Knee of the non-Vampyre

Gross coral scrape update: inflamation down about 35%, madly itchy in unlined wool trousers and surface area about 1 1/2 inches across. The world needs to know these things.

In other news, I've fallen off the wagon. Last weekend, while in the throes of the sort of giddy ecstasy that can only accompany an all-to-rare visit to my favorite bookshop, I bought another vampire book. Well actually, a few of them. I am weak. I am also an idiot. Why do I do this to myself?

Normal people would think, "No. That's it. I have vowed no more angsty wounded creatures of the night and their terminally drippy soulmates. Enough fang jokes. Enough use of the word "feeding" in any context except those which involve fresh hay and domesticated animals. Or maybe situations supervised by animal nutritionists in zoos at a pinch. But no more of this cod-gothic twaddle that makes me feel vaguely bilious. All that black leather will probably give me sweat rash. Sunshine is good. Daylight is your friend. Now settle down and glom a few nice historicals set in ancient Rome."

And I tried, I really did. But on Saturday afternoon, my pathetic excuse for a subconscious signed a pact of mutual alliance with the billions of polyps in my kneecap, took advantage of my weakened, jet-lagged state and decided to work its wicked wiles on my pocketbook. Legless and brainless, that's the goal.

"Ooohh, shiny orange cover in reasonable taste. And hey, it's okay if there are werewolves too, like in this one. Besides, lookee, this is the one that looks as if it may turn things on their head. It had good reviews. I think SmartBitches liked it. Oh, and in this one, it's not as if she's a vampire hunter. I mean, she hunts bad creatures of the night with fangs that drink blood. But they're not vampires. So that's okay. And hey, this is a book by she-who-usually-writes-about-vampires, but it looks as if this one doesn't have any of them in it at all. Must. Add. To. Pile."

Then I had to lug them back here. Only to discover that the one that isn't remotely about vampires and the one that isn't-about-creatures-called-vampires-this-time-but-they're-probably-lurking-somewhere-close-by both contain stupid mistakes about something I'm familiar with.

Polishes halo. Shows restraint.

Oh soddit. It's stupid scuba stuff.

Bites through restraints with vampire-sharp teeth

Normally if I'm enjoying a book, I tend to gloss over minor niggles. After all I'm no expert anything. There could be exceptions or variations. I might have remembered wrongly. But in the here and now of the splish-splash subaqua fun that is scuba diving, I've just finished a refresher course and buddied a novice, so all the safety stuff and basics are swirling around in my head. When clashed with a fly-by-night mistake or three, they turn me into one of those angry know-all nit-picking pedants who writes letters to newspapers in posh ink that start, "Dear Sir. Imagine my mortification and appalled intellect upon reading in line twenty-seven, page one hundred and seventy-six of the newly-published novel, "BlahBlahBlah"…" Aarrrgghh. Aarrggh. Aaarrgggh.

So I need to get a couple of things off my chest somewhere reasonably safe, where hopefully no one will ever know of my shame, or consider me a total nut job since they've given up reading this post around paragraph two due to the incomparable grossness of my knee scab.

First of all, aarrrggghhhandsignalsaaaarrggghh pleeaaase not thumbs-up for "ok" pleeeaasse. Just get one of those cards, or look it up. Pleeeaaasseee. Secondly it's air, dammit, AIR in the tanks. NEVER OXYGEN (okay, maybe for some shallow decompression stops but they were going DOWN heheh).

You thought that was bad? Incoming pedant alert

Oxygen gets toxic at depth. Even the 21% in normal air is bad for you if you go deep enough (instead people use kinds of funky stuff like trimix that I've never tried, because it's also cold down there, and I'm a wimpy-arse diver with nerves of jelly who likes being warm and looking at pretty fish). Oxygen toxicity makes you nauseous. It makes you twitch. It makes you spit out your regulator. Its effects can very easily kill you. It's a very very bad thing.

But in this book, h/h filled up their tanks with *shudder* oxygen, leapt blithely into the water (without checking their spare regulators, sigh) and immediately plunged to their horrible convulsive watery deaths. Maybe. That's when I stopped reading.