The rubber duckies were originally justified as pool floats for dollhouses, and as you see, I am supplied with multiple scales!
After resisting 20+ years of rubber ducky novelties -- they used to be all over the Castro -- I succumbed to a rubber ducky machine at the Musee Mechanique in San Francisco last year. Fortunately, I'm incompetent at claw machines and it's rare for duckies to show up in other vending formats, so there is a natural lid on how many duckies I can acquire. I refuse to buy duckies off the shelf, as there'd be no end then.
If the Tampa airport gift shops had sold a flamingo ducky, I might have broken that rule. Phoebe the Flamingo was impressive in person! The gift shops did have small plastic flamingos, but they were made of that thin, light, brittle-feeling plastic that you get on the $4 AliExpress articulated doll bodies. A Phoebe ducky would have had some level of playful irony.
The trip was extremely productive as a business trip, but the first time I've done nothing for non-biz fun in Tampa. When I staggered out of the airport on Sunday morning after my all-night flight (the least stressful way to get there, but least stressful doesn't mean unstressful), I felt like I'd been hit in the face with a massive hot sponge. My glasses fogged instantly. My clothing felt saturated. In past years, the weather's always been gorgeous, but this year, nope. I walked across the street from my hotel for brunch, reflected that Tampa bus service on Sunday sucks, and decided the Ybor Chickens wouldn't miss me.
On Tuesday after work, I got an absolutely brutal sinus headache -- but hey, I'm fortunate I didn't get it when I needed to be lively for meetings! -- and then I shipped out early Wednesday. Tampa's airport gift shops sells genuine "I Can Be..." Barbies rather than knockoffs, which removed any temptation there.
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