graculus

Hell, yeah it's October and I just woke up after getting back from connotations yesterday, not that I went to bed immediately on getting home from dropping off katemonkey and gumbie_cat (who I know were planning a MLP marathon on the Wii because they started talking about it as we turned into katemonkey's street, so mock them as they so richly deserve!) but you know what I mean...

Booked the week off because a) I knew it would be A Very Good Idea after the con (awesome as always, guys!) but also b) because I have Stuff To Do which I never seem to get done at the weekends. Like I broke my bed a few weeks back, though sadly not in a fun sexytiems way, and it needs replacing and I can't even begin to consider going to Ikea except during the week. Also nobody told me that being a grown-up would involve taking stuff to the tip recycling centre and having to be Responsible and stuff like that. Or if they did, I ignored it in favour of 'but you can spend all day in your jammies and nobody will give you shit about it!'.

Back to the con, I somehow ended up modding/co-modding two panels, which went way better than my half-arsed preparation could have possibly allowed me to hope - for those who weren't there, they were on 'Kink meme culture - creative wellspring or inspirational cul-de-sac' (or it may have been the other way around...) and 'What, if anything, has fandom learned from various fails or does it just make us more prone to navel-gazing?' At some point this week there will be summaries of the main points and links to stuff on connotations, though I have to say after someone at the Crack Fic panel talked about the Merlin/Arthur AU where Arthur is a BNF in Camelot fandom and there was also discussion about the various Charles/Erik fic where one or other of them is a kitten, how is it that all of those ended up being recced on epic_recs the past few days? Fandom Hive Mind, we haz it. And there was also (finally, after many years of threatening to do so) pimping of Wild Wild West and it was good. :)

In short, it was once again good to be Among My People and I am already looking forward to next year, though my brain still refuses to accept that this will be Connotations X - yes, the con is 10 next year! *wibbles*

In other news, work continues to be just like working for local government, but with more chocolate and biscuits. Buzz the psycho loner ferret has now decided his latest trick will be to go blind in both eyes, which means he has a tendency to run into things since his only paces are either complete stop or full-out run. And there must and will be fic. Along with consideration of whether I want to attempt Nano this year, which will depend on whether I can storyboard the idea (in the movie version of which, in my mind at least, the male protagonists are currently played by Takeshi Kaneshiro and Paul Bettany, no I have no idea how that happened either...) I have and convince myself I can get a novel out of it, which I probably can if I put my mind to it.

Thoughts? Comments? Brickbats? I could probably do with more of all of those, except maybe the latter. ;)

I swear, ferrets may not spend much time awake, so I can only assume that they spend their time asleep dreaming of how to drive their owners insane. Particularly in terms of doing things they have never done before and therefore cannot be anticipated or prevented.

Today, for example, Buzz climbs into the (switched off) washing machine because the door is open and there are a couple of things in it. I've had ferrets climbing in and out of that washing machine, or sometimes even curling up to go to sleep in it, for as long as I've had ferrets. What I haven't had (until today) is a ferret deciding to chew a bloody great hole in the rubber doorseal.

Grrr. This would be why I am currently googling 'hotpoint doorseal' rather than putting my feet up and watching telly like a sensible person.

Unfortunately, when Woody went in for his surgery today, they found not only an enlarged spleen (as we'd suspected) but also a tumour - unfortunately, for the latter to be removed, they would have had to also remove an untenable amount of Woody's intestine, so that wasn't a possibility. I was given the option of either having him euthanised while still under the anaesthetic or stitching him back up and seeing what happens. I didn't think option B was at all the right thing to do, given the recent drop in his quality of life, so now I'm down to being a one-weasel household again. :(

My contract for my new job arrived yesterday, and I also went over to the office to meet folks and have a look around. Yes, we're heading rapidly into 'OMG this is really happening!1!!!' territory, as I'll be putting my notice in at the end of next week, to start mid-November.

The office is open-plan, which has never been a personal favourite, and the managers are also shoved off in their little partition so I'm probably going to have to get a) earplugs and/or b) a mirror to go on my computer monitor so folks can't sneak up on me. I've discovered in my current place, I have a tendency when I'm really engrossed in something on the computer I'll be oblivious to anyone being there till they speak to me and then they're peeling me off the ceiling. However, there are meant to be moves afoot to create actual offices, so we'll see...

On the positive side, one of the other managers lives near me and tells me that on a good day he can do door to door, home to office, in 20 minutes. And the office doesn't open till 9, rather than 8.30 like my current employer's does. I cannot even begin to think how good that sounds!

In other news, the first lot of blood tests has come back for Woody and apparently, whatever the lump is so far it's not affecting his liver or kidney functioning. He's still eating and can put on a fair turn of speed when he thinks he's missing out on something, so it may just be a case of watch-this-space. I'm reluctant to put him through the stress of surgery that might be pointless when his quality of life is okay. More results still to come so we'll see what that tells me.

This morning really went from one extreme to another...

Firstly, the lovely Buzz waits till I go outside to refill the weasel's foodbowl to find and then consume a slug that has crawled into their hutch. *shudders*

Then, on the way to work, I see this bright (you've been Tango'ed) orange car heading towards me and realise it has a personalised numberplate, changed to say 'HI GIRLZ'. I'm sure the owner of said vehicle would be pleased to hear an office full of women talking about him this morning but not so chuffed with the consensus opinion about the likely teeny-tiny size of his penis. ;)

How did it happen that I'm only 2 weeks away from my holiday? :)

Got to finish up the MW door-art stuff before I forget - it's half-done, but I need to buy colour cartridges for my printer, which always seems to get caned this time of year more than any other, I wonder why that is?

In other news, the ongoing back garden work is proceeding, though I've had a weekend off so far. I intend to do a bit of digging later, once I've put the washing out. This is kind of sublimation for not writing, as at least I can see something being achieved.

Also, belatedly, we are Premier League! Woo and indeed yay for my team winning the Championship league, having made me chew my fingers since we clambered onto the top of the table in October and have clung there ever since - we are Wolves! :)

Finally, and much more what you all really want, this time I remembered to take my camera with me when the kids went out to play - ( Weasels go wild behind the cut! )

Here's a few belated ferret + snow pics, though they're all of Woody since Buzz hid behind the sofa and refused to come out to play - apparently he was under the impression I was going to do something awful to him... he's such a big wuss!

( Click here for pics )

Somewhere in my house there is a Chunky Peanut Butter Kitkat.

Like someone who has never had ferrets, I foolishly left a multi-pack of said items on a chair in my living room - there were three left of the original five and I have so far located one gnawed-at-but-unopened and one opened-and-gnawed-at and one just-the-empty-wrapper.

Yes, the emergency vet is on speed dial. *headdesk*

I'm starting to wonder if Dougal losing weight has got something to do with his teeth, since he'll happily eat wet food but there's no evidence that he eats the dry food if that's all there is. Given his age, however, I'm extremely reluctant to put him through being anaethatised to deal with this if it is the problem so I'm currently making dry food soup for him. Chicken paste and the like is okay as a short-term thing but it doesn't really have enough protein to work as a long-term food - I need to go and scour the wet kitten food labels again for one that's high enough in protein to be a possible substitute (ferret food is around 40% protein because of the shortness of their digestive tract).

In other news, we get the 4th season premiere of The Closer on Monday and then next Friday sees the season 3 premiere of Psych. I watched the second season premiere of Burn Notice this morning, which was enjoyable (and I can't wait for the four-episode arc with Michael Shanks!), and I also enjoyed the pilot episode of the new show Flashpoint which aired last night. Given that it's ostensibly set in Toronto and has both Hugh Dillon and young hottie David Paetkau in it, Flashpoint also ought to be good fodder for Canadian Actor Bingo, as well as hopefully giving Enrico Colantoni (better known as Keith Mars) more well-deserved screentime. He's got that air of calm competence that just works perfectly in this show, even if it does look a little odd seeing him in the SWAT-style outfits rather than a sheriff's uniform... ;)

Yep, rather than coming home laden with zines and so on, the main thing I've acquired this weekend is this.

Also, still not sithdragn! ;)