, and it's very supercilious about it. If I say no to something it wants me to do, it asks me if I'm sure twice, explains why my choice is wrong, and then reminds me five minutes later. And it speaks in Laurence Olivier's voice, which is why I haven't destroyed it yet. I'm not sure if I owe Myke, or if I should kill him. I mean, I was totally fine with a normal computer. This is like owning a toaster that can do your dry cleaning. It's great, but confusing and not entirely necessary.
In other news, I am bald. Well, not entirely. I have something that could be charitably described as a pixie-cut-in-training on my head. It turns out that there was an awful lot of damage from the electricity and heat of that evil hairdryer, and I had to lose pretty much all of my hair. I bought a new hairdryer, but I haven't had the nerve to use it yet. Also, I have no hair to use it on.

Back to Blogging

Water is blissfully back to normal, and I've been busy. Babysitting, looking for plants that can withstand ice, weeding the garden (weeds cannot withstand ice, as it so happens), looking for a place a little bit more private than my pool to practice cryogenesis now that my little sister has decided it's swimming weather, and wearing my awesome black leather vest. I've been unable to post because of the weekend rush of parents trying to escape their offspring. You try posting with kids looking over your shoulder and howling about bedtime stories. Seriously, the Gregson boy must be Nosferatu, judging by his sleep cycle. I've been making sure to order garlic sticks with the pizza, just in case.

On the good news front, they finally arrested Dr. Wilde. That creep was hanging out at a zoo. The monkey exhibit, of course. Some supervillains are just extraordinarily hard on endangered species. Remember Snow Leopard a couple years ago, who was all "Snow leopards are my totem, so that gives me the right to wear a costume entirely made out of their fur"? Yeah, the clip of Goldenrod smacking her seven ways to Sunday is one of my YouTube favorites. Snow leopards are just too damned adorable. And there's another great cryogenetic name I can never use, thanks to that jerk. Not sure what happened to her costume. Isn't it a felony to even touch something like that?

Convenient Cryogenesis

Someone took out the entire county's water supply today. Well, technically it's still there. There are just things in it that aren't water. The news crews were awfully vague about what precisely went wrong, which means it's probably something governmentally hush-hush. Or maybe some M'lar skinny-dipped in the water towers again and nobody wants to make a big thing out of it.
Of course, I found out about this contaminated water stuff in the middle of a shower. So I had to decide between walking around with chlorinated skin and sudsy hair, or using cryogenesis on the sly. What do you think I did? Yeah, I lied to my sister and told her I was already clean and just stealing all her hot water. She's pissed that I got in the shower first, since she didn't get a turn, but since it was contaminated water anyway it all evens out. She's been mocking me, saying maybe it was radioactive water and I'll get superpowers from it. Ha. Ha ha.
Technically I don't really need to take showers. I can make enough water on my skin to keep clean. But I like hot water and the way the water hits my skin, so I take normal showers unless I've touched something extraordinarily gross and I need to get clean immediately. Please don't lecture me about water conservation.
I focused the water out of my hands. All the practice with the sno-cones and stuff helped me pinpoint my cryogenesis. It took forever to wash my hair, since I use very sudsy shampoo and I can't make more water pressure than a faucet, and I was holding back a bit because I didn't want the water to freeze in my hair or get out of control and turn into another sheet of ice. I can make ice a heck of a lot faster than water, for some reason.
I also used cryogenesis to brush my teeth. It saves the drinking water for the rest of my family, who actually need it. And it's not like anyone is checking my water consumption and I need to misdirect them. My family doesn't actually think I have any secrets from them. It could be worse. I could have to deal with the crap Mycroft puts up with.

Elementary Deduction

Hey, remember that part about me questioning whether I should tell Mycroft about me being a cryogenetic? It turns out that when you borrow Myke's internet, he gets all Big Brother on you. I wiped the browser history, but he poked around and kinda put two and two together. I've already threatened him in person, but since I know you're reading this Myke, if you tell ANYONE, I will distribute your naked baby photos to the entire state of Florida and a couple choice parts of Oregon via snail mail. That will be all.
So, to the rest of my readers, here's how my day went. Despite my heartwrenching sick puppy impression, I got dragged out fishing. Because fresh air is good for me. And there were pierced worms and flopping fish and inconvenient sprays of water. And muggy weather, and bright sun, and so many bugs. I was sulking behind a slightly damp book when Myke dropped down beside me and said, "You might as well power up. Nobody's going to notice except the mosquitos."
As you can imagine, my razor sharp wit came up with an appropriate reply. About thirty seconds later. I smacked him over the head and told him to keep his voice down, because my sister was like ten feet away. But I upped the frost aura a bit more. The bugs left, and Myke stopped sweating. We talked. I'm halfway terrified at my secret being out to a real live person (besides maybe Dani), and a bit annoyed that he snooped, and a bit thrilled to have someone to actually talk to. I know Myke's been following the news (I don't think he can NOT follow it, actually) but he wasn't scared. I cooled his soda for him. I actually like drinking mine warm, but it's kind of impossible to do that anymore, because it starts cooling down the moment I touch it. I didn't dare do any more, or even sneak Myke an ice chip, since the parental units were kind of watching me to make sure I didn't steal a vehicle and flee the premises.
But he knows. And it's okay. Out of all this horrible weekend, after hearing everyone talk about Killer Frost, after putting up with fishing and camping and car rides, I have someone who understands. I'm typing this on his computer, because he's got my laptop wired into something and the screen is displaying things that aren't my desktop. The computer is actually working for him, and I think he might be debugging it and downloading stuff while he looks for green fire residue, since he's making disapproving noises at me. Like I'm some sort of idiot who doesn't take the lint out of the dryer and then it bursts into flame. Whatever. If he keeps doing that, I'm going to make a sheet of ice down his back.
Wait, are you reading this, Myke? I haven't even posted it.
Myke is a slobbering troll.
You ARE reading it. Quit it. At least be polite and look over my shoulder or something because that's really creepy that you're reading it off a different computer while I'm writing it on the other side of the room. Don't you dare sign into my account and edit this. And stop mocking my typing speed, you jerk.

Don't Eat That Cherry Snow

So, I've given myself a stomachache from all those Freeze Pops. Not really sure if that means I'm vulnerable to cold from the inside, or if I'm allergic to red food coloring, or if I just need to try eating less sugar water and more real food.
I've got to get to bed now, because we have wholesome family activities to do at a disgusting hour of the morning tomorrow. More updates later.

Killer Frost: What's He Up To?

If you guessed 'killing people,' you are correct. It's shit like this that makes me cringe to call myself a superhuman, let alone a cryogenetic. It's not that all the cryogenetics out there are batshit crazy serial killers. It's just that the most visible ones are. There was even a freaking league of evil assholes specifically devoted to cryogenesis, trying to start up a new ice age. Cryo isn't around any more to tip the scales with cute charity events like free ice skating for orphans or whatever. Every time you hear of a cryogenetic there's always some picture of frostbitten faces and people shattered into little bloody ice shards. Now that Killer Frost is out of jail and murdering people again, it's just going to get worse.
On less depressing topics, last night I babysat for the demon kids next door. Their parents were escaping for a date or anniversary or whatever, and I had to entertain them, feed them, then stuff them into their beds. Naturally, they're picky eaters, they're easily bored, they argue over ridiculous trifles, and don't like listening to me. And to top it off, one of them managed to douse himself in orange juice, and he just LOVES baths, let me tell you. I'm almost willing to trade jobs with Vector right now, if only to watch him suffer.

Ice Cream Aftermath

Why didn't you update last night, summer_snow? Did something go horribly wrong? Did you accidentally out yourself as a superhuman via some tragic ice-cream-based accident? Nope. I had an awesome time. A little bit of chaos in the kitchen, a game of kick-the-can with my sister, a few minutes mopping up the leaky saltwater (I love love love tile floors) and some tasty ice cream all round. I'm thinking I'm going to store the coffee can, salt box and ice cream jars in my room. That way if there's an accident I've got a built-in excuse, though I haven't found a way to make the ice cream mix keep. And no, you smart alecks out there, freezing it won't keep it good indefinitely. It's got milk and eggs in it. I want to try making ice cream via cryogenesis. If nothing else, it's going to be faster than the other way. I am an ice cream monster, since it doesn't make my tongue go numb, and I can taste every bite of it. After we ate all the ice cream (I had half my dad's portion, since he has delicate little fillings that don't like temperature changes), the whole family sat down for a movie together, and I snarfed 75% of the popcorn, and it was midnight before I got back to my computer. Oh well. It was one of those adorable time travel movies, Kate & Leopold. The movie was a bit iffy on the pseudoscience of time travel, but whatever. My sister squealed over Leopold and his fancy pants, but I was actually a bit more interested in Stuart the inventor. It's not that I have a thing one way or another for metatechs or time travelers, it's just that I liked the character better. You gotta be a total optimist to jump off a bridge like that.
I had some issues with the portrayal of the time traveling couple's relationship. One, I totally wouldn't live in any period of history except my own, what with the advent of feminism and hygeine and all that. Can't live without 'em. Two, if I couldn't persuade my time-displaced sweetie to live in my period without catastrophic universe-altering paradoxes, I'd go for a time share or just living out of a time machine. Anna Chronos and her husband do that, and they've been together for several billion years.

Family Matters

I have glitter in my TEETH. There is glitter on my toothbrush, and in my hair, and on my floor, and on my doorknob. It's like a nanovirus that is multiplying and trying to take over the world. It should be illegal to own this much glitter. She uses it in every possible part of her makeup, and leaves a sparkly trail around the house. I'm fairly sure that my sister has ingested so much glitter that she just naturally excretes it now. I never lend her books, because they always come back with the pages crusted with glitter. Actually, that's not true. I don't lend her books because we have vastly different tastes in literature. She likes sparkly vampires. 'Nuff said.
Now to the big question. Have I told my family that I'm superhuman?
Uh, no. No I haven't. Since my cryogenesis is not hereditary, they don't know about it. And I don't think I'm going to tell them. They don't really need to know, do they? Some things are private. Some things you don't tell your parents. I don't tell them about my sex life. I don't tell them about the times I'm up way too late color-coding my closet. I don't tell them about the trashy magazines I buy sometimes. I didn't tell them about that one time I drank beer at a party and threw up. So I don't see a reason to tell them about an unusual new talent and a private hobby. I haven't told them about this blog either. I just want to keep this to myself. I don't have an awful lot of secrets, and I want this to be all mine. I don't want my dad offering me suggestions and instituting training sessions, I don't want my mom asking me to make ice cubes when we run out, and I don't want my sister telling everyone in the world that I have powers. I don't want them to control this. To limit and regiment and monitor what I do. This is mine.
Okay, that came off a little harsh. I would probably tell them if I started being a vigilante or something. If it put them in danger, or stood a chance of getting me seriously hurt. They have a right to know why and how I'm affecting the family. I'd better come up with a few principles or a mission statement before I go pro, since my parents would put me through the wringer making sure I'm doing it for the right reasons before they would support me in something that risky. But as long as there are no consequences, this will be my secret.

CryoGENIUS

Why haven't you posted, summer_snow? Are your finals going well? Have you suffered a pork pox relapse? Did you get hit by a truck? Did the government kidnap you? Have you concluded that the only honorable way out of this semester is via seppuku?
Not quite. As embarassing as this is, I kinda sorta wound up freezing my keyboard. Yeah, I'm that stupid. I hang my head in shame. I was typing with my icicle fingers, and then they kinda melted a little bit, and dripped under the keyboard and then refroze because I panicked and tried to solidify them in time to get them out before they short-circuited the machine that contains my final essays. And I couldn't even use a hairdryer. I had to take apart the laptop, and then take out the keyboard, and wait for that to thaw so it wouldn't damage the rest of the computer. After the ice thawed, I blasted it out with compressed air, then reassembled the computer (I have a screw left over and I don't know where it came from). Naturally, this did not help my essay deadlines. At all.
I bet Cryo never did crap like this.

Stormy Weather

I don't want to talk about schoolwork right now, except to assure you that I'm totally on top of it and not stressed out in the slightest. Not at all. What I do want to talk about is the weather. In Florida we have two seasons: wet and dry. We have (finally!) started the wet season. I love the afternoon thunderstorms. And the midnight thunderstorms most of all. Honestly, I just love thunder, especially when I'm snug indoors with my face pressed to the glass, hearing the surrounding murmer of rain and feeling the windows rattle with every boom. Florida is a pyrogenic environment, and the lightning strike capital of the world. It's also the capital of cars bursting into flame, but I'm not sure how much of that is due to lightning and the heat, and how much is due to Firecracker. Either way, I'm looking forward to the storms.
The air before a thunderstorm is heavy with expectation. The skies are a moody black, instead of their usual relentless blue during the day, or gaudy orange at sunset. Florida doesn't do brooding weather very well most of the time, but we have some truly awesome thunderstorms. The wind picks up, blowing away the stifling heat. If you're looking close enough, sometimes you can see the rain racing towards you. Florida rain is serious business. It falls in fat drops that slam the rooftops and bounce up off the ground, rendering umbrellas useless. Within minutes, the runoff has created puddles so deep that it's almost worth the ringworm to jump in them barefoot. I can stand outside spraying snow as hard as I can in all directions, and it still won't measure up to Florida rain. I did that this afternoon during the storm, and I couldn't see the difference between when I was creating water and when I was just being rained on. I really need to start putting my phone in a ziplock bag or something before I do crap like that, because I'm not sure if I broke it. It was turned off, and I'm letting it dry before I try it again. It's an old phone anyway (and it did glow green the one time, so it's kinda expendable). I don't trust (and my parents don't trust me with) new technology. After a couple years locked in a battle of wills with my laptop, I'm terrified that any complex technology will attain sentience and deem me (and by extension humanity) unworthy of leadership and then it will take over the world and it will all be my fault for not stopping it. So no iPhone for me.
The best part of any storm is the thunder. It's so much more thrilling and dignified than fireworks, and leaves no smoke to obscure further flashes. I saw Stormcloud once, before she left for Shining Citadel, but her javelins had a sharper sound, more like a whip crack than deliciously deep rolling thunder. I guess it was because she was only a few blocks away. Either way, she didn't make that much of an impression, sorry to say. It only took her the one strike to end the fight. I'm fairly sure I saw her face off against a Titan as well, but even through the binoculars there was just a huge fluffy cloud occasionally lit up by flashes of orange light and little threads of lightning. It was way out at sea, at night, and too far north for us to get anything worse than really choppy waves the day after.

Carpet Crisis

I tried shampooing the carpet today. Not that I think I can salvage it and spare my housing deposit, but I don't think it's healthy to keep breathing mildew. I guess it smells a bit nicer now, and the splotches have changed color. There's really nothing that can make that particular shade of carpet look worse, really. This might even be an improvement. I am so tired of damp socks and squishy wall-to-wall carpeting. At home I have ugly tile floors that I don't care about, and I can use a mop or towel on them, problem solved. Gasp! Did I just reveal a scrap of information about my private life that people can use to track me down? How many college girls in Florida have tile floors? Quick, to the Brotherhood of Evil Real Estate Agents!
Sometimes you just have to mock these things, or you wind up driving yourself crazy. There's only so much second-guessing I'm going to do. I have tile floors. Alert the press. Whatever.
Gotta get some sleep now, or I won't wake up on schedule tomorrow. I've set my own deadlines for my finals, and I am a harsh mistress. I'm waking up early to get the maximum amount of library time (yes the library's open on Sunday, but not for long), because I seriously want to get this done early and then slack off and lounge around the common room in my pajamas and play video games while Dani frantically flips through her chem notes and chants the names of molecules or whatever.
Yeah, I'm a jerk.

Procrastination Time

I should be writing essays and studying right now, shouldn't I? My first exam is on Monday, and I've got a ten-page paper due Tuesday by 5:00. Instead, I have gone into a cleaning frenzy. It's the most useful form of procrastination I know. When I'm vacuuming, taking out the trash and sorting my closet, I feel the warm glow of accomplishment, of doing something grown-up, responsible, and laudable. Regardless of how much other stuff I should be doing instead. I've packed a lot of my stuff into the boxes under my bed, folded my clothes neatly, organized the papers floating around my desk into their respective binders, and lined up all my textbooks neatly in descending size. So yeah, my room is immaculate. Except there's kind of a stain on the carpet under my bed, and it's not coming out with vacuuming and I think maybe it's mildew. It smells musty. Damn you, short blowdryer cord!
Actually my whole room kinda smells like rancid old books or something, despite the cinnamon broom in my closet (which, by the way, is a really good way to scent up a room when you're not allowed to burn candles despite being a human fire extinguisher). So I'm thinking I can kiss my housing deposit goodbye. I'm also thinking that since my housing deposit will be used to replace the carpet and stuff, there's no harm in practicing a little bit more...
crap iuts hard tio typewith icicle Fingers

Scrabble and the Supervillain Ethic

I'm enjoying my last gasp of freedom before I have to start studying for my finals. This will be the last week of classes, starting Monday, and I am so ready for summer. It's like high school senioritis all over again. A couple of my professors, lagging behind in their syllabi, will attempt to cram their classes, and the rest will go easy on us. I remember in high school after the AP exams were done, the AP classes just played Scrabble for the last couple of weeks. I am a Scrabble GOD. I can manage to make solid blocks of words that earn me points vertically and horizontally, and would also earn diagonal points if those were possible. I'm also apparently a lot better at keeping a straight face than I thought, since I managed to convince quite a few people that the contents of my all-vowel Scrabble rack were actually a legitimate word of Hawaiian origin. Several times. Mostly I played by the rules, but I'm more partial to making awesome words than winning by strategy. Kind of like how Mockingbird will try and take over Chicago with giant jack-in-the-boxes or whatever. Sure, it's not the most efficient way, but it's the most fun. It's a matter of style, which seems to be a villain thing mostly.
I don't always win Scrabble games, but sometimes it's worth losing just to savor the game. If I'm playing a word game, I don't really see the point in playing by arcane mathematical rules, and having a joyless, calculating bland game. Why get 50 points for 'ox' when you can put down 'corsets' or 'globule'? I preferred to team up with Jack so he could do the strategy part, and I could do the creative part. We were virtually unbeatable together. That's probably why we spent so much time on separate teams. Scrabble week was one time where I earned instant popularity in high school. It's like dodgeball in reverse: the geeks get chosen first out of the lineups.