i knew i would be sitting in an open-air stadium from 9:30am-1:30pm (prime sun-bathing hours), and i've been trying to break my awful habit of not wearing sunblock for a couple of years already. so why did it NOT occur to me to put some on yesterday morning?!?! maybe because i had to wake up at 5AM to leave by 5:30 to get there by 6ish to wait in a line for ~3 hours before finally getting a seat inside the LA Memorial Coliseum
and I was more concerned with making sure there were toilets nearby and that i had snacks to munch on than i was with preventing myself from getting a sunburn on a day that i thought would be gloomy anyway. so naturally, the sun came out in full force to welcome the lakers to a well-deserved summer break. of course. yeah, my friends and i got pretty decent seats, but those 2-3 hours that we spent sitting there in the coliseum, mingling with la raza, waiting for the lakers to wrap up the parade route and get to the coliseum were pretty brutal. we were sweltering, and after hitting up the concession stands (which took for-EVER because the cashiers labored with no sense of urgency or haste regardless of the lines of potential rioters growing longer and longer) we were also broke because a bottle of water cost FIVE DOLLARS! yeah, they were ice cold, but they should've been bottles of Fiji water for that price!! crystal geyser pshhhhh.
so anyway, the parade continued, the lakers arrived,
the rally started, and before i could get my fill of lakers-love
the rally had ended and i was suffocating in a parking lot. hordes of cars tried to exit via the same paths that the genius LAPD routed the throngs of fans who came by foot. that was awesome.
surprisingly, less than 2 hours later i was back home, relaxing and showering when i saw that my shoulders were RED! like, SUPER RED!! like... my skin went from white to black, except that the black was red. OMG..... insane! i'd never seen my skin so red before! the rest of the afternoon and evening, i couldn't take my mind off of my burned shoulders. i would pull my shirt off my shoulder to show everyone the crazy burn i got. it was kind of funny. it was also strangely funny feeling the drastic temperature difference between my upper arm and my shoulders. my shoulders were literally hot to the touch. eventually, the funniness wore off and the pain set in. forget being hot to the touch, it was straight up painful to the touch now. any clothing that brushed over my shoulders felt like millions of pins pricking me. lifting my arms over shoulder height felt like my skin was ripping. those sensations continued into today. no matter how much aloe vera gel i've slathered on today, my burned shoulders find no relief.
like i said, i don't think i've EVER gotten burned so badly before. i usually tan without burning. what happened this time? *lightbulb* boston. yup, i'm exposing my sun-deprived-for-9-months skin to california sun. idiot! when i came back from boston in may, i came back with the palest skin i'd had in yeeeeeeears. so of course, my first real encounter with the sun left me burned. ouch. welcome to summer.
this picture does NOT do the redness of my shoulders any justice!
