MY VACATION, LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT IT
Okay, quick post time! Because I'm at work and hope to do a more leisurely one later (oh, who am I kidding? But a quick post is better than none at all, right? Right!)
I survived the lovely, lovely vacation! nightengale and sorchafyre , fortunately, survived it as well (though there were moments where I'm sure they doubted the outcome, mainly while caving and while riding in my car.) Having nightengale here was spectacular; finally meeting sorchafyre face-to-face was equally so, and we ran amock at TusCon and sold stuff from nightengale 's booth and visited with a humongous owl-eagle and got our pics taken with it and and and... It was, truly, one of the best damn vacations I've ever had as measured in how I felt afterwards, how much fun I had during it, and how many people said 'You really look much more relaxed!' at work after I got back. (This phrase was usually followed by a look which translated out into now get back to the grind, slacker, but you can't have everything.)
We went caving (the Ladder Tour at Colossal Cave); we had massages (East/West Massage); we shopped and ate-- Sweet Tomatoe's and The Revolving Sushi Place and Lucky Wishbone and Seven Cups and Oishi Sushi... lil_1337 made a magnificent Pork & Green!Chile Stew as well as some sort of unbelievably omnable Mexican casserole-thing, and I cooked Trader Joe's chicken stuff. And we brought home a very special permanent addition to my home....
Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present Hanabi the baby ferret. Her name means 'fireworks' in Japanese (literally 'flower fire'), which suits her personality very well. She's a bouncy, bubbly, cuddly little thing, and has progressed from being timid and hiding behind stuff when I come into the ferret-room to charging out and climbing my feet instead.
Hanabi is a light-tan sable with a white bib and tiny white mitts that only cover her toes; she looks like she's wearing fingerless gloves. Her undercoat, as you can see above, is cream, with deep chocolate guard-hairs. She's got quite a lot of white/cream on her face and a very pointed muzzle; her paws are small and delicate-- she'll never be a big ferret, and as nightengale says my boys are horses and this makes her look even smaller. Y'all, she is so, so tiny!!! I mean, LOOKIT!!!
She's getting along well with Tan, Chai and Shima-- Chai in particular seems to be buddying up to her, but I've also caught her jumping all over Shima (and getting pounced on in return, which is like watching a Great Dane take on a Dachsund.) Bob seems to be a little wary of her-- maybe it's because she's a she-weasle and not One Of The Boys-- and I'm gonna keep an eye on him and her together until she gets some size on her.
I love her. She's sweet and playful and smells so good, like puppy and kitten smell combined plus that odd sweet scent that means musteledea; I'm very glad we got her, and horrendously grateful to my friends for all coming along and helping me pick her.
.....and now I'm back to work. Eeeergh! On the other hand, I got some writing done last night and a TON of knitting and I have some gorgeous silk to make Sedona a new kimono or maybe a furisode out of (a recycled shirt from Saver's) and... Well, for various and sundry reasons, the world feels good to me right now. Peaceful, a little clearer, less stressed out for the most part. There are a few snakes in this miniature and short-lived Eden, of course-- an apartment that drastically needs straightening (dishes, eeew! litterboxes, double eeew!), too freaking much silence in said apartment, email that very much needs catching up on, NaNoWriMo that let's just not talk about, watching the fallout from a very bad Facebook post that somebody I know made (dude, you do NOT discuss confidential details from an assault case in a public forum, especially without the victim's consent) and one holy hell of a lot of laundry to put away tonight, but in general this week's starting out very well. I even got packages mailed off today that needed to go! And this year I get to brine a turkey again for the Official Cheesecrack Thanksgiving Get-Together, which will be fun, and I'm gonna make cranberry-sauce and other stuff-- maybe home-made bread again? We shall see.
Life's pretty decent right now. And I have my friends to thank for that. Thanks, y'all..... I mean it. ^____^