I’m hot, but I’ve been hotter!

My mind is on holiday today, so the rest of me has had to carry on regardless. I had to go to work, all day, and work. Luckily, I was doing something that I didn’t need to think about. Well, I don’t think I needed to think anyway – you can’t really tell when the thing that you use to think has gone off for the day. It should be back any time soon, but until then my auto pilot is still directing me. You should see this typing! Luckily for the blog my auto pilot has been programmed to correct any spelling error instantaneously when they are detected. Due to this auto-correction routine, the post itself is taking quite a bit longer to complete… it’s a case of type a word, backspace, type it again, for nearly every other word. It will be completed, however. The auto pilot has been programmed to do that too.

What the auto pilot has not been programmed to do, and which would be really useful on other occasions too, not only this one, is to think of something to add to the blog for this Post A Day challenge. When the ideas are not springing to mind as soon as fingertips touch keyboard, this would be an ideal opportunity for auto pilot to take over, and randomly generate ideas.

Write about that blue car from this morning. Or that cat that looked at you suspiciously. Or the misty start to the day. I have a feeling that my auto pilot is trying, but none of these ideas are forcing me to type away uncontrollably, in both directions, to complete my post for today.

Sorry, auto pilot. Manual drive has now been re-established. Auto pilot has been sent away for reprogramming, so more storage can be available to be filled with ideas for the next time. So that now means no mind and no auto pilot. Only one thing for it… look at the Daily Post suggestion, and write about that…

“What’s the most on fire you have ever been?” is the topic I have selected. It’s yesterday’s topic, but never mind. Today’s is about my name and I’ve written about that already in my ‘About’ page – well, Aquatom’s name anyway – so I don’t want to write about that again for a while yet!  

I don’t think I have ever actually been on fire, although I may have come extremely close to spontaneously combusting once. I may have sizzled once or twice in the past when sunbathing, and became a shade of red known as ‘sore’ afterwards. This is a pleasant shade after a while, but when you first see it you notice how much it clashes with virtually everything else around it. It does blend in, like I say, and then becomes a sort of burnt terracotta colour. Anyway, about the time I nearly combusted:

A few years ago, I visited the Six Flags theme park in New Jersey. It may still be called that now, I’m not one hundred per cent sure, but it was when I went in the early nineties. The day was breezy, sunny but overcast. My friends and I walked around the park for about eight hours, enjoying the rides, enjoying the day. I wore a vest top and shorts, and didn’t notice that my skin colour had changed to sore. In the car on the way back to the house where I was staying, I knew then that it was sore. Oh, did I! Everybody else in the car was cold. Freezing cold. I was like a portable furnace. Everyone had their hands on a piece of my body that was exposed so they could warm themselves up and cool me down at the same time. It didn’t work for me. The others warmed up perfectly fine, but I was so hot nothing would cool me. I even started to shiver, but was still hot, the shivering didn’t help. Eventually, we got back to the house in Connecticut, I went to bed, and slept all night in the same position. I woke up the next day. My temperature had cooled considerably, and my skin, although still red, was starting to turn a more pleasant shade. I was just a tad achy. A mere twinge here and there where my clothes brushed against my skin when I walked, but I was fine.

Lately, I don’t tend to feel the heat. I am cold all of the time. In work, I have to wear my jacket constantly. Sometimes it is due to the jet stream from the evil air conditioning system that is pointed directly at my desk, and other times it is due to the gale force winds blowing in through the windows.

This week, I have been warm. My power to feel heat has been restored! Nothing like the intense feeling of warmth I got from Six Flags, but a nice, comfortable warmth. I have to take my jacket off, and joke to my colleagues that I am hot.

Little do they know that I have been known to be hotter… and I can’t have them knowing that I’m hot stuff – they may turn the air conditioning up a touch, and shivering when warm brings back some uncomfortable memories.