(no subject)

*sigh* I'm an idiot.

I prepped the TAS eps to watch during the flight. Loaded all my MP3s. Thought I was set.

The watch came with these earbuds. Like pretty much everyone (AFAIK), I find earbuds uncomfortable. Unlike many (but perhaps like many others), I don't find the added convenience and portability to be benefit enough to offset that. So I packed my own headphones. They're nice. Clip over the ears (with spring-loaded clips for a gentle, self-adjusting grip). Good wire. Excellent sound signal range. Picked 'em up for $15 at Radio Shack a couple of years ago.

But they fit into a standard headphone jack. And I completely forgot about the existance of mini-plugs. 1/8" plug does not fit into 3/32" hole. Oops. (I'd thought of packing the earbuds, just in case, but decided they weren't worth the trouble.)

Oh well. At least it's easy enough to remedy. $5 at Radio Shack should fix the problem. So I should have it for the way back, at least.

ETA: Dad went to Radio Shack for me. Got an adapter, but it was $10. Which seems excessive. But it works! Got the music playing in my ears as I type this, and the quality is really good. Had to turn the volume down to 5%, thanks to my sensitive ears (and U2's base line is still noticably vibrating my eardrums), but I'm getting better sound quality than from any of my previous players. Maybe I'll watch some Batman later.

And the adapter has 3 bands instead of the usual two (which is why it was more expensive). That should mean it'll take an input signal, too. I'll have to try some things when we get home. Maybe a mic. Maybe the remote from my old player. Not sure if the watch is designed to handle either, but that port is, as mentioned, awesomely multifunctional...

Anyway, my nephew just woke up, and my head is actually getting itself together. I think we're going mini-golfing.

(no subject)

Went mini-golfing with Dad and my nephew.

That was fun. My nephew is really enthusiastic about it, as he is with, well, just about everything, actually. Since he'd been that morning, he cheerfully acted as my guide as well as playing.

He'd go first. Putt. Run. Knock the ball into the hole. Then cheer us on as we took our first shots. When the ball got onto the green (as it generally did with the first shot), he took over. Usually, he'd wait for it to stop. But once that happened, he'd helpfully herd it into the hole for us. So, my every shot (as far as I was concerned) was a hole in one. (Though I did actually get a hole in one at one hole. Possibly a second. I'm not sure, because he decided to catch it that time.)

I used my putter and my cane (I've been using one for a few weeks now) almost interchangeably. Tried not to use the putter as a cane too much (I tried it, but then decided that it wasn't my property and wasn't really designed for the purpose). But it was really humid out and there were a lot of stairs. For a while, I needed both. My nephew wasn't too happy with me using the cane as a putter. I thought he'd laugh. His sister would have, I think. But he said I shouldn't. I asked why not. "It's too silly!" I told him he was being silly, because there's no such thing as "too silly." But he still told me not to every time I tried. So I only did it on a few holes.

The cane as putter thing is kind of mixed. The handle is hollow plastic, not shaped quite right, and not really angled right. Even when I hit the ball squarely, it didn't go even close to where I'd planned. And yet... it's mini-golf. The fairways were, for the most part, narrow, twisty, and banked. And I was selective about which holes I used the cane for. And so, even though the ball didn't go the way I'd been aiming... it rolled and bounced around and actually got pretty close to the hole. Perhaps closer than I would have come if I'd used the actual putter.

And then, just as we got back to the car, it started to rain. I'm glad. Hopefully, that'll take some of the humidity out of the air. It was well-timed, though.

Oh, and the random feature on the watch does work. Mostly. When I tell it to play music, it picks a random song. When that song finishes, it picks a different random song. Good so far. Only problem (and what was confusing me before) is that if I tell it to skip to the next song, it goes to the next song alphabetically. If I tell it to go to the previous song, it doesn't go to the one it just played, but rather the previous one alphabetically. And then, when it finishes that song, it picks a different random song. Unless I tell it to skip. So if I let it just go, it goes randomly. But if it picks, say, a Beatles song, and I'm not in the mood for the Beatles, and all my Beatles songs have file names starting with "Beatles"... I may have a lot of skipping to do.

Oh well. Still getting really good sound quality through the headphones. And still fit all of my music with plenty of room to spare. And it's still a freaking video watch! So I'm cool with it.

And Batman seems to play well. But I only watched for a little while. I've only got two eps, and I want to save them for the plane ride home.

ETA: Forgot to mention before, and don't want to spam your flists any more than I already have (especially when I just said I didn't expect to be around too much)...

I was wearing my S-shield belt buckle the day of the flight, as I always do when flying. My nephew was raised on Disney and such and doesn't really know superheroes yet. He's heard of Superman, but doesn't really get it. And, it seems, doesn't recognize the logo. (*sigh* I know. I've failed to properly indoctrinate him.)
So he sees the belt buckle, and he goes...

"That looks like... ... That looks like Mushu!"

Took me a sec to figure that out. I'm used to thinking of floury pancakes, chicken, mushrooms, plum sauce, and so on when I hear "mu shu." Luckily, even though I haven't seen the movie, I did recently see a video with the character in Disney. (They totally gutted the MGM animation tour and replaced it with and about Mushu.) So I remembered relatively quickly that Mushu is the name of the little red Chinese dragon from Mulan. You can see the resemblance: