In good news...

In good news... the peeling just started. Like, just 3 minutes ago.

That means I'm done itching. Hopefully, only the worst part (right under my sternum) will actually peel, but either way, the worst is over.

[relieved sigh]

How to go insane

Last weekend Dragon Lady and I went to Seven Peaks with some of her good friends. I don't know why, but I've always had a slight "macho" complex when it comes to sunscreen; I delude myself that I'll just get a nice tan despite my pasty-white hasn't-seen-the-sun-in-a-year skin. In case you were wondering, it's not true. I got burnt like a redneck piece of toast.

Having a sunburn is never fun, but the first couple days were at least bearable. I mean, it hurt when I slid my arm into my backpack, and my shoulders protested whenever I reached for a glass from the cupboard, but it was bearable as long as I was careful with it. On Monday night, though, as I was just about to go to bed, things got a whole lot worse.

It started with a sharp itch in my shoulder.  Since scratching a sunburn isn't a whole lot of fun, I left it alone, hoping it would go away.  It didn't.  It spread down my upper arm and started crawling down my chest.  I decided that it was definitely time to go to bed, before things got any worse.  I put some aloe vera on, hoping it would help the burn stop itching, and crawled into bed.

Getting into bed didn't really help anything, though.  The sheets of my bed were just scratchy enough to aggravate the rest of me, and before long my entire upper body was itching.  And this wasn't just a light itch; this was a jaw-clenching, teeth-grinding, back-arching kind of itch.  I tried to lie still, since any movement started a new fire on my skin, but even breathing was too much.  After about 20 minutes of agony, I jumped into the shower, hoping that water might calm the itch.  It calmed it a little, but not enough for me to be anywhere near comfortable.  At about 1:00 AM I decided that I couldn't justify staying up that late anymore, even if I did itch like crazy, so I got out.

The problem with taking a shower while you're sunburned is that you have to use a towel afterward to dry off.  And hotel towels, being washed and rewashed, are not known for their softness.  Within 30 seconds of getting out of the shower, I itched worse than ever.  I was pacing back and forth in my hotel room, trying to hold in a scream as there was simply nothing I could do beyond praying for relief.  (Which I did, don't worry.)  I finally got back in bed, (since pacing wasn't doing any good,) and steeled myself to bear the awful burning.  I tried to focus my attention on some non-itching area of my body (my big toe), but it didn't help much.  I was burning, itching, dying for relief.  If you've read Stephenie Meyer's Breaking Dawn, you'll understand what I mean when I say that I felt about like Bella did during a certain rather-painful event in the middle of the book.

I nearly went insane.  I would have given a lot to be able to get out of my head for a while.  It was just that excruciating.  I told Dragon Lady I'd been itching, and she told me that it was good.  That it meant I was healing.

"Good."

Maybe it was healing, but you'd think my body could come up with a less-agonizing method of repairing skin damage.  Having healed skin wouldn't have helped much if I'd gone insane and jumped out the window.  And really, it wasn't that far off.

Moral of the story: Use sunscreen.  Really.

URU is coming back!

Most of my readers probably know that I'm a big fan of the Myst series. There was a time when I lived and breathed the game. I was in a Myst fan chatroom when my parent's house caught fire. There were times when I considered attending a Myst fan convention. (Heck, there are still moments when I consider it, if I'm honest with myself.) Dragon Lady and I played Myst 3 together for quite a while back when we were first dating. It's one of those things that I grew up with, and it will be forever a part of me.

Due to my mission and such, I have never played Myst V (the last in the series), nor URU (the online multiplayer game based in the Myst universe). I'm working on Myst IV right now, and plan to play Myst V once I have a computer that will handle the graphics decently. I was quite disappointed, though, when URU was cancelled in 2004 for business reasons. I felt like I'd never quite be able to finish the series; there was some part of this obsession of mine that would never be fulfilled.

URU came back in late 2006 on GameTap, but was then cancelled again earlier this year. Naturally, all this back-and-forth availability has been rough on Cyan Worlds, Inc (the developer of the game), and there was a time in September 2005 when they actually laid off all but two of their employees before promptly re-hiring them when a deal was worked out with a third party. Even now, though, they seem to be limping by, despite creating the number-one-selling PC game from 1993 to 2002. When URU was cancelled this last time, it seemed like my hopes were lost.

So you can understand my excitement when I ran across news that GameTap and Cyan had worked out an agreement under which the license would return to Cyan. They didn't release all the details, but it sounds like neither GameTap nor Cyan was making money in the current state, so they figured it didn't hurt to let Cyan try at it. That's my understanding, anyway. The new agreement is really for the fans; Cyan is planning to only charge enough to maintain operation; they're not looking for profit right now. Content creation will be opened up to fans as well, so Cyan is essentially creating a quasi-open-source MMORPG to be run at cost only. Naturally, if it takes off, we can expect prices to rise, but I'm perfectly fine with that; anything that helps Cyan get into the black is good in my book.

So. If any of you have any interest in the Myst series, I encourage you to keep an eye on it. It's exciting for me, and hopefully by the time they get it up and running, I'll have a computer with a better graphics card than an integrated chip on my motherboard.

This is so cool. :)