Three quick things

[aadler]

 
First: I was right. I was informed today that I’ll be in charge of my detachment while we prepare for this year’s mobilization to Iraq. That almost certainly will change between now and departure, but meanwhile I’d better brace myself for heavy responsibility.

Second: last night I keyed in the most recent chapter I’ve done on “Queen’s Gambit” (as I’ve mentioned several times, I compose in longhand), and it ran over 6,000 words. I have over a dozen complete stories on my home site that are shorter than that single chapter. This fic is turning into a monster.

Third: when Susan and I were in Amsterdam, the city guide (provided for us by the nursing conference she was attending) had over eighteen pages of ads for ‘escorts’. Though they didn’t come right out and say this was prostitution, the ads were less coy than the kind we see in the U.S. The thing is, one of them had a price quote that read “€100 hotel, €125 airport”. So, can anybody tell me exactly HOW these enterprising young women go about performing their services in an airport?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Comments

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

You'll do fine -- anyone who can write a long fic has mad organizational skills.

[aadler]

I write on my own schedule, with (as you can see) varying results in terms of how long it takes me to finish something. This is a whole ’nother venue. But thanks for the encouragement.

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

It is true that setting your own schedule is a whole different animal ... that's part of why I haven't written much fanfic, lately.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Is the extra €25 the fare to the airport? Presumably things happen in the limo on the way back to town. Or maybe there's an airport hotel for passengers in transit or something.

[aadler]

That would be a couple of possible explanations. I still wonder, though.

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

Maybe you have to pay extra if they perform some useful service like taking you to or from the airport? Of course, in Amsterdam I wouldn't put it past them to have designated rooms in the airport specifically for the businessman in a hurry.

[aadler]

That last one would have been my best guess. The thing is, though prostitution is widespread in Amsterdam (famously so), and thoroughly tolerated, it isn’t truly legal. The police may politely give you directions if you can’t find the right address in a desired neighborhood — I saw that in a guide to the Netherlands even before we left — but I have trouble envisioning areas specifically set aside in a public airport for illegal activity.

Since I wasn’t (and still am not) willing to investigate the matter personally, I may just have to keep wondering …

[trinfaneb.livejournal.com]

I love your Kolchak icon!

The only time I've been to Amsterdam was when I had a 2 hour layover on a flight to Paris. I rode the train into the city and had just enough time there to witness a woman getting her purse snatched. I wasn't aware I could have had an airport rend-ez-vous with one of the local women :)

[aadler]

Karl was the first userpic I had, and for a long time was the only one I ever used.

This was technically my second trip to Amsterdam; I changed planes at the airport there in 2006. And, as can be seen from my replies to the various comments, I really don’t know quite how such a rendezvous might work.

So much for flying the friendly skies; apparently, the real action is on the ground.

[trinfaneb.livejournal.com]

Have you ever written a Kolchak fic? One of my first fanfic ideas was a fic (that I have yet to write) where Sam Beckett (from Quauntum Leap) jumps into Karl. And this was before I had ever seen any fanfic on the internet (although I had read about Kirk/Spock slash fanfic from a David Gerrold column in "Starlog" magaizne).

[aadler]

Never done any Kolchak, sorry, though I like Karl, and I had considered (but never gone beyond the initial notion of) a crossover where Sam Beckett jumped into Xander. No more than that, however. I, too, got my first exposure to the concept of “slash” (though it wasn’t called that at the time) in a book overviewing the STAR TREK phenomenon; I remember at the time thinking it was silly and juvenile, and it never occurred to me to wonder whether this stuff went beyond some odd, pathetic fringe minority.

Which still holds true, of course. It just turns out to be a much larger odd, pathetic fringe minority than I then suspected.