Words are inadequate

In the last six weeks, Kai and Chaos have been:

• stuffed into new smaller (soft-sided) cat carriers briefly as a test
  
• stuffed into the cat carriers for real, taken away from home, and left in a strange place with a strange cat
  
• abandoned by their people after one night in this strange place for a week
  
• abandoned by their people AGAIN after only a few days, this time for most of a month
  
• fed tranquilizer pills
  
• stuffed into the cat-carriers for fifteen hours
  
• subjected to the unpleasant rigors of airport security and Canadian customs screening
  
• mad enough (Chaos) to attack the carrier enough to catch a claw in the mesh and rip it partly out
  
• fed more tranquilizer pills
  
• carted on public transit (SkyTrain and bus)
  
• brought to another strange place, though at least this one has all their stuff
  
• sprayed (Chaos) with disinfectant on the injured paw
  
• left alone for three days

Okay, so that last one isn't happening until tomorrow. Still. Poor kittens.

At least they're home for good now, and come Monday everything can start going back to normal for them.

Chaos is currently hiding under the bed. Kai is sulking next to the bed. I imagine Chaos got irritable with having someone else around while he's injured and kicked her out. (The bedrooms are the only carpeted rooms in the house.)

It's good to have them around again.

Ted Chiang's novella The Lifecycle of Software Objects is currently available online, because Subterranean Press really is all that. The online version is sadly lacking the neural maps and charming illustrations of the printed book; the text itself holds up fine.

Speaking of stories available online, I've probably neglected to point to A Crowd of Bone, the standalone middle story from nineweaving's deeply lyrical and densely allusive Cloud & Ashes. Well worth reading but will take some effort.

From tam_nonlinear, there's some lighter reading to be found in The Flying Mouse Affair: "OMG YOU GOT RID OF MY BAT. I HATE YOU. YOU'RE NOT MY REAL MOM."

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My feelings on the new office are mixed to say the least, but in the course of the move I ended up closer to the window. (Or at least with less stuff between me and the window; I think the actual distance is about the same as it was before.) So I now have a decent view of, um, the mall and some office buildings, and trees and mountains off in the distance.

Yesterday was quite nice, though. I got to watch the clouds devour the hideous beige hotel across the street.

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Gracie the spare cat went back home yesterday. After the first few days she was willing to come out and sit with me on the couch in the evenings. By the last week this had developed into insisting that if I was on the couch and she was gracing it with her presence, I had better be paying attention to her. Kai is generally content to curl up next to me, and Chaos inches his way over one's lap and laptop but he does it slowly and sneakily, or as sneaky as a loudly purring 14lb cat can be, so this was a newish experience. (Having my stomach punched and kneaded enthusiastically was also a new experience. I recognise that the act of declawing is inherently inhumane but I have never been so grateful to have had it done on a cat.)

By the last few days she wasn't running to hide under the bed any time the door opened, and I even caught her looking out the window a few times. I think she was mostly pretty happy here. I'm glad she came to visit for awhile.

Ten minutes of heavy rain do not make up for my getting mugged by the heat and humidity every time I step out the door, including at eleven PM. Ick. Also, the crap wiring in this complex means that ten minutes of heavy rain (probably including thunder and lightning somewhere) makes the lights flicker on and off. At least I've got the router plugged in to the UPS properly so that it doesn't drop my net connection for no reason.

Probably relatedly, it is time to furminate the cats again. We just did this last week (or maybe it was the week before, but I'm pretty sure it was last week) and Chaos is already shedding in clumps again. I know how everyone with cats is like "oh, yeah, cats shed a lot, that's just how it is with cats," but I am here to tell you that these cats are worse. When I say "clumps" I mean that literally: I come away with handfuls of fur every time I pet either of them. I have no idea how they do it.

My favorite highway interchange: "There's even a train station in there somewhere."

Brown Out: the true story of Van Halen's "no brown M&Ms" clause. Absolutely bloody brilliant.

Via rislyn, Depression's Evolutionary Roots. I need to read this again before I can have anything coherent to say on it, I think. It's. . . thought-provoking.

"'The primary difference between these two subspecies of Formicidae is that the one on the left has longer legs and therefore a greater height from the ground,' Tom Swift said tolerantly." --xiphias

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I had a really good time last weekend, for uilos-definitions of "weekend." Wednesday night I took her out to dinner at Kazan, where by sheerest coincidence we were joined by a dozen other cool people. Then we went back to the apartment for cake and games and "please take some of these books away now."

Thursday and Friday were slow, though I did get a decent bit of writing done. Satyrday we went out to Reston for some gaming, and also to retrieve an 8x8 pan that we'd left somewhere last October. (I know it was October because we also got a jar of roasted pumpkin seeds we'd forgotten we left, which she pronounced "stale, but edible.") Played a dogsled-racing game twice, which is good: the first time I thought it was great, the second I could see ways in which it irritated me, so now I won't need to pick up my own copy. And other good stuff as well, of course.

(Unfortunately I think that the intense climate changes between rooms in the house in Reston caused me to come down with a summer cold. The space under my eyes is filled with sand and I've been a little drifty the past couple days.)

Sunday continued the weekend's tradition of being pretty darn cool. We slept very late and lazed around a lot, and eventually made it out to Adams Morgan to meet tamnonlinear at DC Tribal Cafe. I'm a little surprised by how much I enjoy watching the dancers. Something about the flow of movement, and the energy, and the beat of the music. It's entrancing, and sexy in a way that's more "oh, nice" than "WANT," and it pulls me out of myself in a way that not much else does.

Also stopped in the used bookstore next door, which has some of the oddest stuff. I found an archy and mehitabel collection, and a volume of Piet Hein's Grooks, which always make me happy.

Last night we buried Keishi out in the woods. I haven't anything else to say about that, really, but it feels wrong to let it pass without notice.

Tomorrow I get on a plane to go spend a wonderful week with nixve, and then the weekend after I get back I'll be camping at Assateague. The back half of September, however, is suspiciously empty. For now.

I spent the weekend doing very little indeed. I played a lot of games on the Device (Geo Defense and Harbor Master, with a touch of Toki Tori) and slept lateish and made waffles and poached eggs and replaced a button that was trying to come off one of my favorite shirts. Gaming on Friday night, and dinner with folk on both Satyrday and Sunday nights, which seems to have been a mostly acceptable level of socialization. I'd like to say I'm feeling recharged after that, but really it just made me want to keep hiding.

I haven't been spending much time in the hamster room since the discovery that my shoulder hurts when I use my desktop. We're going to experiment with leaving the laptops in there for now instead of out in the living room. I suspect that this is at least partly a ploy to get me to put away the boxes on the spare bed and give away the DVD player and TV. Regardless, it'll be good to hang out with the wee beastie a bit more.

Went out running on Monday morning. I can't tell if it's the July heat and humidity or if I've just lost that much muscle and lung capacity. It's a struggle now to keep going for five minutes at a stretch. Stiff today, too. With any luck it'll get easier as it goes.

A couple months ago I bought a crazy-expensive new pair of running shoes. They're supposed to correct my tendency to step harder on the balls of my feet and not put much weight on my heel. The hope was that this would also fix my supertight hamstrings, by changing how I walk. Now articles are starting to trickle out about how running shoes are actually bad for your feet and walking heel-first can cause all manner of problems. So, I dunno. I think next time I'm someplace near where they're sold I'll try on a couple pairs of Vibram Five Fingers and see what I think of them. (If they'll fit me at all; the website says they're good for up to EEE widths, which isn't too helpful for my EEEE feet.)

Other than that, tired mostly. I'm starting to suspect that my brain feels like it's overdue for a summer vacation. I've been doing the same thing for three years straight, now, which is at least two years longer than I've ever before gone without a few weeks of sleeping late and reduced work hours. Too, school was more stressful than work, but also more varied. Every year something different.

I can't see myself staring at these cube walls for the next five years, even if I weren't planning on moving. I just don't know what else I'd be staring at.

. . . man, this got depressing. Here, have a heartwarming tale about a mystical Chinese warrior. I think the phrase "Don't make me unleash Chiang!" needs to become an integral part of my trash-talking lexicon. (See also Urban Dictionary.)

Shouts and Murmurs: the obvious-in-retrospect follow-up to the Cheney incident. "As a quick-thinking senatorial aide switched on the Senate's public-address system and cued up the infamous 'Seven Minutes of Funk' break, Mr. Leahy and Mr. Cheney went head-to-head in what can only be described as a 'take no prisoners' freestyle rap battle."

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It's silent in here.

There's no whimpering from the living room. There's no barking like mad and collar-jingling whenever someone comes to the door. No "I need to go outside" whining. No toenails clicking on the hardwood.

A grapevine wreath hangs on the front door, a black ribbon wrapped around it. There's a beanie-baby bear angel inside the wreath holding a well-worn dog collar. The space next to the piano is vacant, the dog kennel having found a new home somewhere else.

I went into a house, and it wasn't a house.