soup and free stuff

i had a really good day today. the sun is shining, it's fresh, a lovely day to be outside and doing things, or even inside and doing things - just doing things, really. so, we brought a bunch of stuff for recycling and then bought bunch of new stuff to replace it O_o. heh - no, it wasn't that bad. lordkilljoy convinced me to go make some soup, so we got a hand-blender thing. and then, of course, i had to get a recipe book on making soup, because i'm timid when it comes to making up food stuff.
so we went to eason to look for one, which i found, but it had no price. the girl at the counter couldn't find a price and after checking with her manager gave it to me for free - much to my surprise and delight. while still in the shopping centre, i went to get a bagel and the dude made it wrong, had to re-do it and gave me the one he'd gotten wrong for free! madness. lordkilljoy's comment was that i might end up winning a car or something. i didn't.

the rest of the day was normal enough - got ingredients for carrot and coriander soup, and locusts for yoshi. we're going to try getting him to eat them again. we're being optimistic, but he's eating really well at the moment and i think he may eat them with just a little encouragement.

ahhh - my foot has fallen asleep and now has pins and needles. euwww - it feels icky.

almost a month's worth of news

lordkilljoy and i went to see star trek last night. i loved it - everything about it made me want to watch it again. it was funny, exciting, adventuresome, i liked all the characters and seeing how they all ended up together.
i want to go back and see it again this weekend; we'll see how things work out.

i finally started the rewrite of the fall. lots of things have been changed, mostly from the first half, because i was never really happy with it.

it's been almost a month since i made a proper post, gosh - that's terrible. i guess script frenzy just kept me from updating and then i was down in cork and things just got ahead of me. so this will probably be lots of short points.

in pet news, newt died. he hadn't been eating and then we went away for the weekend and he was dead when we got back. even if we'd been around, i don't think he would have survived. he just seemed to go off his food and that was that.

ooh - we got a surround sound system in the apartment. it is so cool. the sound out of it is so clear and loud and rumbly. playing games on it is fantastic. and it makes finding gargoyles in fable2 way easier.

yea, we went to see wolverine too. it wasn't nearly as good as star trek. i seemed to lack something, or the story just wasn't grand enough, or heroic enough or something. i did like gambit, though. he seemed cool.

it was lordkilljoy's birthday last week and we went for korean barbecue. the way that works is there there's a little firepot at the centre of your table and you cook the food they bring you. it was delicious. then we went for after-dinner drinks and dancing at the village. that club is way trendier than i had expected. but i still had a really good night. i got to see lordkilljoy and goblin_insane get their boogie on. it was funny to see.

so... what other news do i have? yoshi is eating voraciously these days. it's good to see. nymph isn't eating so well, but he's eating a little. i think he's turning into a nocturnal newt. he just seems to sleep until 4 or 5 in the afternoon.

i don't think i have anything else to say...

animals and other news

i finally got newt to eat something. (newt is the small, skinny one.) he ate 5mm of morio worm yesterday and the same again today. nymph (the larger, more rounded one) didn't eat anything yesterday and just had a smidgeon of morio worm today. maybe i'll get him to eat tomorrow. but i think nymph has been scavenging around the bottom of the tank, because he's always lively and he's growing and has a bit of flesh on him - not like newt who is just skin and bone. but even compared to yesterday, newt is looking a bit fatter. so i'm happy. we're heading to galway for the weekend and i won't be nearly as worried about them as i was last weekend in cork.
it's actually amazing the lengths i go to for our animals. like, to get yoshi eating crickets i held them in my hand for ages and ages, just getting him used to the idea that they were food. and for the newts, i take them out of their tank and then cut up a live worm and feed it to them in a little tub. i do this because they aren't so fast and not so good at catching food as it swirls around their tank.
i put some activated carbon into the filter yesterday and it's made a huge difference to the water. just the sponges in the filter helped to un-cloud the water, but the carbon has made it ultra-clear. i kinda feel like i should get an ammonia test kit, but they are really expensive. and it should all be gone by june anyway. and with daily water changes, i don't think it will get that bad.

yoshi is well. lazy as ever, but eating well and doesn't seem to have any major problems.

script frenzy is going well. i'm going to catch up on the advised word count today - yeay. after a very slow start and speed writing to catch up, i can now relax a bit. i've kinda been at nanowrimo writing levels for the last few days, and even with that scriptwriting goes way faster.

the weekend+ in cork was good. we went over to frosthearted and my_name_is_fiki's place to watch wrestlemania. i bought a pair of jeans too - i love them. i imagine they won't come off for a month, as happened with the last pair of pants i got. that's kind of the way jeans go with me. i get a pair and then wear them until they wear out and then angst over having to get a new pair. but then i eventually find a pair i love and do the same to them. and usually at this point i go: i never really liked my old jeans anyway, and never wear them again.

i think that's all my news. enough procrastination. now i write.

animals

so i'm off to cork for the weekend (yes, i'm aware that it is only wednesday).
script frenzy starts today.
the newts are still alive, still not eating.
yoshi ate 4 crickets this morning. i'm so proud of him :) it's kind of silly being proud of a lizard for eating. i mean, everyone has to eat. now if only the newts could understand this.
did i mention that i figured out what species the newts are? they are chinese warty newts (paramesotriton chinensis)(i can't believe i know the latin name off the top of my head). not that it makes a whole tonne of difference, but it's nice to know.
i really have no news at all. i had serious anxiety dreams last night. when we went to bed newt was lying on the bit of wood we have for them out of the water. it's usually not a good sign at all, so i guess my dreams were worrying for me. but he's ok today. i think he was just shedding - i found skin in the water today. it's a pity yoshi dosen't shed so easily. he's still got old skin clinking to his head, arms and his whole lower half.
yea, so i hope everyone is still alive and well when i get back.

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.

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.

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.

the evening news

i went to see bolt yesterday (well, technically it was two days ago, but well). i really enjoyed it, your typical disney movie: funny, emotional, very well animated. i love disney movies anyway.

i really shouldn't be updating my journal right now. i'm tired and need to go to bed, but i'm lazy and don't want to leave the warmth of the sitting room.

tomorrow is my last day at work. yeay. then i get to go home and see my parents and penelope_stone's house and fish. that will be good.

so yoshi won the battle of wills. we are just feeding him morio worms now, i did a bit of research and it is ok for them to be his staple, as long as they eat well and we dust them with vitamins and calcium. he's putting on a bit of weight now. he's a cute pudgy little lizard. (i feel like writing kawaii, but i will resist).

lordkilljoy is playing mass effect at the moment. it dosn't seem like a bad game. i don't think it has the theme / overall feel to keep me interested if i was playing, but it's fun watching him play. and i'm modelling one of the guns in 3ds max. it's going slowly, after an evening's work, i'm about half way though the modelling.

right. i have no energy left and my brain is mush.

news for today

The xbox came back to us today. well, actually, it was a replacement, all clean, new and shiny. and my fable game isn't working. something about downloaded content being different. i'm very sad. i'm totally not starting a new game, so i'll never get to play again. awh :(

i have no news. yoshi isn't eating crickets. he's going to get malnourished if we keep feeding him mealworms.

a quad-core does 3ds renders very quickly. i need something to render.

right - i'm going to go find some blue-prints or something.

i have a new user-pic :)

valentines

I had a really good day yesterday, well after i got home from work, that is. lordkilljoy bought and cooked dinner for me (3 courses), and got me a beautiful rose. Dinner was delicious, we settled in to watch a movie after and finished up the evening in the pub discussing religion and politics. The religion part was interesting, but try as he may, lordkilljoy will never get me to care about politics. In fact, we have directly opposite views on politics. He thinks it is of vital importance to everyone in the country, and i think it is the greatest farce ever to have been invented. But anyway. He's suffering somewhat badly today from an over-indulgence in wine. I tried some and almost spit it out it tasted so foul. I really don't know how anyone drinks it.
It was a good valentines, though. Usually i just ignore it and hope it will go away, and it does, but it was good this year. I guess having a boyfriend makes a difference.

Our lizards arn't doing so well. It turned out that Yoda and Yoshi were both males and yoda started intimidating and attacking yoshi. Poor dudeums was really scared. So lordkilljoy brought yoda back to the pet shop and got a different one (who we called yoshimi in the hopes that it would be a girl) but it turns out that he is a guy too and also has territorial issues. awh. so we are thinking of just keeping yoshi on his own now. I think we should try to get a girl somewhere in a few weeks.

I finish work in a week. I can't wait. I'm totally going home for about 4 days the first week i'm unemployed.

So i handed in my notice yesterday. I've never actually handed in a notice before. Mostly contracts have ended, or employers have known the day i'll be leaving for ages. But anyway. It's over now. My last day is the 22nd. Yeay.

We went to see the wrestler the other night. Darren Aronofsky makes movies that affect me so badly. Like requiem for a dream: that movie left me scarred for weeks. The fountain had me in tears from about half way though, and the wrestler made me faint. There's one bit in it were there's some kind of crazy blood-frenzy wrestling going on and they are stapling each other and sticking in thumb tacks and wrapping each other in barb wire and stuff. It was utterly gross. Even worse was when all the tacks and staples had to be pulled out again. Gross. I think the fact that i'd eaten a lot of really salty pop-corn on an empty stomach didn't help either. lordkilljoy will probably say i'm just making excuses, but it's happened to me before that i've fainted eating pop-corn. But the gory scenes were definitely a catalyst. It took me about 10 minutes to recover. My ears were buzzing and i couldn't hear anything. I missed the whole next scene because of it.

My keyboard is being a little annoying. It's starting to miss some keys. Hmmm. This just won't do at all. It's not like lordkilljoy doesn't have about 5 keyboards lying around, but i really like this one.

In lizard-y news... Yoda has stopped eating and has taken to hiding in the corner. His skin has turned very brown. I'm a little concerned. Yoshi is doing well, though. He seems to have settled in. He ate 2 mealworms this morning. yeay. I should post pics.

I was talking to penelope_stone today. Her fish laid eggs recently. That's so crazy!

You can tell i've been doing proper work recently, because there are a few capital letters scattered in among my sentences.

chinese water dragons

it has taken too long for me to get around to writing this post. but work is screwing around with my hours, again (why does this still surprise me? i'm actually this close to quitting. my mood has plummeted and whatever little bit of motivation i'd worked up over the last week and a bit is totally gone. i just don't care at all for the petty, unorganized, greedy company i work for. i really should quit.) so i haven't had a chance.

we got lizards on saturday evening. green water dragons. two of them.
they are adorable, but i think they are finding it a little hard to settle into their new home. they aren't eating that much and their skin looks healthy occasionally, but the rest of the time is sort of pale and lacking lustre. we need to try to get the humidity up in the tank. it's at 40% and needs to be at 80%, but even spraying it down a few times a day does nothing.
anyway, the two cuties are called yoshi and yoda. they are about a (small) hand long, not including their tales, which are about a foot. we have no clue what sex they are, but we'll find out when they get a bit older.

i'm doing up a website for penelope_stone, but i'm having trouble finding time to work on it. i should be doing it now, but i really needed to update my livejournal. i had news that needed sharing.

yea, it's funny. we got pet lizards, and they need food, so we have temporary pet crickets and locusts. the dudes are picky eaters, though, and will only eat crickets (and a few mealworms). i don't know how to get them to eat new food. we tried them with an apple too; they didn't even look at it. ah well.

i don't really have any other news. bye, then.

[edit] my mood for today is annoyed, which i debated over choosing, but i think i chose right. i'm totally distracted - i forgot to choose a user pic and give this post a title. :sigh: