Vacation Notes

I'm sitting in a hotel room in Portland, Oregon, avoiding the sun and awaiting a wedding. I have one of those underestimating-sun-exposure-due-to-clouds-and-trees sunburns, but life is good otherwise.

• I've made it past the TSA with a minor who isn't mine and has pins in her arm hidden under a cast. Also with a bottle of narcotics that aren't prescribed under my name. It's okay, though. They were in the name of that minor who had just been taken away to have her arm scanned.
• I've been subject to a dramatic reading of the Skymall catalog, which was much funnier than it sounds.
• I've completed two rounds of work on my mystery project and am satisfied it's ready to go to the next stage. One of those rounds was despite the guy in front of me on the plane deciding his seat didn't recline far enough, so he had to really lean back into it from time to time.
• I've survived 90F and sunny at the Portland zoo with a teenager operating on one hour of sleep and motion sickness. I have no idea whether she'll remember the giraffe she was so set on seeing.
• I've managed to get my mother her hotel room key despite the fact that she didn't turn her cell phone on until she was sitting in my room.
• I've short-circuited a tantrum by said teenager by, instead of arguing about what she needed to do, dripping water on her "napping" self while describing the secret project to my mother and brother. (I never said I was anything like orthodox, just effective.)
• I've aided and abetted saving a very confused fish from asphyxia and seagulls.
• I've survived a muddy, cliffside walk with a teenager who is "too smart to do something dumb enough to get hurt" and who really wanted to show me this cool, off-trail place from which to take a great picture. She survived as well.
• I've aided and abetted saving a banana slug that really wanted to hang out in the middle of the trail.
• I've cleaned enough mud off myself and the teenager to be marginally presentable for an indoor lunch.
  
• I've avoided asking a server whose great idea it was to serve crab bisque as a do-it-yourself meal: two whole crab legs served in a bowl of cream and tarragon. The task of cracking open crabs is not improved by having them covered in soup.
• I've explained to said teenager which parts of the dead jellyfish she could poke at and which parts could hurt her before she was aware that there were dead jellies on the beach on which she was walking barefoot.
• I've picked up a wedding present and card before the wedding itself. We were snubbed by the person doing gift wrap, probably for being sandy and windswept. I think she was jealous that we'd spent our day at 70F instead of 95F.
• I've been smart enough not to drag my pink skin back out under even cloudy skies.

All in all, pretty good. Now, as long as I can figure out where the wedding is actually being held, we should be all set. Oh, yeah, that and remember the groom's name...and manage the whole TSA thing again tomorrow...at 6:30....