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AUUUUUGH!
So at some point post-hurricane, I made the stupid, stupid rookie mistake of going outside. In the summer. Wearing only one layer of clothing. I know, I know, I should know better, my only defense is that going to Pennsic made me lower my defenses. Because of course, as a result, both of my legs are entirely covered in chigger bites.
To which the only suitable response, of course, is "AUUUUUUUGH!"
Repeated as necessary.
They're actually somewhat better now than they were, say, Tuesday night, in that they only itch unbearably when a) I move, b) something, including air, touches them, or b) I remember they exist. So I've been going through a whole list of home remedies for unbearable itching. Nothing gives more than a few minutes' actual relief, but then I didn't expect that; nothing stops the itching for weeks on end when I get mosquito bites, either.
My favorites:
a) soak the itchy area in a bath that is as hot as you can stand for as long as you can stand, then quickly drench with freezing water. I think it helped mostly as a distraction, because I was still itching even as my legs turned bright red from the heat, but it was really quite relaxing in other ways (god I want a Roman bathhouse of my own, SO VERY MUCH);
b) cover every individual bite with nail polish. This doesn't seem to do anything physiologically to help (I didn't really expect it to) but making the individual bites obvious and discrete does seem to help psychologically - I scratch less, and it's easier to assure myself that no, there are not bugs crawling all over me and/or new bites appearing every time I look away. It might help in terms of providing a protective coat so the itch reaction isn't triggered as easily, too. Also, I used red, green, and purple nail polish, so I look kind of like the main character in Put Me In The Zoo, and that is awesome.
c) Shouting "AUUUUUUGH!" It helps.
Being unable to sleep deeply for the itching has given me some awesome dreams, though. I had one where Steve Rogers aka Captain America, recently awakened from the ice, decides to visit some old friends of his from before in order to get a break from the culture shock, and Tony is worried and tries to tell him that even if his friends are still alive, they won't be the same, because time goes on, and Steve just grins and invites him along, and it turns out the old friends are the Addams Family. And Steve used to go dancing with Morticia, and they put an old record on and he sweeps her into his arms and it's just like it was yesterday, and Tony finds himself sitting awkwardly on a Victorian sofa and bonding, against his will, with Gomez (...they do have a lot in common) and it was pretty clearly heading toward a foursome when I woke up.
Which a) what is wrong with me? and b) kind of want that fic now.
Yesterday I was reading a bunch of random MCR vampire AUs in order to distract myself from considering the practicalities of self-amputation, and I had a dream that Gerard was a tattoo artist who could make people grow actual wings by tattooing them (and my 'them' I of course mean 'Frank') which just goes to show that one should never read MCR vampire AUs before bed.
Oh! I have also discovered the Ancient Lives project which is a crowdsourcing effort to let people help digitally transcribe the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and it is brilliantly addictive for anyone with lots of spare time and an archaeological bent, though it has some issues. (I swear, at some point I found a thingy that would auto-translate what you had transcribed, and also try to match it with extant Greek texts, and now I can't find it again, which makes the whole thing a lot more frustrating. Also they could seriously use some work with the example scripts, the first papyrus I got was written in a wonderfully clear uncial hand, and going by their examples it would be completely untranscribable.)
To which the only suitable response, of course, is "AUUUUUUUGH!"
Repeated as necessary.
They're actually somewhat better now than they were, say, Tuesday night, in that they only itch unbearably when a) I move, b) something, including air, touches them, or b) I remember they exist. So I've been going through a whole list of home remedies for unbearable itching. Nothing gives more than a few minutes' actual relief, but then I didn't expect that; nothing stops the itching for weeks on end when I get mosquito bites, either.
My favorites:
a) soak the itchy area in a bath that is as hot as you can stand for as long as you can stand, then quickly drench with freezing water. I think it helped mostly as a distraction, because I was still itching even as my legs turned bright red from the heat, but it was really quite relaxing in other ways (god I want a Roman bathhouse of my own, SO VERY MUCH);
b) cover every individual bite with nail polish. This doesn't seem to do anything physiologically to help (I didn't really expect it to) but making the individual bites obvious and discrete does seem to help psychologically - I scratch less, and it's easier to assure myself that no, there are not bugs crawling all over me and/or new bites appearing every time I look away. It might help in terms of providing a protective coat so the itch reaction isn't triggered as easily, too. Also, I used red, green, and purple nail polish, so I look kind of like the main character in Put Me In The Zoo, and that is awesome.
c) Shouting "AUUUUUUGH!" It helps.
Being unable to sleep deeply for the itching has given me some awesome dreams, though. I had one where Steve Rogers aka Captain America, recently awakened from the ice, decides to visit some old friends of his from before in order to get a break from the culture shock, and Tony is worried and tries to tell him that even if his friends are still alive, they won't be the same, because time goes on, and Steve just grins and invites him along, and it turns out the old friends are the Addams Family. And Steve used to go dancing with Morticia, and they put an old record on and he sweeps her into his arms and it's just like it was yesterday, and Tony finds himself sitting awkwardly on a Victorian sofa and bonding, against his will, with Gomez (...they do have a lot in common) and it was pretty clearly heading toward a foursome when I woke up.
Which a) what is wrong with me? and b) kind of want that fic now.
Yesterday I was reading a bunch of random MCR vampire AUs in order to distract myself from considering the practicalities of self-amputation, and I had a dream that Gerard was a tattoo artist who could make people grow actual wings by tattooing them (and my 'them' I of course mean 'Frank') which just goes to show that one should never read MCR vampire AUs before bed.
Oh! I have also discovered the Ancient Lives project which is a crowdsourcing effort to let people help digitally transcribe the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and it is brilliantly addictive for anyone with lots of spare time and an archaeological bent, though it has some issues. (I swear, at some point I found a thingy that would auto-translate what you had transcribed, and also try to match it with extant Greek texts, and now I can't find it again, which makes the whole thing a lot more frustrating. Also they could seriously use some work with the example scripts, the first papyrus I got was written in a wonderfully clear uncial hand, and going by their examples it would be completely untranscribable.)
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(Well, most of them are imo. As long as one of the canons are not actively offensive, like with that stupid Goku/Anne Frank fic.)
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ME TOO. The endorphin rush from the hot-cold thing is the best thing ever. So relaxing.
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***
I cannot figure out how the transcription at Ancient Lives works. Can't figure out how you enter text. (I do this kind of stuff all the time, only with English; fourth-generation photocopies of faxes run through OCR software look about like that.)
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To transcribe: when you're on the transcription screen, you click on a letter, which should put a translucent red dot on it; then you click on the corresponding letter on the onscreen keypad (or your keyboard), and that dot turns opaque and has the letter in it. You can have several translucent marker dots at once, but the active one is always red. Does that work for you, or is something more broken? Their documentation really does need a lot of work.
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It says something about where I live and what the climate is like that my first reaction was "so you ended up frozen?" (I kicked myself for not going out with a jacket a few times the past week, so.) :/ But ick, bites. I am very sorry.
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ETA: yep, maximum temperature ever recorded in the country is a smidgen under 90F.
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Also, Movie!Uncle Fester? CHRISTOPHER "DOC FUCKING BROWN" LLOYD :D