the calzones . . . BETRAYED ME?

@IAMSethStewart

For the anon who requested the first Valentine’s Day post-reunion.

“Valentine’s Day has been hit or miss for us,” Kurt says, stride purposeful and chin lifted to see above the dawdling shopping crowd.

“Hit being the year you banged in a car before someone else’s failed wedding?” Elliott struggles to keep up with Kurt’s dodging and weaving, then stumbles to halt when Kurt pauses in front of pallet stacked high with granola bars.

“One: I didn’t know the wedding wasn’t going to happen.” He holds up a finger, then another. “Two, we banged as you put it, in the hotel room. The car was merely some light groping and making out in the backseat.”

“Yes, that is so much less tacky,” Elliott mutters.

“So,” Kurt presses on with both his stay out of my way clipped pace and explanation, “This year we are together, in the same place, no one is wearing an eyepatch after a slushy-related maiming—“ Elliott raises one eyebrow at that, “And I know Blaine is going to go completely over-the-top so I have no choice but to step up my Valentine’s Day game.”

@martinrichardson: if you’re still feeling requests– anything with jefferson and ham would float my boat

Lin keeping his cool after Hamilton’s Grammy performance 

“i read somewhere that until you’re standing in the middle of nowhere, head in hands desperate to quit and go home, you’re just on vacation. after that, it’s a proper adventure.” so notes paul souders, who navigated the western coast of the hudson bay alone in his inflatable zodiac boat, “frustrated by poor charts, bad weather and my own meager maritime skills.“ 

say paul, "the distances were vast for a small boat like mine, and the immensity of the play sometimes turned oppressive. northern manitoba’s interior is a huge, flat forest, and the coastline is shallow and badly mapped. every time i left my ‘big’ boat, i reminded myself that if i screw up, i die. as careful as i was, i know in my heart that the arctic is too big, too empty and too cold to count on anyone coming to my rescue.”

“i was three weeks into the trip before i saw my first polar bears, and it was only after motoring more than 1500 nautical miles (2775 kilometres) and reaching the arctic circle. searching for polar bears out on the sea ice is insanely difficult. sea ice isn’t uniformly white [and] polar bears aren’t pure white either. in the warm light of the setting midnight sun, pretty much everything looks like a bear. 

"so it took a lot of patience and concentration to finally find one. …i kept a healthy distance for a long time, allowing her to relax a bit. the bears can swim for more than a hundred miles, for days at a time, but i tried very hard not to stress her. sowly her curiosity began to kick in, and …by sunset, she was swimming slowly beside me and i was able to lower my underwater camera housing right beside her.”