newt names

the other name was nymph. newt and nymph. i think they go really well together.
the fish died this morning. i think i caught its last few struggles. it was floating when i went into the kitchen, then swam away when i went to get it out of the tank. but it kinda flopped on its side and drifted around the tank for a bit and didn't struggle when i went to take it out the second time. i put in a bowl of water for a while - but it was just floating on its side. not knowing anything better to do, i put it in a zip-lock back and threw it in the bin. flushing fish down the loo is way too traumatic.
in other newt news - they havn't eaten anything yet. we are just cursed by pets who won't eat. well - i got yoshi to eat three crickets this morning. he likes to be hand fed in his tank and if that's what it takes to get him to eat, then that's what it takes.

we got newts

We tried yoshi on feeder fish the other day; wandered down to the pet shop and picked up 3 cheap, small goldfish. but yoshi, being the picky eater he is, ate none of them. so we left them in his bowl, thinking they looked nice in there - swimming around and being all colourful and fish-like. off we went to bed that night hoping he'd eat one in the morning (we are very naiive when it comes to thinking yoshi will actually eat exotic foods). unfortunately, next morning two of them were floating belly-up in the bowl (the smallest and largest). possibly died of too high water temperature.
so anyway - we were left with one goldfish who we rapidly took out of yoshi's tank and put into a jug of cold water. but we couldn't leave him there. he needed a tank or something while we wait for yoshi to get big enough to eat him. so off we went to the pet shop again, in search of a suitable tank. now, i should mention that while we were there picking up the goldfish the day before we noticed some exceptionally cute newts. that night we did a bit of research into what sort of tank they need, food, co-habiting status and things. did i mention that they are the most adorable little frog/lizard looking dudes? and that i've wanted a newt since i learned that you can keep them as pets?
yea - we came home with two newts, a tank, decorations and food. :)










in other news: we're watching battlestar galactica at the moment. i'm really enjoying it. the characters are very believable and the plot is well written, with enough high points to keep every episode interesting. we're about half way through season 2 at the moment.

i've had a really busy weekend actually - on friday i went to the cinema (twice). the first show was bolt with goblin_insane. i enjoyed it just as much as the first time seeing it. then goblin_insane and i went for lunch in the porterhouse (they make delicious wings) where we met up with lordkilljoy. from there we went around town for a bit (goblin_insane headed off to meet claudia) and lordkilljoy and i wandered around until we randomly bumped into ildanach, adain and rob. plans were made for dinner and we wasted time until then by going to going to the cinema for the second time - this time to see genova, which was terribly dull. dinner in yamamori noodles (yummy) and plans to go to the zoo.
sunday = zoo day - lots of animals. they have amazing tigers. we saw some sealions being fed, and just had fun looking around. yea - and elephants are ginormous.
today lordkilljoy had off as a holiday. we got used to the newts - i named them, newt and something else which i forgot almost straight away. it was a really cool name too. ah well.

right - this is a really long post. i'm going to go now.

lordkilljoy encouraged me to join good reads the other day. now i have this obsession to get all the books i've ever read listed on my page there. it is folly, because i'd have to add in all the books i read when i was younger (i used read about a book a week when i was in school - it has dropped significantly as i've gotten older, which is a pity). so i've been doing that and not writing, as i had hoped to do today. march is sliding rapidly into the gloomy depths of the past and i'm not even half-way through my high-fantasy.

it was really good having penelope_stone up last week. we went into town on saturday, she bought a bit of stuff, i didn't buy anything - i just don't like the clothes that are in fashion at the moment. i never like the clothes that are in fashion, though - so there's nothing new in that.
on friday, we barbecued food for penelope_stone. it was an extremely random idea for dinner, but it was lovely. we cooked outside on the balcony, but ate inside where it was warm. perhaps the spring solstice is just a little early for outdoor food.

we bought a little (well kinda big, actually) box for yoshi to chase crickets around in. he just seemed scared in there yesterday, but today he ate 2 crickets. i was so happy for him. he can actually feed himself. it's great though that he's gone from only eating morio worms and refusing crickets to catching them on his own. he's shedding a lot at the moment as well. he spends lots of time sitting in his water scratching.

i can't really think of anything else to say.

it is a beautiful day

i just cycled an 8km round trip. 2 to the shop and 6 home. as you can clearly tell, i went home the long way round. but it is such a beautiful day out, i just did not want to go home through the village. so i headed out into the countryside and did a big loop around. and it was wonderful - the air was a perfect temperature for cycling, the sun was warm, the countryside was green and growing. my only problem was that i didn't have a drink with me and i was dehydrated by the time i got home. but a large glass of juice sorted that out.

in other good news, i got yoshi to eat a live cricket today. the lizard-specialist vet (the vet who'd seen him on monday knew lots, but got the other vet to give us a call yesterday) rang last night and practically gave out to me because his diet was so bad. she insisted we feed him live gut-loaded crickets and try to get him to eat veggies and stuff. so yea. the only way i could get him to eat a live cricket was to let it crawl on my hand. yoshi is such a spoiled little lizard... won't eat crickets that aren't hand-fed.
but anyway - i'm just happy that he's eating live ones. now we can start a rotational system of: crickets out of main container - into veggie container for 2 days - feed to yoshi. i figure if we have about 6 crickets in the veggie container at all times, we'll have enough nutritional food for him.
we are never, ever going to be able to go away on holidays, though. i couldn't imagine asking anyone to come in and hand-feed him crickets. but maybe we can just leave some in a bowl and he'll eat them by that stage.

penelope_stone is staying with us at the moment. it's really cool having her around, i get to have late night watch her tidy stuff away sessions again. i missed those. all we needed was some music on or something! it would have been like home again. ah well. she's climbing all week, but we're heading into town on saturday.

i don't really think i have any other news. i'll go now.

me and yoshi went sunbathing today

we took yoshi to the vet yesterday evening. i just got too worried about him. his colour has steadily turned more and more brown and yesterday even his stomach was a pale shade of brown. so i bought him a hot water bottle and we drove him over to leixlip to see the vet. the visit was good. she proclaimed him well, and that he is probably about to shed, which is causing his skin to change colour. but she's going to test his poo as well and get back to us if anything turns up. hopefully it won't. but it's such a relief to know that there is nothing fatal wrong with him.
i need to learn how not to worry. i tried so hard not to worry yesterday - and even managed to convince myself that i wasn't worried, but it was all an intricate self-deception. once we came out of the vet, i knew i had actually been really worried. i felt one hundred million times better. peace of mind is such a good thing.

i went into the mind, body, spirit festival on sunday. it was good - loads of things to look at. i got some turkish apple tea, a little angel wind-chime and a book: "the animal healer." it's interesting to read - all about dealing with animals in a way that is least stressful for them.

ugh - i just closed down firefox by accident. i'm so glad Lj has a post-backup thing. ok - the reason why i closed firefox is because i was going messing around with some photos in photoshop - making them post-worthy.






the pic of yoshi has had some major cosmetic surgery done to it. i removed a branch and a wire and made the colours more tonally unified (aka, hid the brown skin on his back). but this is a slightly old pic and it wasn't nearly as bad then.

tiredy post

yoshi ate 6 crickets today. that's a personal record. he was very off-colour today though. i worried about him, but he perked up quite a bit after he ate... jumping off his branch into his pool of water, splashing around for a few minutes, climbing back up onto the branch again until a few minutes later when he plopped back into the water again. repeat about 4 or 5 times. it was cute to watch, and good to see him so lively.

i'm thinking of heading into the mind body spirit festival tomorrow for a bit... i missed the one in cork and it would be good to look around and see what the atmosphere is like.

recently lordkilljoy got me a really cute bear-hat-thing. it's white and fluffy with cute black ears and big cutie eyes at the front. it's really adorable - i love it :) i should post up a picture.

i'm really tired. i should go to bed. yep - i'm spacing out here, i'm so tired.

more arts

k. another colouring by me... perhaps not as good as the one i did yesterday... the lighting isn't quite as vibrant.


Iris by Red-Priest-Usada Color by ~zarkia on deviantART

and the original line work:


Iris-colouring lineart by =Red-Priest-Usada on deviantART

some art

i coloured for the whole day yesterday. i had "draw something" on my list of things to do, but drawing inspiration just hasn't been happening... so i took a colour-me by one of my friends on deviantArt and worked on it in painter.
maybe it will get my artistic brain working.


Huggles by Noben Coloured by ~zarkia on deviantART

and this is the original:


COLOUR ME: Huggles by ~noben on deviantART

yeay, i can play games on my pc again

i am the happy owner of a new cd/dvd drive. i stole it off the pc that lordkilljoy was building but gave up on. and it works perfectly. i got to play oblivion (shivering isles) on my computer last night. and i'll be able to make penelope_stone a mix cd now. yeay.
and i have an old cd drive to open and play with. after pulling some funky-powerful magnets out of lordkilljoy's old hard drive, i'm curious to see what a cd drive will have.

i'm working on the cappanalea website at the moment and noticed a wierd sort of typo: Inspaniduals. it's because i was changing some divs to spans and it took the middle out of this word. i'm kind of laughing at it. it's a really funny sounding word if you say it out loud.

anyway - web dev until 12, then writing after lunch. woo!

sunday

yoshi ate a cricket last night. this is excellent news. he can actually have a bit of a varied diet, yeay. he really seems a lot more happy in his tank. he was very active last night, and he's not running to hide from us any more. he still sleeps in the corner, but i think that is just a protection thing, and ok now that he's not freezing each night. he was on the branch this morning when i came in - that's a first in about a week and a half. so i'm hopeful that his socialization is coming along better than it had been.

i'm planting a pineapple tree at the moment. right now i'm at the getting roots to sprout stage.

lordkilljoy's d+d game started last night. me, ildanach and mark were players: a cleric, a rogue and a ranger. and we didn't die - that's always good. it was a fun game, lots of battles, a bit of dealing with npcs and lots of getting lost in the mountains - our ranger is a half-elf, he can't be to blame for not being able to find his way in the mountains!

i don't have a lot else to say. i'll just go now.

watchmen was amazing

We let yoshi swim around in the bath for the first time today. He can swim! He seemed really scared, though, so we didn't leave him there for long. Now he's hanging out in the water dish in his tank. i moved the stuff around in his tank yesterday and he seems much more comfortable there now.

we went to see watchmen last night. there were very few tickets left, so we ended up in the third row from the front. everything looked huge, and slightly squashed, but the movie was still fantastic. but i think it was so fantastic because i had read the comic. i'm not sure if everything would have come across quite as clearly if i wasn't already familiar with it.

we're heading out for cajun food tonight. i'm really looking forward to that. we went for kebabs before watchmen and they were the best i'd had since new zealand. the only difference was that in NZ its all falafels, which are wrapped, and kebabs are just food on a flat bread, not wrapped, but i made a good effort at wrapping it myself and it was so yummy. and filling. and messy, but well :)

i havn't a whole lot else to say. hopefully i can convince lordkilljoy to go for a walk in the forest today. he said he didn't not want to go, so that could be a good sign.

i forgot a subject

wow, i really havn't changed at all. i'm doing the coding for cappanalea's website and here i am procrastinating on livejournal. yeay!

i opened up lordkilljoy's broken hard drive last night and pulled the magnets out of it. they are so strong. i never would have guessed that a hard drive would have magnets in it. i've been playing with them for some of the morning. and playing with yoshi for another bit of the morning (even tough he's not very playful. i moved him from under the bush in his tank (the coldest place he could be, with no heat mat and no light) and he was freezing when i picked him up. he's a silly-bo for staying there so long. he sat in the "sunlight" for about an hour after that, until he ran off behind the waterfall. he's such a scardy-monster.

so i have some javascript to go work on. i may be lazy and just look at what other people's code does.

mouse gestures

yeay!
mouse gestures are back working again in gmail. i really missed them. even though they were gone for about 2 weeks, by brain just couldn't get out of the habit of right clicking and flicking the mouse left. now i am happy. navigating my email is easy again :) i'm so delighted i may even make a cross-post to twitter.

i made a 16 point to-do list this morning while lying in bed (it was cold out of bed and i didn't want to go out into it). if i do everything on the list today i will be 100% exhausted by the end of the day. but it's a nice mix of practicality, exercise and creativity.

i'm debating heading down to cork on thursday... it would be fun to catch a bit of the health fair, but it's a long way to go just for a day and a half. so, yea. i guess i'm just feeling lazy. i should go. i want to go, i just don't want to face five and a half hours of travelling.

ok - my 2 song playlist ended, that means i have to start on item number 1 of my list: go to aldi.

right.

don't feed the yao guai. that is all.

p.s. - i have no idea what tags to put on this post.

self-pitying lj rant worked

sorry to have inflicted my last post on everyone, but i needed it. i'm a firm believer in the livejournal as therapy theory. it works every single time. the one great thing about me is that i can only fall so far down the depression hole before i hit the big puffy bouncy cushion that lives at the bottom. once i get there i spring back up pretty quickly. woo!
so i still have no direction with my live, but who cares about the big things? i went off and planned a cycle-trip for myself out to donadea forest (about the same distance out to farran from home (just over 12km if you go the straightest way)), i cleaned yoshi's tank and fixed the pump on his waterfall (there was a dead worm blocking the inlet... eep). i think he thinks i'm a big scary cleaning monster now, though. he's watching me intently, probably trying to figure out what i'm going to do to his tank next. or maybe he's hoping i'll give him some food. i do think that there are no more crickets hiding in the tank, though. i think they all drowned in the waterfall (there were 3 dead crickets and two dead worms in there, wonderful).
i think i'm having a slight love affair with lordkilljoy's macbook. it's just so pretty to work on. it's been broken since november or something, and he fixed it last week. and of all the 6 computers in the apartment, this is the one i chose for updating my journal. well - i would have chosen my pc, but i turned it off when i went cleaning yoshi's tank.

right so. that's all i have to say.