There is too much, I will sum up.
Okay, this is the summary of what was going on in my life this past . . . year, almost.
I usually have a lot going on but starting about this time last year everything got unusually busy.
As most of you know since I posted a lot about it, I had my mid-life-cat-lady crisis and decided to tame and rescue a couple of feral cats, Dex and Lumen.
Also at about that time my roommate countessaleska, had the happy fortune to get engaged to a lovely, geeky, and all-around excellent gentleman. He was up for a promotion and a transfer to a nearby city; his current lease was getting close to its renewal date, so Mr. Aleska and Aleska developed (wth my agreement) a plan in which he'd drop his old apartment, move in with us for the month or so until his official transfer (putting some of his belongings in storage for the meantime), and then when the transfer came through they would move out, I'd get my own place, and, hey, simple.
. . . Except that, once all this was underway, Mr. Aleska's job suddenly started waffling. Well, maybe they weren't transferring him after all. But then again, maybe they were. Don't get tied down to a new lease in *either* city, because It Could All Change Anytime. And so on.
What had been intended as a month or so of interim doubling up dragged on . . . and on. For months. While hardly intolerable (Mr. Aleska was a perfectly fine roommate, and everyone got on well), it still resulted in 3 humans and 4 cats crammed into a 2-person, 2-bedroom apartment, and it was . . . tight. Also somewhat tense, since we all knew we would need to be making large changes (and signing new leases) shortly . . . but we never knew quite *when.*
Then, after about 5 months, around Feb. of this year, Mr. Aleska's job finally broke the stalemate with an OMG! We're transferring you right now, chop-chop, hurry up!, and that's when it got pretty busy. Suddenly they were looking for a new home in another town as well as prepping to move, and I finally had a timeline RE: leases that I could use to look for a new place. For a while that was a bit dicey -- finding a decent apartment in my price range that would allow 3 cats (I inherited Fry, since he and Tippy just weren't going to get along well, new location or not) wasn't all that easy, but I lucked out and got a great new place. The lease wasn't up until August, but thanks to a bit of financial help from my parents (embarrassing at my age, but necessary, and they offered freely), I managed to foot the bill for the remaining months of paying full rent at Area 51, and the depost/etc. on the new place.
I spent pretty much the month of July moving (turned out that the previous tenants' schedule led to them vacating a month early, which was nice because let me have a lot more time to shift *my* stuff in turn), and am finally at the point of being at least functionally unpacked (though there are still a lot of boxes stacked around, and will be for a while).
Overlaid on this "infrastructure" stuff was the fun stuff: RadCon in February (which was great, except for the norovirus, which wrecked nearly a whole week's worth of productivity for both myself and Aleska -- Mr. Aleska, happily, was moved out by that point and avoided the plague); Norwescon over Easter weekend; MisCon in May; SpoCon, and a Western Martial Arts conference in August. Fair amount of traveling and prep for all of those.
And then there were the not-fun-at-all kitty health issues. Fry's always-sensitive digestion took a rather appalling turn for the worse which was finally fixed by putting him on a grain-free diet. To everyone's great relief, he's been doing fine since then. However, I had a few months there where my primary concern was trying to save the Area 51 carpets from nonstop kitty incontinence (and then a period of intensive litter box retraining after that).
Unfortunately, as soon as Fry was taken care of, Lumen in turn developed digestive issues, and after a visit to the vet was diagnosed with feline megacolon -- very unusual for a cat of her age and gender, and potentially very serious (as in needing surgery to completely remove the malfunctioning colon, with a price tag starting at about $1000). Fortunately, after blowing a lot of time and money on vet visits, and trying several medications, an over-the-counter human remedy has proven highly effective, so she's in the clear now, too. But it was fingernail-biting time there for a bit, especially since all of *that* started up right when I was prepping to move, and I was afraid I might be dealing with not just moving 3 cats, but moving them all when one was still recovering from major surgery. Not attractive.
So, tl;dr -- there were some bad things, but they resolved well, and most everything else was positive and just time-consuming.
Probably some pics from various events coming up, and, natch, I have lots of pics of the kitties being cute, adjusting to their new home, etc. ;)
I usually have a lot going on but starting about this time last year everything got unusually busy.
As most of you know since I posted a lot about it, I had my mid-life-cat-lady crisis and decided to tame and rescue a couple of feral cats, Dex and Lumen.
Also at about that time my roommate countessaleska, had the happy fortune to get engaged to a lovely, geeky, and all-around excellent gentleman. He was up for a promotion and a transfer to a nearby city; his current lease was getting close to its renewal date, so Mr. Aleska and Aleska developed (wth my agreement) a plan in which he'd drop his old apartment, move in with us for the month or so until his official transfer (putting some of his belongings in storage for the meantime), and then when the transfer came through they would move out, I'd get my own place, and, hey, simple.
. . . Except that, once all this was underway, Mr. Aleska's job suddenly started waffling. Well, maybe they weren't transferring him after all. But then again, maybe they were. Don't get tied down to a new lease in *either* city, because It Could All Change Anytime. And so on.
What had been intended as a month or so of interim doubling up dragged on . . . and on. For months. While hardly intolerable (Mr. Aleska was a perfectly fine roommate, and everyone got on well), it still resulted in 3 humans and 4 cats crammed into a 2-person, 2-bedroom apartment, and it was . . . tight. Also somewhat tense, since we all knew we would need to be making large changes (and signing new leases) shortly . . . but we never knew quite *when.*
Then, after about 5 months, around Feb. of this year, Mr. Aleska's job finally broke the stalemate with an OMG! We're transferring you right now, chop-chop, hurry up!, and that's when it got pretty busy. Suddenly they were looking for a new home in another town as well as prepping to move, and I finally had a timeline RE: leases that I could use to look for a new place. For a while that was a bit dicey -- finding a decent apartment in my price range that would allow 3 cats (I inherited Fry, since he and Tippy just weren't going to get along well, new location or not) wasn't all that easy, but I lucked out and got a great new place. The lease wasn't up until August, but thanks to a bit of financial help from my parents (embarrassing at my age, but necessary, and they offered freely), I managed to foot the bill for the remaining months of paying full rent at Area 51, and the depost/etc. on the new place.
I spent pretty much the month of July moving (turned out that the previous tenants' schedule led to them vacating a month early, which was nice because let me have a lot more time to shift *my* stuff in turn), and am finally at the point of being at least functionally unpacked (though there are still a lot of boxes stacked around, and will be for a while).
Overlaid on this "infrastructure" stuff was the fun stuff: RadCon in February (which was great, except for the norovirus, which wrecked nearly a whole week's worth of productivity for both myself and Aleska -- Mr. Aleska, happily, was moved out by that point and avoided the plague); Norwescon over Easter weekend; MisCon in May; SpoCon, and a Western Martial Arts conference in August. Fair amount of traveling and prep for all of those.
And then there were the not-fun-at-all kitty health issues. Fry's always-sensitive digestion took a rather appalling turn for the worse which was finally fixed by putting him on a grain-free diet. To everyone's great relief, he's been doing fine since then. However, I had a few months there where my primary concern was trying to save the Area 51 carpets from nonstop kitty incontinence (and then a period of intensive litter box retraining after that).
Unfortunately, as soon as Fry was taken care of, Lumen in turn developed digestive issues, and after a visit to the vet was diagnosed with feline megacolon -- very unusual for a cat of her age and gender, and potentially very serious (as in needing surgery to completely remove the malfunctioning colon, with a price tag starting at about $1000). Fortunately, after blowing a lot of time and money on vet visits, and trying several medications, an over-the-counter human remedy has proven highly effective, so she's in the clear now, too. But it was fingernail-biting time there for a bit, especially since all of *that* started up right when I was prepping to move, and I was afraid I might be dealing with not just moving 3 cats, but moving them all when one was still recovering from major surgery. Not attractive.
So, tl;dr -- there were some bad things, but they resolved well, and most everything else was positive and just time-consuming.
Probably some pics from various events coming up, and, natch, I have lots of pics of the kitties being cute, adjusting to their new home, etc. ;)