I got caught up in watching Mythbusters videos.  They fascinated Doloise.   I almost loved watching the Realm watching them more than I did simply watching the Mythbusters, although it would have been a difficult thing to measure.

I don’t know what the fey method of taking notes is, but whatever it is, she was doing it.  I imagined a group of a dozen or so taking turns behind her eyes in a “Being John Malkovich” kind of situation.  “No, no, I want to see the fellow with the hairy mouth tentacles do something.”  After a while, I was concerned at her glee involving the explosions.

I leaned back, put my hands behind my head, and smiled at her.  “And none of it is done with magic,” I said.

She actually stood up in an almost aggressive stance and stared at me.  After a moment, she came up with an argument that amused me.  “They are using the natural laws!”

I turned it over and over in my head, and then laughed.  I guess she had a point.

I considered letting her loose on YouTube, but then decided I actually would be saving the world in preventing it.  Yeah, it was getting kind of late, too, and my thoughts were getting muddled.

I fell asleep trying to figure out what the magical equivalent of a 404 was.  “Deity not found?”

When I awoke, I saw Doloise scribbling madly on what looked to be a conjured blue sheet of paper.  I found my towel,  walked past her into the shower, and then off to work.  Rinse, wash, repeat.  Wait, was that the right order?

I had to admit my curiosity as she was focused enough to spend the day drafting.  I was given a good reference from my contract (the girl I had been doing the temporary labor for was being released over the weekend, so she was presumably returning on Monday) and a bonus from my employer under the table.  Not standard practice, but I wasn’t going to turn him in, and I could always report it to the IRS later.

“Let’s go have some borscht,” I suggested to Doloise as I walked.

“Is that a kind of goblin?” she asked.  She had rolled up her draft and was swinging it from side to side, reminding me of a girl in pigtails skipping down the side of the road.  Well, except she didn’t have pigtails, and she couldn’t very well skip in those heels.  But the image of a girl in pigtails skipping down the side of a road has to be one of those things Jung was getting on with the Akashic Record.  Except now I felt all dumb realizing that there may not have been a lot of Chinese girls in pigtails in more historical times, let alone, you know, Tanganyika.  Anyway, it was part of my cultural heritage, white bread as I am.

“Yes,” I told Doloise.

I was actually hoping for some chicken Kiev, maybe a pierog.  But now I not only had a good meal to look forward to, but a surprise.  Would Doloise be disgusted?  Hungry?

I know, there are days I am amused by the small tortures.  All of them, actually.

I called in a reservation for two, and drove Doloise downtown.  She stared at all the people.  There’s this corner at Colfax and Broadway which is, day or night, really kind of the reality crux of the area.  It’s not magic, and yet, at the same time, it is.  I think it’s the most active bus stop in the city, and there’s always a stream of people, in all of humanity’s variety.

I took my time driving by.  I love Colfax anyway, if only because you have this feeling that you could just walk down it and see everything.  While that particular corner was the kind of place the proverb-writers meant when they said things like, “Stay in one place and the world will come to you,” Colfax was meant to be adventured.   You needed to have a couple hundred dollars in your pockets, and two days to walk along it, and you’d come out richer for the experience than almost anywhere else in the region, despite the majestic Rockies as a backdrop.  A little slice of life, the universe, and, well everything.

Yeah, I’m an urbanite.  Someday I’ll tell you how I feel about camping.  How I really feel about camping.