Three till Seven

Huzzah, I’m not dead after all! I’m sorry if anybody has been anxiously awaiting a new blog post here; I tell you, I get my evenings entirely free of homework because school’s out and I blog less than when the semester is in swing. I think it’s because during the school year I have little breaks at random times—including during class, sometimes, ahem—whereas while I’m at work (which is what I’ve been doing this summer), I can’t just post a blog entry while I’m there. Then when I get off work, I just want to laze around, play Paper Mario, or work out. Well, maybe I don’t want to work out, but I do want to not be fat, so I work out anyway.

Let’s see, let’s see… I went home this past weekend (as in, to my parents’ house) and got to visit with the kittens again. They’ve grown a bit but are still small enough to melt your heart at 50 paces. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding picture:

There! Are you more appeased about me not blogging in… 2 weeks?!… because I posted kitten photos? They apparently like salty things, because that’s the only reason I can think of that they all were so keen on licking/nibbling my fingers. Or maybe my fingertips remind them of their mother’s nipples, though those are some pretty giant cat nipples…

Work has been interesting this time around. I’m doing another internship at Lexmark but I’m in a different area this time. I was initially hired to work on a project involving Google Gadgets, which was cool, but then I got switched off of that to working on a Lexmark Firefox toolbar (the new version with my changes isn’t up yet), which I also enjoyed. Then I wrapped up work on that and got put on another project, which is my current one, and it’s hairy. The code itself is in XML, XSL, CSS, Javascript, and C++, and somehow, these things talk amongst each other. For the first few days of this project, I was doing nothing but reading hundred-page-plus specification files, which was boring as all get out and, I felt, didn’t do much good. Now I’ve gotten into actually programming it and I’m enjoying it, after a few setbacks where I felt things weren’t working just to spite me.

I finished Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman and, while I liked it, I didn’t think it was Pratchett’s best work¹. I haven’t finished American Gods by Gaiman yet because he just hasn’t kept me spellbound, so I don’t know as how he’s that great of an author to begin with. I’m currently reading The Color of Magic by Pratchett because it’s the first Discworld novel and, omigosh *fangirl squee*, it has The Luggage. After that, I’ll probably reread Reaper Man because Death is an awesome Pratchett character.

Now, that’s about enough blog posting—Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on Nintendo Gamecube (as played on my Wii) beckons.

¹ In my opinion, Reaper Man is his best work, and this is because it’s my favorite book of his. Sourcery is also good.

My dad sent me photos of our new kittens! See all of them in My Pets on Flickr; this is my favorite:

I returned from a visit to my parents’ house two days ago and I bring wonderful news: the “tomcat” that miraculously had kittens brought them out the first night I was home. Mom came in to tell me and Dad that she heard meowing near the attic of the shed where they were kept and, sure enough, when Dad and I came out there were little babies scattered across the ground by the shed, mewing. We rounded them up and put them in a box with some clean rags, but there was still one missing. We heard him mewing from the attic but any time we tried to reach in, he’d hide again. Finally, as we loved on the others, he came out and commenced to yowling because he was stranded on a board propped against the side of the shed. Dad lifted him down and all four kittens were reunited. We left them in the box next to the shed for the mom to do with as she pleased, even though it worried me to leave them.

Next morning, the mama was on the porch and one baby was under the porch, but the others were nowhere in sight. I carried around the one baby, loving on him, and eventually put him with his mother on the porch. I looked around the shed but couldn’t find any of the others, so I worried that they were gone. I went in to watch a movie, trying to distract myself from the idea that all the other babies were gone for good, but Mom came and got me later: the three other kitties were now by the porch! I s’pose the mama led them over in her own time. I went out and rounded up two of them to put with the other on the porch, but the elusive fourth kitten was still gone. Mom and I heard him calling every so often but couldn’t locate him. Mom said our golden retriever, Goldy (I’m so creative), had came ’round and scattered the three on the ground. I doubt she meant any harm; she’s mostly just inquisitive and sniffy with new animals that we take a shine to.

Dad joined the hunt for the fourth kitten later and we eventually determined that he was hiding under the foot of the wooden ramp leading up to the porch. He was so far underneath it that we couldn’t reach back there and grab him, so Dad started to take up one of the ramp’s boards. The drill scared the kitten forward, further out from under the ramp. I suggested he just do something to scare the kitten completely out, and give up the board removal. I had my head buried under the ramp, watching the kitten’s progress, when suddenly green light started flaring along with smoke and hissing. The kitten high-tailed it out from under the ramp, I ran and scooped him up, and that’s when I noticed Dad had lit a firework at the base of the ramp. That’s one way of inspiring a kitten to move…

So, the happy family was reunited amongst some rags on the porch. They’re sheltered behind a large aquarium and some plant shelves so the other animals can’t easily get to them. The rest of my visit home, I would periodically go outside and cuddle a few kittens. They’re incredibly soft, though of course all kittens are, but these are extra soft; even their mother, a fully grown cat, is still downy feeling. They’re all dark gray with lighter stripes. Some are blacker than others, and one has brown spots on him. They each have stripes in the shape of an ‘M’ on the forehead. I took lots of photos but all with my dad’s camera, since I didn’t bring mine home, so I’m waiting on him to send them to me before I can post them online. Don’t worry, though, I’ll post them as soon as I get them. Everyone has to see the fuzzballs!