Saturday, March 31, 2012

There's No Cat In My Driveway.

I'm getting worried about Momma Cat. I haven't seen her for three days, and the food I put out for her on Thursday morning hasn't been touched, which is pretty much unheard of. I'm hoping she's just found somewhere better to be, or maybe that the hunting is so good in this nice spring weather that she doesn't need the handout, but I fear the feral life might have caught up with her at last, poor thing.

[ETA: She's back! Still hasn't eaten the food. But she's definitely alive. Should have known that kitty was harder than that to kill, given some of the winters she's made it through!]

Unrecovered Biblioholic

So, of course, I went to the library sale. And, of course, I went with a fixed number in mind for the maximum books I would allow myself to buy. And, of course, somewhere in there, I... sort of forgot to keep count. Somehow, I found myself with twice that number, and I just couldn't bear to put any of them back. They were all looking at me with puppy-dog expressions, going, "Take us home and love us!" Really, what could I do? Sigh.

Also, note to self: Next time, do not bring a tote bag. You will end up completely filling it, and then you will have to walk home carrying fourteen books. (Well, fifteen, if you count the one I brought with me to read on the way. Book addiction? Me? Why would you say that?)

Friday, March 30, 2012

Biblioholic

I probably should not be all excited about the Friends of the Library sale tomorrow, considering that I still haven't read any of the books I bought at the last one. Should I?

Pretty Pictures Pt. 4

Here's the last batch of Hawaii pictures from my aunt:









Man, I really do want to go back. I'm feeling so in need of another vacation now. Preferably somewhere I'm not allergic to the local plant life.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

So Much For That Idea.

Behold, my brilliant solution for introducing Newt to the other cats while still keeping them safely separated:



She's quite a little climber, that one! Alas.

Pretty Pictures Pt. 3

Yup, it's more Hawaii pictures from my aunt, this time featuring some of the native wildlife. Also lava.









Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Look Out, She's Talking About Her Cats Again!

Just had Newt into the vet for a check-up, and, lo, she has been pronounced healthy! Her eyes look good, her nose looks good, and in general she finally seems to be a normal, healthy kitten! (Well, almost normal, anyway. She's still an itty-bitty little thing, but I don't think that's going to change much.) Can I get a hallelujah! Well, OK, there might still be a tiny, tiny chance that she has herpes, but it's extremely unlikely, since the corticosteroid ointment we tried last time usually makes herpes much worse rather than much better. The vet seems pretty sure that the final round of antibiotics finally knocked out her infection, which might actually have been chlamydia, after all.

Now, I just need to get her spayed, although the vet suggested waiting a month or so, just to give her poor, overtaxed immune system a little more time to recover. And after that... Well, I still don't know. Anybody want a healthy, adorable little kitty? Awww, come on. You know you do!

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Pretty Pictures, Pt. 2

More Hawaii pictures from my aunt! She took a lot of good ones, so I figured I'd post them a few at a time. Here's the current batch:







Monday, March 26, 2012

New Doctor Who Trailer



Did you see that? Cyborg cowboys! Ben Browder! Pistol-packin' Amy!

Me WANT!

Friday, March 23, 2012

More Pretty Pictures

My dad recently reminded me that I was going to post some more Hawaii pictures. So, here's a few more that my aunt sent me. Gosh, what a pretty place! I want to go back now.









More to come later, probably.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Astronomy vs. Stir Fry

There is nothing that makes you appreciate the vast interconnectedness of all things quite so much as working a job where the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy deciding to burp can lead directly to your dinner getting cold.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Currently, It's Time For Some Currentlies

Current clothes: Dark blue sweatpants, maroon t-shirt that says, "I know just enough to be dangerous." (Which is true, but I'm still feeling pretty good about the way I managed to fix a problem earlier where my PC and my TiVo were refusing to talk to each other.) White socks. Cthulhu slippers.

Current mood: Today, I've been in one of those bizarre states that I sometimes wonder if only I am capable of: a weird, fluctuating combination of relaxed and frazzled. Sort of a "Yay, I'm off today! I can do anything I want to!" plus a "Gaah, where did today go? I have gotten nothing done!" I did just vacuum, though, which always makes me feel better. It's like an easy, sure-fire way of making myself feel like I've accomplished something.

Current music: Leonard Cohen's Old Ideas.

Current annoyance: Oh, there are so many of them. Which one to pick? How about the fact that my allergies have started acting up again? Stupid sinuses.

Current thing: Cooking! More specifically, crock pot cooking. I realized, finally, that part of the reason why I hate to cook is that when it's dinnertime, I don't want to have to jump through annoying food-preparation hoops. I just want to eat. It's actually a lot more fun if I do it when it's not actually mealtime. Hence: crock pot! I even went out and got a crock pot recipe book, and have made several reasonably successful new meals. Last week, I made a Cuban-style curried turkey thing that looked like a gloopy mess, but tasted amazing. As in, oh-my-god-I-can't-believe-I-actually-cooked-this-food amazing. Today, I just made good, old-fashioned pot roast, although I'm feeling kind of annoyed with myself because I forgot to put in onions.

Current desktop picture: A photo my aunt took from the top of a Hawaiian volcano. Probably Haleakala.

Current book: I'm re-reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. For some reason.

Current song in head: Brain Radio has been crazy noisy lately. Right now, it seems to be playing "In the Car" by Barenaked Ladies. I have no idea why.

Current DVD in player: Nothing in the living room at the moment, because I'm trying to get caught up on weeks worth of Tivo'd stuff. The last thing in there was season 3 of Merlin. Which is a show that ranges from a fluffy bit of brain candy that I like better than I feel I should to actually pretty decent television. In front of the treadmill, I've been watching season 1 of The Twilight Zone. And, wow, but that is just classic, classic stuff. Even better than I remember it being, most of it. How the hell it manages to hold up so well after fifty-plus years, when everything it does has become so over-familiar in the meantime, I don't know, but it does.

Current refreshment: Diet A&W root beer. I normally dislike diet sodas, but something in the root beer does a good job of hiding that nasty chemical taste from the aspartame.

Current worry: Again, there are many. But the kitten is really trying hard to dominate here. Her eyes are actually looking a lot better, which is great. But then for a while she decided to stop eating much of anything. It wasn't a case of not eating because she was feeling sick, though. She was in no way feeling sick. At one point, the only way I could get her to eat anything was to scatter some Kitten Chow on the floor so she could bat each individual piece of kibble around with her paws and hunt it for a while before eating it. That's not being sick. That's deliberately trying to drive me crazy. Finally, after enough days for it to start to get scary, she seems to be back to eating just fine again. What a relief! Except now she's out of the antibiotics she's supposed to be taking. The vets gave me a small amount of liquid in a big bottle and warned me that sometimes it coats the sides and won't come out, so I could come back for more if I needed it. A couple of days ago, it looked like there was several days worth, coating or no coating. Today, I tried to get some out, and there was nothing but dried stuff crusted onto the sides. And, of course, the vet's office is closed for the weekend, and I can't get any more until Monday. Yeah, going off a course of antibiotics for two days right in the middle is a great idea. New worry: that I am currently breeding resistant bacterial super-bugs inside my kitten.

Current thought: I want a vacation. I want to put all the damned cats into suspended animation and go lie on a beach somewhere and do nothing but read for a week, while people bring me drinks with umbrellas in them.

Thursday, March 08, 2012

But It's March!

Holy crap, it's snowing! And here we were just having lovely already-trying-to-be-spring weather this week! Stop teasing me, nature! Don't tell me winter is over and then yell, "Just kidding!" and put it back again!

Oh, well. At least the killer winds we were having this morning have died down. Meaning my internet is now mostly staying up. Mostly.

Two Great Tastes

It seems Farscape's Ben Browder is going to be making a guest appearance on Doctor Who next season. Clearly somebody in this universe loves me!

Monday, March 05, 2012

Cat Update #703

So, Newt's test results did finally come back, but let's just say they were not exactly conclusive. On the upside, she probably doesn't have kitty chlamydia. But it could still be herpes. Or maybe something bacterial. Or an even an auto-immune disease. (That's right, House fans! It could be lupus!) Her ear is looking good now, at least, but she still has pretty bad conjunctivitis. And so we continue working our way through the veterinary pharmacopeia, hoping to hit on something that will work. Right now, she's got yet again still more different antibiotics. She's also got some corticosteroid eye ointment that might make things better and might make things worse. Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets!

At least there was some good news: Happiness' thyroid levels were just fine, meaning the dosage she's on right now is working great. Even though a couple of times she's missed a pill, because I thought she'd swallowed it only to find it on the floor a day later. Nova's limp is looking a lot better, too, so that's something.

Still... cats.

Saturday, March 03, 2012

It's Meeeee!

I meant to post some of these sooner, but I've been busy. Plus, my internet was down for two days. Fun times!

Anyway, some more pictures from my aunt. The one thing lacking from my previous posts on my Hawaii trip, I think, was pictures with me in them. So here's a few, just to document the fact that, yes, I really was there: