Total lack of posts lately, a situation that may begin to change next week. I didn't have time/inclination to post my first few days visiting the parents in San Diego two weeks ago, and then the last 4 days there I was up in Anaheim, doing Blizzcon stuff, which was pretty much constant Diablo 3-related toil. Sunday I was back in SD, but spent all day interacting with parents (including tennis and swimming), with my free time typing up interview transcripts and posting tons of Blizzcon D3 news.
Sunday night I flew back, and had some lovely R&R at my new semi-girlfriend's house. She's suggested "Elle," a deviation of her middle name, for a name I could call her on the blog. But I'm not sold on that one, since my long time coworker on Diabloii.net and now the D3 site goes by "Elly," short for "Eleanor," which might lead to confusion amongst long time readers. (The new semi-gf's middle name is not "Eleanor," at least.)
At any rate, I visited Elle's house on the way home from the airport Sunday evening, and after a delightful and relaxing interlude, I headed home in the wee hours, and was met with my cat rejoicing upon my arrival. I'd been gone for 8 days, and while I hired a cat sitter to come in three times to play with the beasts, and my next door neighbor was able to scoop the boxes each day, that was still much less interaction than the animals had grown used to, over the 2 months I'd had all 3 of them here.
Monday was spent doing tons of website work, with some house work and pet interaction. I put off shopping trips since I was just too busy, and survived on canned goods and frozen stuff. And lots and lots and lots of tomatoes, since my front porch jungle of romas finally hit their stride during my week away, and there is now a veritable Edenic garden of dangling red globes of delicious delight. I picked something like 30 romas and at least that many yellow cherrie toms yesterday, and that hardly scratched the surface of my crop. Plus my next door neighbor, to whom I gave a half dozen of my extra plants, has as many or more growing over there as I do in front, and has been giving me a huge basketful every week or so, just to thin our her production levels.
It's nice the later growing season up here; my mom and dad both had toms growing in their backyards, but they were almost done for the season. Their plants were no more than chest high and had been cut back as the top limbs all went yellow and died, and while they still had some production going, their days were clearly numbered. While my plants up here are just hitting their prime, are soaringly-high (I've tied them to the overhead trellis for support and they're growing up and over it.) and have tons of yellow blossoms still on their upper limbs, while the body of the plants is in full speed production.
I didn't have toms until a month or so later than they did in sunnier, hotter SoCal, but I'll have them 2 or 3 months later, and probably in much greater total abundance. The lesson here, for my future days, is to plant toms in a variety of growing areas. Some in full sun for faster early production, others in afternoon or slanting sun for larger plants, longer growth, and later season delights.
How I digress.
So, Monday was work. Tuesday Malaya and her husband came over to pick up their cat. Well, cats. I never quite got around to blogging about it, but I got a second cat back in December. Kyo, by name, and she's about the best cat I've ever interacted with. Super friendly, loves to play, very affectionate, not afraid of strangers, etc... to humans. To other cats she's bitchy, passive aggressive, fond of sneak attacks, hisses a lot and gets scared for no reason, etc. Basically exactly the opposite of her behavior towards humans.
She and Jinx have been together for almost all of the past 9 months, and they've never grown to do more than tolerate each other. Jinx isn't the aggressive one, and while she's not as sulky or shy as she was back in December and January, she tends to pout or hide when Kyo swipes at her. More suitable to cohabitation with Kyo is the third cat, which was formerly the IG's cat, and then became Malaya's cat, when the IG needed to give him up and she/I were still besties. Malaya lamentably calls him "Bela," named after the famed
Hungarian actor of the silent movie era. Pronounce it all butchy and Dracula style. "Beh-lach."
That's fine and all, but 1) Malaya never actually says it that way, and 2) my mom's had a female cat named "Bella" for several years. And yes, Bela is neutered, but still, do you gotta rub it in by giving him a girl's name? And no, it doesn't matter if Bela was a masculine male name in Transylvania in 1882. It's a girl's name now, and the cat deserves a little more respect than that. So I've been calling him Bruno, named after
the alter ego of a much more famous
Eastern European entertainer of the modern era. The cat responds equally to either name, as well as any other word you choose to use as a form of address, so it's going well, I think.
Oddly, the only way I found to truly interest in (with words, not fud) is to sing along with hair metal. Seriously. I recently had a fit of nostalgia and added some early Van Halen and Motley Crue to my 500+ song WinAmp list, and for whatever unknown feline lima bean brain reason, when I sing along to Panama or Public Enemy, in an appropriately 80s style falsetto voice, Bruno always perks up and runs over to stand up on his hind legs and put his front feets on my chair. He'll often leap into my lap on especially high notes. He has never exhibited such behavior with any other type of musical sing along. And when I'm working I find myself singing along to a lot of music. Hair metal kitty?
At any rate, Malaya picked up Bruno, and took Kyo as well, on Tuesday. They kept Kyo and Jinx last winter, while I was out of town for a week, and Bruno (who then had yet another name) was still living with the IG. Predictably, they fell in love with Kyo, as does everyone, since she's the most friendly cat I've ever known. The contrast was more marked since Jinx hid under the bed the whole time, since while she's very friendly and fun with me, she fears almost everyone else. Including Malaya, her little lima bean brain having long since lost any memories of where or who she lived with during the first 4 years of her life.
Bruno and Kyo don't get along all that much better than Jinx and Kyo, except that Bruno is rather dog-like, for a cat. Big, clumsy, abrupt, and strong enough to knock you over with head rubbing. He's also kind of oblivious, so when Kyo does her crouching and hissing thing, or swipes at him (in an entirely ineffectual, half hearted paw batting sort of way) he just ignores it. Literally ignores it, like sometimes he doesn't even notice that another cat is swatting him in the ankles or the tail. So it doesn't upset him when it happens, and he doesn't try to avoid it. Jinx knows it's coming, stays out of the way, and pouts when it does happen. Hence while Kyo would actually be by far the happiest living alone, and while Jinx and Bruno got along fairly well (they'd sleep on opposite sides of me in bed every night), Malaya and her husband think of Bruno as theirs, and if Kyo is going to live with me and Jinx or them and Bruno, she's happier with them and Bruno.
Jinx, for her part, has been transcendent in her delight at being an only cat (or at least being free of Kyo) for the past few days. Tuesday evening, shortly after the other cats were spirited away, she started racing around the apartment, sprawling in odd places, barking and chirping in her weird, meow-less voice, and acting very affectionately towards me. She's kept that up for the past 2 days, and has slept as long as I wanted to sleep in the morning (not getting up and being restless as she did when sharing a bed with Bruno), has been much more playful and active, is following me from room to room, and generally seems far happier than at any point since the summer began. She's not a cat cat, and she's not a people cat. She's apparently only a Flux cat?
I've not had that much time to play with her though, since I've been super busy with continuing post-Blizzcon website stuff, and have spent some time on the usual "I've been out of town for a week" activities. Shopping, clothes washing, miscellaneous errands, etc. And now, just as I'm catching up on things and the weekend is approaching, there's a new complication, of the most delightful sort. Elle (not Elly) is driving up here (she lives south of SF, about 35 miles distant) tonight after work, and is staying the night, before returning Saturday afternoon. I've been looking forward to this all week, and it's helped me be diligent and productive on website stuff. Since I knew I had a weekend recreational treat, I could toil ceaselessly during the week. It's an attitude I hope to extend to my fiction writing, once this huge bolus of website work has been squeezed out and the D3 site schedule has returned, more or less, to normal.
In other news... not so much. I've hardly surfed this week, and haven't had time to even think about watching movies or finishing up/posting more reviews. Next week, perhaps.
Labels: blizzcon, diablo iii, elle, gardening, vacation
