Test 1, 2, 3.

So, long ago and far away (in the 90s!), my sister fed the stray cat that hung out in the backyard, and as a result, Stray Cat left the very best kitten from her entire litter in our backyard.



I'm also pretty sure he was the runt of the litter.
Even taking our large breed prejudices and weight fluctuations into account, he always had his tiny baby paws and tiny baby face.



Lady hated him on sight (which was not entirely unjustified given his later tendency to go after her). Whereas Ringo decided to take him on as a Padawan Learner and teach him the ways of over-eating and laziness (Ringo just gave him the one paw "I am huge so don't even try it" smackdown when he got obnoxious).





Which leads us (somehow, in a very roundabout way) to his name. Technically, he was named after Tobias from Animorphs (which my sister generously allowed to be shortened to "Tobi" to help ease my confusion over having been pronouncing the name wrong in my head). And then I had delusions of him being Tobi-wan Kenobi which never really stuck, and then it all went down the tubes when he started climbing like a little monkey up the wooden support pole in the kitchen all the way up to the ceiling.



He continued monkeying on (the hey hey we're the Monkees spelling came later).



Until PUs cruelly declawed him. Blech. I hope his erstwhile claws haunt them and scratch up all their stupid furniture.



And well, you'd be evil too if someone ripped out your fingernails.



Anyway he was rescued from the evil PUs' clutches by a brave knight and taken to the Land of Marys on an epic journey that involved getting lost on Bellona, a demonic street that stops and starts and quite possibly intersects itself creating a hellish vortex of crossroads magic.
And that's how Bellona became Monkee's patron saintdemon/war goddess.



And he lived happily ever after with his favorite bite victim person/princess (a.k.a. my sister).





There's a Monkee-shaped gap in the world now. And the world is poorer for it.

One last poke for the Monkee Face.



"No amount of time can erase the memory of a good cat, and no amount of masking tape can ever totally remove his fur from your couch." - Leo Dworken

1. Bootsie snuggling is the best way to start the day.

2. Fresh garlic smells (and tastes) the omnomnomiest, and the whole apartment still smells like it this morning.

3. Getting paid for 8 hours of work I don't have to do. (And I get my first full-time paycheck next week!)

4. I sold another book from my online store. (Even if it was to Niki, my cousin-in-law.)

5. Weather is such that I've been able to eat lunch outside quite a bit (a trend that will hopefully continue).

Hey. Hey! You're not allowed to sleep all day: that's my job!

Also you are in my spot. You need a permit* for that during daylight hours.

....

Well, I guess I could just curl up here next to you. But be aware that you are in direct violation of [yawns] rules... and... stuff.

Mm. Sleepy naptime.





*ha ha purr-mit

My thoughts while cuddling the Boots:

Bootsie is very warm.
It must be because of his fur.
...
He's a furnace!

*cackles maniacally*






You're welcome.

There is a North Skunk Creek and a South Skunk Creek, but no Dead Skunk Creek.

There was a Dead Horse Creek in Wyoming (as well as a Crazy Woman Creek, which I side-eyed until I decided it was preferable to Dead Woman Creek), and just generally, Wyoming had a lot of creeks of the [Adjective] [Noun] Creek [Road] formula.

Iowa was the land of wind turbines. They had a whole gentle giant majesty going on especially when compared to the smoke stacks of South Dakota ejaculating poison into the air (seriously though, the phallic imagery was pretty epic).

Little Sioux had a billboard that seemed bigger than the town itself saying "Prepare to meet thy God". Um. Sure. I'll meet my god, who doesn't exist. Then Sioux City, and finally Sioux Falls where Bobby and Snowmiser conspired to trap me for the night with blizzarding and road closures. Though I guess if I was going to be delayed somewhere, it's nice that it was a place I got to make Supernatural references about.

This is the first time my car has ever gotten below 30 miles per gallon (27: yikes!), but I figure it was due to a combination of the car being weighted down with my stuff and the weather/windiness as well as spending a lot of time idling to warm up the car in the morning when it was below zero out. And the other numbers were in the 30s and I got as high as 37 on one tank, so not too terrible overall.

Driving in the wind is incredibly tense-making. Even with the extra weight, I had to make minute course corrections and got all hunched up over the steering wheel about it. I know some of the extra windiness was from the storm, but seriously, set up some wind turbines and you'd be set for power.

In other reference makings, I stopped in Bozeman, Montana for gas on the final day of driving. I seem to have a thing for states with future Star Trek history in them. Going from the future birthplace of Captain Kirk (although not in the alternate timeline of the reboot cuz there he was born in space), to the future site of the launch of the first human warp drive/first contact with the Vulcans.

I wound up spending a lot of time following trucks and sort of using their speeds as a reference to what would be best given the icy conditions and wind.

I did not get hit by a Semi when "Bad Moon Rising" came on the radio.

There were periods of no radio reception as well as only scary religious radio reception, and lots of country (which led to me discovering Carrie Underwood's "Blown Away").

Bootsie was of course NOT PLEASED throughout the ordeal, but he wasn't overly howly about it, and he drank and ate a little the second night so I didn't have to force water down his throat with an eye dropper like I did the first night (I was slightly less worried about dehydration since it wasn't super-hot summertime, but winter Bootsies need liquids too).

Being a "young woman traveling alone" (as both Dad and Aunt Flossie felt the need to warn me about) did not really seem to affect my travels in any way that I could tell.

I'm sure I'm forgetting lots of stuff because well, three days of driving insanity almost two weeks ago, but that gives you a taste, I guess.

Of course when I finally got to my new apartment, they were still putting the flooring in and that made everything extra stressful and obnoxious, and Bootsie hid in the crate while they were there all the next day, which was a little ironic considering how it had gotten progressively more difficult to get him back in there.

But they finally finished, and the new floor is nice, and I got my stuff all moved in. I still have some boxes around that I should probably do something about, but I'm getting there, and my first week of work went well.

No more diarrhea, no more of this not peeing nearly enough for all the water you're drinking nonsense, and most certainly no more sneezing. That is just completely uncalled for.

Sigh.

Guess who needs to go to the Vet. Again.


[And yeah, I know the peeing is related to the diarrhea dehydration, but the whole shebang is worrying me to the point where I'm sick, so between the two of us, the apartment smells just fantastic.]

The Boots started having tummy troubles yesterday which culminated in the evening with him, uh, relieving himself of what I believe to be the culprit. Which leads to me wondering what the hell I [used to] own that's like a green tie or drawstring type thingy. Because, you know, if there's more of it or something similar, I'd like to prevent him from eating that in the future. Now, I know he likes to eat ribbony stringy things based on an incident early in our acquaintance involving the vomiting up of said ribbon, as well as later instances involving the removal of string from his mouth and throat. As a result of this, I tend to be fairly conscientious about such things. Of course, the original ribbon was in a closed box that he opened, and he ate off the tip of Babs's ear for fuck's sake so there's only so much I can do.
Right, so at first I thought it was a green ribbon, but closer examination (say it with me now: eeewwwwwwwwwwww) revealed that it was a folded over piece of cloth with a machine-sewn hem, and I have been wracking my brain and looking all over the apartment to see if I can find something that's missing a Green Whatsit, and I cannot for the life of me figure out what the bloody fuck he ate.

The good news is that he seems to be doing better today, and I got my car battery recombobulated such that I can take him to the vet sometime this week if need be.

It would help if Bootsie were less cute and distracting.



"No! Do not look upon my face! The cuteness will be too much for you!"

So normally, Bootsie really doesn't care about what I do in the kitchen unless it involves feeding him and/or opening a container that could contain food for him (but nine times out of ten does not). But today while I was cutting the carrots for carrots & onions and the potatoes for mashing, he decided he needed to "supervise". Too cute, sir.

(Because I now have large amounts of floor space such that there is enough not littered with art supplies and other junk for me to lie down upon.)
and Bootsie wanders over as if to say, "Hey, you can't do that, that's my thing! Are you a member of the Lazy Kittehs Union? I'm gonna need to see some identifica-- Oh, you're right it is comfy here." *snuggles*

Going through papers for packing purposes (Do I need a record of every single oil change my car has had since I got it? Probably not.) and I found the pictures of Lady and Ringo that Barbara and Ruth gave us to see them for the first time (as much as I'd never move to a retirement community that didn't allow pets, I'm very glad they did). The pictures are labeled as being from August of '96, so I'm assuming that's when we got them.

( WARNING: Extremely cute kitty pictures behind the cut. Click at your own risk. )

Anyway, Ringo is Bootsie-sized (as opposed to the ginormatron Ringo-size he would one day become) in these pictures and it's sorta freaky.

So I spent, well, we'll say 2.25 days in Iowa City/Coralville because Tuesday and Friday were pretty much Travel Extravaganza days (Drive to Princeton! Take the Dinky! Take the Train! Take the AirTrain Monorail Thingy! Take a Plane! Take Another Plane! Drive Rental Car! And then I got to do all that in reverse! *collapses*). Oddly enough, though I didn't feel well while traveling and had to use the bathroom at various airports, I didn't get the super epic owies until Saturday when I was home, so who knows what's up with that.
So I looked at apartments and found a place I liked (so of course it's all restrictive to get into, but we'll see). I went to the Coralville Public Library a whole lot and used their 30 minutes at a time free internet access to frantically google things and check my email and so forth. And then I got to get a tour at the Center for the Book which is in an old teaching school so the one entrance says "High School" and there are lockers in the halls and stuff. So that was cool, but the Center is very limited physical space-wise, so I'll have to get used to that. Then I met with my adviser, who might not continue to be my adviser because he's more on the history side of things and is, as much as I hate to use a BMR coined phrase, not a practitioner. And while part of my purpose is to learn historical things, I think I'd relate better to someone who does the physical hands-on stuff, since that is my passion or whathaveyou. He did take me to see the University Library's Conservation Lab, which was awesome, cuz I'm a conservation/preservation nerd.
Meanwhile, I was missing my Bootsie something fierce, and he was missing me because he wouldn't even eat his wet food til I came back (though it looked like he munched some dry, so he wasn't starving or anything). So when I finally got home Friday night, we had our reunion and have been snuggling lots to make up for lost time.

Drop off Bootsie poop for the Spring Edition of bi-annual parasite testing, and then stop at CVS on the way home to get a big honkin's Reese's PB egg.
I also got 4 regular-sized eggs and a "Reester Bunny", and I still have one PB egg left from my 9-pack of Zitner's that mom gave me last Saturday.

Hi, my name is Nicole, and I am a peanut butter addict.

"You have too much fur and we have to return some to the fur fairies."

This admonishment really didn't help as far as preventing him from trying to eat the comb, but it amused me in the meantime.