Wow, thunderstorm. No lightning, though.

Oh, there was lightening. I was just leaving work when you posted this. I saw the flash of lightening and it was QUICKLY followed by the rolling thunder. Driving home there was hail. I'm so done with this. There was sun at lunch.

The Moscow subway is the most amazing fucking thing.

More than 8 million passengers daily. You go in at rush hour, and the fast moving escalators deposit you into a sea of humanity packed so tight that you could literally pick your feet up off the ground and still keep moving with the crowd. (Ask me how I know.) The trains come less than a minute apart, and the platform fills in between.

Off hours, the crowds aren't so bad, so you can take a few minutes to boggle at the architecture (and art). Even so, you almost never wait more than a couple of minutes for the train. And it costs like 9 cents!

I think Moscow was the first subway I ever road. The cars back then (1991) set my standard for cars, hell, and stations for life. Brass fittings! Elegant frosted glass interior lights! Wooden benches, richly polished! All.that.freaking.marble&granite. I'm betting they have more modern cars now, but...man, it struck 16 year old me as old world elegance. I felt underdressed!

The escalators kinda scared me.

Anyway, I've not ridden a more aesthetically pleasing subway since. Of course, the choices are only DC, Prague, Barcelona, Budapest (tank treads!) Vienna, Philly and NYC. Only the train cars that took me from Vienna to Feldkirchen im Karten (? Probably massacring the spelling-somewhere in the mountains) impressed me more with their well-preserved elegance. But that wasn't subway.

The escalators are scary as hell. Crazy fast. But the stations are so deep it's kind of cool - they'd take forever otherwise.

The Hong Kong subway system is excellent: clean and speedy and well-signed. It doesn't have brass fittings, though.

Keep in mind the only escalators I'd ridden before were probably US airports. Oh, and the malls in El Paso. So it was SHOCKING. And fun.

I was reading up on the Moscow subway the other day and there were some impressive numbers at how fast those things move. And that the longest takes 2 or 3 minutes, top to bottom. Which is deep and yet still fast.

OK, may have to turn off NCIS if it keeps in this vein. I wasn't even looking at the screen and I did throw up a little in my mouth at the description. Body goo just sets me right off.

Hey, cat shooter uppers! I've been having a hell of a time getting fluids in my cat in recent weeks. I either go too deep, which causes the fluids to stop, or the needle goes through the skin twice and ends up on the outside of the cat. Any advice? I pull the skin up with two fingers and use a third finger to guide where the needle will go. I was going just fine for years and now all of a sudden I can't do it right. Poor kitty is getting stuck multiple times until I finally get it.

Report on the day:

I had meetings today from....well, I was not in a meeting between 2 and 2:30. And I came in early and left late.

I did have a freaky worlds collide moment when something someone mentioned in lj (in that 30 minute window) came up a few minutes into the next meeting.

I did get out in time to vote, so that was cool. I almost bit the head off the woman who asked if I wanted to vote electronically. Didn't even realize I'd done it until the guy behind her was all "I guess she told you".

"Ain't got nothin' to do with me, it's her right as a citizen."

At which point I realized how sharp I'd been and turned to apologize, but she'd already moved on -

"Whatever issues she got, it's her right as a citizen, ain't got nothing to do with me. I mean, can you imagine what could happen if these things...[trails off]"

And then we all had a (good?) laugh at the sorry state of democracy in this country.

But they told me (when I asked) that none of the places had "I voted" stickers anymore. Feh on that.

Hec, bless you for the dinosaurs, I so needed that. And the one totally sounds like Jesse.

Hair cut week after next. Cannot wait.

Finally got home and could not for the life of me figure out what I felt like for dinner, so I went with beer. So far I'm happy with my choice.

Are you pulling the skin too tight? Also, what kind of needles are you using? The owner of the cat I shoot sometimes gets super small bore ones, but she usually has to ask for them specifically - so there might be something out there easier to shoot than what you're using.

But the stations are so deep it's kind of cool

I've read that their subways were built with the secondary purpose of being bomb shelters in mind, which is why they're so deep.