Sic Itur Ad Astra

With many apologies to A Softer World

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:04:31 GMT

Light Echo, AKA My Friends Say Quotable Things on IM, an intermittent series. Starting with a bangpunintended using V838 Monocerotis, variable star and temperamental camwhore of the neighborhood. Monologue supplied by the illustrious alexpshenichkin.

Workin' on the mashup, very slowly. Real life has intervened somewhat in the past week. Sugar the foster cat went to his new home, arctangent's juggling two plays, his involvement in one of which ends tomorrow night so that he can miss their final weekend in order to open the other one, which is driving him crazy because they're having trouble pulling everything together in the...four days they have left. Community theater is crazy hard, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

But hey, I bought a large squash, a close relative of the pumpkin, and after much cursing and grunting and a couple of destroyed dollar-store knives and waiting for Arthur to come home turned it into four batches of squash chocolate chip muffins.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:49:09 GMT

"A Glorious Dawn" dude stole my bit! (srsly go listen it's catchy as hell)

Okay, so it was really his bit first and I just asked to borrow it, but JEEZ, he hit every single one of my ideas along the way. Neil deGrasse Tyson. BILL NYE. USING FEYNMAN'S BONGOS AS THE DRUMLINE. Admittedly, he used different clips than the ones I was going to, but I feel like the master's already come in and shown us how it's done, why retread that?

So I'm setting my goals even higher.

I'm going to mash the two songs together.

FOR SCIENCE.

10/16

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 01:21:20 GMT

10/15

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 01:23:37 GMT

10/13 & 10/14

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:12:00 GMT

10/13, coming out of a four-day weekend

10/14, night two of really shitty sleep

Friendcycle

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:16:34 GMT

Does anyone in the DC area needwant a couple of twin mattresses, excellent condition except for the frayed spot on one where the foster cat won't leave it the hell alone? (If so, do you also have a way to transport them?)

I should post more

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:26:03 GMT

I need to remember that I'm not just doing this because I'm an attention whore, I'm doing this because my daily-life memory is crap and I don't want to forget everything.

When I occasionally dig through old entries for something I'm trying to remember, I notice big gaps where I didn't post at all, or I simply neglected to mention all sorts of things I'm sure were going on. I can rattle off chemical names and codes and case numbers all day at work, but unless something particularly noteworthy happened on a certain day and I thought to write it down, I can't recall where I would habitually sit at SWILTable, or how many hours I spent studying for this test or another.

These things are utterly banal to everyone but me. They remind me what it was like Before I was sick, when the future seemed certain. I like to slip back into that mindset. Our paths were carved in comforting stone. But even when I prepare, conjuring up the smell of damp ML basement and Renato's pizza, textbook glue, the feel of hot summer sun and the sound of rogue crickets chirping from under the knocking radiator, I know how much I'm missing, how much the chronic stress and sleep loss damaged my ability to imprint both equations and experiences in long-term memory; and I turn again to my own words, written as if from another age. We are our own best archivists and archaeologists, rooting the middens of half-forgotten lives, when the grass was greener and every utterance was genius and new.

So.

Arthur has at last entered the local community theatre scene and is gone every evening to work on two separate productions, both opening in a month or less. It means I see much less of him, but he's enjoying himself and that's good. He has taken to occasionally staying up all night because he says that's the only time the building's quiet enough to record voiceover auditions. I disapprove but I can't say I disagree - with the various machinery of our lives humming (dishwasher, laundry robots, breadmaker, computer fans) and the tortured wailing of the severely neurotic dog across the hall (who can't be left alone for more than three minutes without creating a din to rival the screaming depths of Hell), it's a chaotic and noisy life that we lead.

I have become one of NASA's more devoted fans on Twitter, of all places. It's fascinating to see the tidbits from astronauts and engineers and official mouthpieces as they are tossed up there, a different experience from that of reading press releases and the official websites. In a week and a half I'm going to be talking to the ISS, an experience I could only have imagined in my most secret childhood dreams. Right now I'm mostly terrified of sounding like a doofus, but perhaps that will fade.

We have another foster cat. My friend M convinced me to petition the foster group to take him, because the poor little stray kept running into her house when she opened the door. He is adorable. She wanted to call him Sergeant Tumbles (I have no idea) but we officially named him Sugar, to go with Cinnamon. Cinnamon tolerates him, but he has too much kitten energy for her and constantly wants to play. I do my best to distract him when she gets too huffy. Everything in the entire world is a toy, if it's small and light enough to be carried around in his mouth and brought to one of his favorite corners for demolition.

At first we kept them separated, but despite resuming the stress-peeing in our laundry, Cinnamon seemed mostly indifferent to the strange paws poking out from under the bedroom door. Eventually she muscled her way into the bedroom and made it clear that she didn't care what kind of ruffian invaded her turf as long as she got to keep her habitual spot on the corner of the mattress and sleep in her favorite spot just under the bedskirt. She's too old to change her patterns, I suppose, and she's too passive to object strongly to a boisterous sibling.

I sent the A Glorious Dawn guy a fan-email, and he sent me the vocal and instrumental tracks with his blessing to remix. I've found some great Feynman clips that I'm going to mash in, and am eyeing Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye, plus the many more who exist only in photographs. I started the project with an artificial sense of urgency, but am now letting things percolate as they should, as indeed they must if I want to get anything that doesn't suck hairy goat balls.

I have reorganized the closet for winter. It's very important that we not let clothing remain on the floor for any length of time, because Cinnamon is bound to pee on it. I like to think of this as enforced orderliness instead of the tyranny of neurotic pets.

My hands hurt terribly yesterday, but thanks to a combination of gabapentin and ibuprofen this has subsided. I have done very little of note with my four-day weekend other than turn my brain off and rest, but perhaps that is, also, as it should be.

good times

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:12:52 GMT

Aaaaaaaugh

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 21:10:08 GMT

There is all sorts of stuff going on in my life right now and I really need to write about it here at some point but major MAJOR thing that needs to be mentioned right now:

In ten days I and 34 other lucky people are going to be at NASA HQ downtown chatting directly with two astronauts - Jeff Williams and Nicole Stott - on the International Space Station.

I need questions to ask and topics to bring up that are not lame.

Examples of lameness: extremely technical questions about the workings of spacesuits, anything involving religion, and anything that can be easily answerable with a quick Google or a visit to Wikipedia. (Durr how do astronauts poop in space lol??)

HALP SUGGESTIONS PLS. I'm thinking possibly something about the Ares launch system which is currently in development and how it will affect the training of future astronauts, though any question would have to be a little less broad than that, obviously.

EDIT 10/12: jamison: Ask them if the windows open

How lucky we are to live in this time

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:19:43 GMT

Hooooleeee shit, you guys. Watch this. Watch it now.

I just sat in a room with six astronauts who as recently as two months ago were floating in space and this was still more inspiring.

(I will entertain the possibility of cumulative effect but JUST WATCH IT ALREADY)

Remembering

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:37:29 GMT

The dry streambed is rough going, huge broken rocks with hidden sandy gaps ready to catch an unwary foot, but the fugitives are stoic in their silence. The dragon’s pace is slow and measured, as if in deference to his much smaller companion, but his dragging wing catches painfully on jutting driftwood and the odd boulder, and his breath is labored. Clouds hang low and threatening over the parched earth, gaining with the setting sun in a race for the western horizon.

“We can rest here for a second,” the dog says, climbing the bank to a small promontory over what once would have been a stretch of rapids. She sits and cocks an ear. “I’ll keep watch.”

The dragon drops his hindquarters with a grateful sigh and whips his serpentine neck around, lifting the useless wing in his mouth to fold it into place against his back. The wing flops loose again and he hisses in pain. “Dislocated,” he says. “Probably nothing permanent, if I can get it looked at, but we’re not leaving by air.”

“Right,” says the dog. Her head tilts as she regards him thoughtfully. “I could chew it off for you.”

“Oh, fly away,” he mock-growls. “Things aren't that desperate, yet.”

A howl goes up in the distance and both of them sit erect. “I stand corrected,” the dragon grunts, and heaves himself up and onward. The dog trots down the bank and follows him, looking behind every few steps, her blue eye flashing in the fading light.

It begins to rain.

*********

If I'm not careful I'm going to be typecast as that chick who always puts talking animals in her stories, even though this is the only other one I've started since Friends in Need. Guess I'll send out some other stuff first.

Escape #3.5

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:27:08 GMT

I got in bed early last night due to extreme tired and Arthur came in to chat for a while. We still hadn't put a lid on the hamster cage because the lid was pretty powerfully attached to all the tubing that normally leads to the upper cage, and we didn't want to give Conan a direct escape route. I had, however, put a cardboard box that formerly held sandwich baggies into the cage to give him a new house, since he hadn't built a new nest yet and the sunlight and then lamp-light seemed to be interfering with his sleep.

Arthur left to go back to his computer in the living room and immediately started swearing and rummaging through the papers on the kitchen table. I came out to help and we quickly determined that he couldn't have gone far. Indeed, he was on the floor under the table. We cornered him easily and captured him again.

As far as we can tell, he waited until we were both out of the room, then immediately stood on the box, jumped up, hooked his paws over the edge of the cage, and chin-upped himself out. I knew all that wheel-running wasn't just to get rid of nervous energy - obviously we need to revise upward his estimated jump height.

spooky music

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:26:19 GMT

The hamster escaped sometime yesterday or the night before. Cinnamon may have been trying to alert us, but we couldn't separate any particular warning from her usual pay-attention-to-me meows. This is Conan's third escape, and the first one involving more than one step - I left a top vent on his upper cage open, stupidly thinking that airflow was more important than the tiny chance he might be able to jump that high. Conan pushed his plastic hidey-log over to that corner and stood on that to jump up and climb out the vent. I don't think he was dumb enough to drop directly to the floor again (at least I hope not), and there were other ways off the desk that both involved much smaller leaps to squishy pillows and couch arms.

Anyway. We figured the apartment is pretty well-sealed and he would turn up eventually, and were pretty sure we could hear him under the fridge, so we left well enough alone for the evening. I took the opportunity to dump out his bedding and scrub down both cages. I put new bedding into the aquarium but left the rest of the reassembly for tomorrow; I strained my back somehow a few days ago and wanted to go easy. Everything remained on the floor for the night.

This morning I crawled out of bed and went through my groggy morning routine. Sometime in the middle of eating breakfast I suddenly looked over at the aquarium and saw Conan pressed against the glass, peering at me with his angry little beady-eyes. He had no food and water but was securely back in the cage, and had probably been stuck there for hours.

I didn't waste time thinking about it at first - I just gave him some food, which he ate, and water, which he drank, and moved the cage to the kitchen table. I figured Arthur had gotten up in the middle of the night and stumbled across Conan foraging for catfood bits, then deposited him in the cage for safekeeping. But Arthur has denied all involvement, and this would be a weird prank even for him.

Catching a wary and unwilling hamster and putting him in a safe place is a little involved for sleepwalking, but the aquarium was on the floor, and it wouldn't have been difficult for a quick-but-not-hungry cat to catch Conan and drop him in there. The problem is that the only cat around here is Cinnamon, and I've said before that I consider her to be dumb as a box of rocks and not particularly nimble. She does carry toys around in her mouth when she's playing, but she's never demonstrated the speed I imagine one would need to corner and detain Conan.

The only other thing we can think of is that he went back in there willingly, but unless he's learned to teleport I can't imagine how he got in there. There was nothing close enough to jump from and no way to climb the outside.

Conan appears uninjured (as always) and is already plotting his next escape. Cinnamon is lying around (as always) looking pleased with herself. The mystery may never be solved.

RIP Granny Scott (1936-2009)

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 01:55:09 GMT

I miss you.

Visited Alex/kitten tonight - holy crap

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:53:47 GMT

Alex tamed the kitten in the two days I stayed home. She still panics when you come into her room and try to handle her, but it seems to be more out of habit than anything else, since she starts to purr as soon as you pick her up. On the living room couch, she sat next to me and on me and on my keyboard and purred like a little motorboat and made multitudinous blissed-out faces. Tonight was the first time she licked my fingers, and the first time she unambiguously butted my hand for more scritches. As neither Mamacita nor Cinnamon are cuddlers, this was a great comfort.

If you put her on the floor she snaps back into feral mode and zips off to find somewhere to hide, but this might be because Mamacita doesn't like her much and she may feel intimidated. We fished her out from under the bed several times - she would zoom under there and then give us a confused "Did I just do that?" look. She moved away from Alex when he tried to reach under and get her, but just sniffed my hand and let me drag her out by her scruff. She loves Mommy more. <3

I'm suddenly going to Lexington on Friday, so Cinnamon's going to miss this adoption fair, but Alex will still take Sasha over. She's going to steal the whole show, I can tell already. She's not going to be ours much longer.

OH HAI

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:51:28 GMT

OH HAI
Originally uploaded by Eliza Effect

All my pictures of the rescued kitten have been crap, but Alex finally took a good one. Sasha looks all DEATH FROM ABOVE, when really she's just hiding in the window frame behind the blinds because humans are kind of scary.

#iranelection

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:29:20 GMT

EBAY LISTING IS LIVE - CLICK TO SEE.

Auction will run for 7 days starting right now. For the love of all that is D, tell your friends. Crosspost! Bring it up in random conversation! ;)

So I posted a while back about winning some sort of Engadget giveaway of a mysterious nature. Long story short, I got in a flamewar with an artist I admire from afar about what Americans could be reasonably expected to do in support of the Iran election protests, given that direct involvement could potentially harm more than it helped and not everybody is a proxy wizard.

He and I both walked away super-pissed in spite of being ostensibly on the same side; twenty minutes later I got the email saying I'd won the giveaway. I declared there and then on Twitter that I'd set aside something from the mystery grab bag for an ebay Auction For Iranian Democracy.

But first, let me tell you the tale of Engadget: The Unboxening.

The Mystery Box(TM) arrived the same day I came home early from work with the flu, so it sat unopened for a day and a night before I could finally stagger into the living room with my camera and some scissors. It was considerably larger than I expected. I thought the duct tape was a nice touch.

Nintendo Zapper added for scale. Nintendo Zapper not included in Mystery Box(TM).

Ladies and gentelmen, drumroll please:

I almost photoshopped a heavenly glow around the opening, but it's just as well I didn't, because (**~*SPOILER ALERT*~**) nothing in there really merited the shoop-filter treatment. Exhibit A:

A gaming mouse? I didn't even know those existed (which should be your first signal that I am not Engadget's target audience). As much as I used to love playing PC games with my Sidewinder joystick in the heyday of Jet Fighter and TIE Fighter and X-Wing, I have since mutated into a console girl and my non-gaming computer is now used for non-gaming applications such as writing, surfing the internet, and warming my cat's butt.

Well, it's not like they could know that I have no use for what I am assured by the Firefox-crashing Microsoft website is one of the most awesome gaming mice ever. What else is in the Mystery Box(TM) that might be more relevant to my interests?

Hmmm. What's this?

It's an iPhone protector! This would be awesome if I owned an iPhone! 'Nuff said.

Well, there's always this gizmo. It's like a wireless card crammed into a flash drive. Perfect for keeping an aging computer with no wireless capability useful into the wireless age. I don't have such a computer, but someone I know would surely love to have this...if the box weren't empty. I don't fault them for not checking everything when they were cleaning out the freebie drawer, but no, okay, I fault them a little.

The rest of the box appears to be taken up by this duffel bag and a couple of video games.

I've never heard of Wipeout Pulse, but it looks like a perfectly respectable if unimaginative member of the antigravity racing franchise that I so dearly love. I would surely play this if I owned a PSP.

Well, here we go, a PC game. The kind of thing you could use with your Sidewinder gaming mouse, I imagine. Its system requirements are the maximum my box can handle, but I might be able to get it to run if I tweak everything enough. I mean, c'mon, the guy has a chainsaw bayonet. What's not to love?

VAMPIRE RAIN. Say it with me. It is literally vampires plus rain. It is raining throughout the entire game. Wikipedia tells me this game has been described as "a trainwreck" and is mildly infamous for being really, really bad. Still, I would totally try it out if I owned an Xbox.

Specs on the aforementioned bag, for the curious.

But wait - the bag is a Mystery Bag(TM)! There is more mystery inside!

Awesome, a polo shirt that I can use as a tent! (Don't let that "M" fool you, it's at least an XL.)

It also has some kind of logo on it:

Me: What's "D"? Because I know what it makes me think of and I know I'm going to be wrong.

Arthur, moments after rushing into the bedroom for a quick Google: It's a technology conference where a bunch of CEOs go to stroke themselves and talk about how awesome they are.
Me: Oh, I guess that makes sense. And look, the bag has the same logo. I guess we know where all the freebies came from.

Moving on:
Hey, a hat! I wear hats sometimes! And I actually read Reuters when I'm bored at work! This might be a keeper.

I've thought about it and thought about it and I'm still not sure what this thing is. It appears to be a...badge? A limited edition badge? Touting a limited-edition laptop covered in pink flowers? I don't know, man, you tell me.

Oh, sweet, a screen-cleaning cloth. Now I can stop using toilet paper or my shirt.

... ??? ...

I know this is an awful photo, but it was hard to get a good one. Basically it's a small stick of hands-free sunblock for your face. With the Reuters logo on it. Well, it is summer, maybe I can use it.

Myspace really went all-out for this D thing. A Myspace beach towel, a Myspace-approved mix CD, and a Myspace-branded water pistol are all tied together with a lovely Myspace ribbon. I think if there were a freebie judging panel they would win Best Presentation.

Now this is kind of cool - a USB doohickey that makes sure that as long as you have your laptop charger, you can charge anything else. There's a plastic bag full of cord adapters in the box for all your charging needs. Absolutely useful, unlike anything else I've pulled out so far, except perhaps for the Reuters hat/sunblock combo.

Blue Planet Run. I don't think the picture provides you an accurate idea of how enormous this book is. Rest assured you could kill somebody with it. However, flippancy aside, this monster coffee-table book is a stunning photoessay on how quickly we're using up all the drinking water there is, and how fucked-up things are going to get if we don't do something about it. As an environmentalist, I approve of the message, even if I doubt most of D's attendees bothered to read it. ~~You can, though - Amazon is giving out free PDFs on the book's page~~ They were giving out free pdfs last time I checked, but this offer appears to have ended, as I can't find it anymore.

I got all excited when I first glimpsed this, but it's not an old tech magazine, it's just a thin blank notebook made up to look like one. Abebooks is one of the sponsors screaming from the cover, so it's a sure bet that when they talk about "THE GREATEST TECHNOLOGY OF ALL TIME", they don't mean the electric flyswatter. (HINT: IT'S THE BOOK.) I wonder how that went down at D.

This appears to be a documentary, and it even sounds interesting, so I'll watch it sometime soon and get back to you on whether it's any good.

This is a postcard about weaponized rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Sorry for the blurry pic. The top says "STOP RAPING OUR GREATEST RESOURCE."

Arthur: ...So what's our greatest resource?
Me: ...
Arthur: ...
Me: ...
Arthur: ...
Me: WOMEN.
Arthur: Oh, jeez, sorry, I thought they meant it in the figurative sense. :(

And, finally, a card with a code for a free ringtone from AT&T. Arthur has an AT&T phone, but he seems deeply attached to his current ringtone, which is just a recording of his voice saying "Arthur, pick up the phone", so this one may also be passed along.

So! This was certainly a...lot of...things that I won, and I am certainly grateful to Engadget for holding the giveaway and selecting me from among the 11,000+ entrants.

I thought for a while about what I could pick from this collection for the auction. There's nothing here that really fits with the Iranian-Democracy theme, and it's enough of a hodgepodge that just dumping the whole Mystery Box(TM) on ebay would be likely to detract from the mission, unless you own an Xbox 360 AND a PSP AND a PC powerful enough to run Gears of War AND you want a whole bunch of random extra stuff.

So what I think I'm going to do is offer something of a D Experience - you can get your very own embroidered D polo shirt and embroidered D duffel bag, plus the Myspace D gift set (beach towel, water pistol, mix CD) and a Reuters hat, and I'll throw in the iPhone cover if you want it. You, too, can pretend you went to a fancy tech executives conference! Skull-crushing coffee-table book optional.

And hear the lamentation of their women

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 05:36:05 GMT

Someday I will post pictures of Conan the Hamsterian, imprisoned lo these six weeks in the Dungeon of the Evil Giants.

He is the pinnacle of all hamsters, enormous and muscular and I'm sure quite virile, judging by the way his testes make up at least a third of his body.

He is also considerably smarter than my past several small pets, and maniacally driven. This has led to one escape by climbing out an open lid-hole that previous occupants had simply been unable to reach, after which he was promptly recaptured; and a second escape by lifting a supposedly-secure cover off one of the unused tube ports in his secondary cage and surviving a 5.5-foot drop onto a stone floor, which lasted several days and led me to construct an elaborate pit trap baited with peanuts, his favorite treat, and which he obstinately refused to fall into. (He ate the peanuts, though.)

Both times I have been alerted to his presence by the ever-faithful Cinnamon the Foster Cat, who has no front claws and the feline instincts of a wet log. She gets very excited when he's loose on the floor but does nothing but follow him around, occasionally letting out a particularly emotive chirp and batting at him playfully. This last time she chased him into the bedroom and I heard him scrabbling around on the cardboard boxes stacked under the bed.

You have to understand, we named him in jest, playing off his great size and strength, but the name's proved too apt. Conan watched me apply duct tape to the port covers, tested the one he escaped through previously to confirm that he could no longer lift it, and turned immediately to Plan B, gnawing on the inside of his plastic tube. When someone comes over to look at him he will stop what he's doing and stare out through the glass walls of his prison. Arthur and I feel like movie villains.

(1:02:44 AM) Eliza: I CAUGHT CONAN
(1:03:05 AM) Eliza: ALSO I DUCT-TAPED THE COVERS DOWN SO HE'S GOING TO HAVE TO BE CLEVERER THAN THAT NEXT TIME
(1:03:09 AM) Arthur: Ha!
(1:03:14 AM) Arthur: And that brings an end to his saga of heroism!
(1:03:16 AM) Arthur: For good, I say!
(1:03:20 AM) Eliza: MUHAHAHAHAHA

(1:06:01 AM) Eliza: Well, he had the run of the apartment for several days and was either too lazy to leave or couldn't.
(1:06:22 AM) Eliza: So I guess if he escapes again we don't have to worry too hard.
(1:07:02 AM) Eliza: I can totally see him just setting up under the bookshelf in smug male hamster fashion, though.
(1:07:16 AM) Eliza: "I claim this Stone Desert as my rightful territory!"

(1:08:52 AM) Arthur: Cinnamon foiled him again.
(1:08:54 AM) Arthur: You two make a good team.
(1:08:56 AM) Eliza: Yeah.
(1:08:59 AM) Arthur: "Someday I will slay that great beast!"
(1:09:04 AM) Eliza: She is the watch-monster.
(1:09:08 AM) Arthur: "Without its powers of scent the Evil Giants are helpless!"

Confirmation

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 02:22:41 GMT

Kitten is female, and was very sweet at the vet. Took her shots and dewormer like a little trooper with no hissing or struggling, and seemed frightened but still extremely curious about the car ride there and back. She spent a lot of time watching the trees pass overhead. Perhaps growing up in a parking lot has given her some basic familiarity with car sounds.

I still don't have pics uploaded, sorry. I'm very tired. "Sasha" has gone into the vet records and is her name until she's adopted, though it doesn't feel especially fitting. Next time around I'll have a list of names prepared for surprise guests.

The vet said her tail is probably an "old" injury (though at 12-14 weeks there is very little that can be said to be old about her). It's completely healed and doesn't seem to bother her. She's very healthy, astonishingly ear-mite-free, and negative for all the bad stuff - FIV/FeLV, etc. This combined with her seemingly good-natured adaptability bodes well for getting her adopted quickly. I can't visit Alex every single night, and I don't think bringing her over here would do much for Cinnamon's disposition - she seems to want to latch onto one person and not share them with anyone or anything else.

Kitten update

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:20:31 GMT

Spent several hours in the kitten room last night. Kitten shot out from under the futon when I sat down and spent some time glaring at me from the windowsill. Eventually it moved from there to the upright TV box Alex had stored in there. This worked great for about an hour until the kitten shifted, slipped, and fell inside.

There was no way to get it out without pulling the whole box from behind the stored furniture and dumping its contents, so I got a clean towel and hauled the kitten out by the scruff. It howled bloody murder but didn't struggle. I figured since I had it in my power, I might as well use the chance, so I gave it a quick once-over.

Found: Flea poop, couple of fleas, probable vagina. I still don't trust my kitten-sexing abilities 100% so I'm just going to say "it" until the vet confirms. Solid-orange tabby females are somewhat rare - lots of females carry the genes but the end result gets overwritten by other color types such as tricolor (calico). Given that her/its mom was also an orange tabby, I guess the conditions were right in this case.

Kitten appears to have no tail at all. What I thought was a broken stump was actually a tuft of fur. It has the tiniest nubbin the width of a chopstick, about proportional to the tailbone on a human, which it can control just enough to curl over its butthole. I still have no idea whether this was a very early injury or a birth defect; there's no sign of a wound.

I decided to further push my luck. I wrapped the kitten securely in the towel and sat with it in my lap, stroking its head gently and talking in a low voice. It made angry little grumbling sounds for a while but eventually quieted and may have briefly nodded off. Eventually it relaxed enough to notice the fresh food on its plate a couple feet away and look longingly toward it, nostrils flaring. I tried to see if it would eat while still in my lap, but eventually released it to see what it would do, which ended up being "zip back under the futon". Still, I feel that we shared a Moment.

Any gains I made last night will probably be erased in the process of cramming it into the cat carrier and taking it to the big scary vet this evening, but I feel it's coming along splendidly. I have a few bad pics but was too tired to upload them last night.

It's the little things

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:40:34 GMT

Jamie sent you a Facebook message.

--------------------
Subject: Tribute fanflim

Hello there. I had found your Tribute video about three years ago and thought it was outstanding. I re-watched it today and decided to tell you how awesome of a job you and your crew did. I really love it.

I used to perform in a local Rocky Horror cast and myself and two friends performed Tribute to the live audience. It went over great. Your video gave me the idea to pull that off and I wanted to say thanks.

Compliments from a total stranger, great job.

****

Hamster is AWOL, feral kitten is feral, energy is down, pain is up, money is tight, boyfriend is far away, life is stressful, but this just made my day.

KITTEN

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:25:09 GMT

So I was hanging out with Alex last night when our nice quiet evening derailed. We were just getting in his car to go to Quizno's for some dinner when I noticed a little orange kitten cleaning itself in an empty spot less than 20 feet away. I got out and approached it, but it ran under a parked car. I got down and poked my nose under there and got a faceful of angry orange feral momcat.

She was pretty mad, but it was about 94 degrees and humid, and she was so enervated by the heat that she confined her response to me to a lot of hissing and shuffling away under other cars when I got too close. There appeared to be no other kittens, and the mom looked young. I harassed them for a while, trying to gauge their level of feral-ness and see if I could get close enough to pick up the kitten, but quickly found they were too wary of me.

However, my kitten trap was still in Alex's closet (because I didn't have enough room in my previous apartment and also I'm lazy). He ran and got it, as well as a can of cat food, and I pulled out a clean towel that I'd accidentally left in the Precious after the adoption fair last week. (Score two in a row for laziness.)

From there it was as simple as setting the trap, baiting it with the open can, covering it with the towel to make an inviting "cave", and leaving it alone for an hour and a half (though I did get impatient and move it closer once). When I picked up the sprung trap, the kitten was terrified but had still managed to consume the entire contents of the can. Works every time.

Alex was kind enough to donate his spare bedroom to the effort, so we moved some of the stored stuff out and set up a small litterbox and feeding station. The kitten was violently opposed to being handled and took up residence behind a chair in the corner. Alex and I made an emergency grocery store run to pick up more food and litter and checked on him a couple of times, but have otherwise left him completely alone.

I was guessing he was about ten weeks old but I think I've revised my estimate up to more like twelve. He looked a lot smaller next to his mom. He's an adorable orange tabby with a little pixie-face and large ears. There's something wrong with his tail that makes it sort of short and curled to the side - either an injury or deformity, I can't tell.

I don't think we're going to learn anything else about him, or whether he's actually a him at all, until his vet visit tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to trying to cram a terrified feral kitten into a carrier. He didn't appear to be crawling with vermin or in any particular pain, just robustly hungry and frightened, so prognosis is probably good.

The vet made me pick a gender-ambiguous name on the spot so I pulled "Sasha" off the top of my head; we might be able to change it later. I'm hoping we're going to have an easier time taming him than we did with Samuel L. Jackson the Illegal Dorm Kitten; while Jackson did everything to hide, including cramming himself under and through spaces I wouldn't have thought could fit an animal half his size, this kitten seemed to feel safe enough just half-hidden behind a chair, and watched us with huge curious eyes as we were setting up. Tonight we begin the Taming, and if he's magically fixed by Saturday he'll go to the special all-kitten adoption fair in Fairfax.

Pics tonight, if I can get them. Further updates to follow. KITTEN.

P.S. - The mom was still hanging around last night, but I'm not sure what to do about her. She's probably too feral to tame, and I don't have a trap big enough for her. If I keep seeing her around perhaps I'll obtain/borrow a larger trap and see if I can get her trap-neuter-released, if nothing else, so she at least doesn't make any more kittens.

EDIT: Alex reports "Sasha" has both eaten and pooped, so he must be settling in. Luckily they tend to figure out the litterbox on the first try. :)

Canadian Rockies, July-August 2009

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 22:05:15 GMT

Canadian Rockies, July 2009
Originally uploaded by Eliza Effect

Photos are up.

EDIT: Also my family reunion from mid-July, if anyone's interested in a bunch of photos of strangers distantly related to me.

Because I've been too quiet here, and this deserves to be remembered

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:05:26 GMT

(Background: Mamacita has expressed interest in going Outside.)

Alex: So, the leash I got her...
Alex: didn't fit.
Alex: I bought another one.
Alex: by leash I mean the harness thingy

me: So basically she was too fat?
me: Unless you bought her a ferret leash by accident.

Alex: she was too fat
Alex: also whoever came up with the first design of the leash I got was kind of an idiot
Alex: the second one makes more sense
Alex: the first one you have to hook under the cat and through on both sides
Alex: as soon as I put one side on the cat is like plop

me: lol

Alex: And then it's like "hold your cat upside down and tighten the harness"
Alex: And I'm like "I don't see any falconry gloves in this box"

fyi

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:15:53 GMT

I got home last night to find that we were experiencing a strange partial power outage to some outlets - the fridge and the garbage disposal and the microwave worked, but not the dishwasher or the washing machine or the stove, etc. Arthur had already determined that this was a building-wide problem and not just us. We got some prepared sandwiches, the power company got some trucks and we were told they'd have it fixed by morning.

Instead, the power went out entirely around 3 AM (according to other residents) and when I went out to the bus this morning, the backhoe, crane and several trucks parked outside were empty and silent.

Arthur, who has somehow inserted himself into the social network of the longtime regulars, most of whom are several decades his senior, called to update me and said the power company is blaming the building for faulty wiring, while the building is blaming the power company's transformer for being demonstrably over 30 years old and on its last legs. Somehow the bureaucratic fight got nasty enough that the workers were called away and now some people are at City Hall yelling at each other or something.

Meanwhile, food is going bad with no way to prepare it, air temperature is way up, shower temperature is way down, Arthur is camping in the library, and I am grumpy because I am smelly and achy and sleep-deprived and disheveled and this is going to keep costing us money until it's resolved. Blarg.

EDIT (7:30): Power's back, yay, dinner is only delayed.