Her name is Hanali, after Hanali Celanil, the Elven goddess of romantic love and beauty. She has six toes on each front foot, and five on each back foot. Her nickname is Velcro. She is ludicrously cuddly and clingy. I am madly in love with her. <3

I really need to get a bookshelf, or rearrange the shelf above my desk. There's a stack of paperbacks fourteen high, on top of a thin hardcover.

Said stack consists of:
Silver Shadows - Elaine Cunningham
The Best of the Realms Book III - Elaine Cunningham
Evermeet: Island of Elves - Elaine Cunningham
Elfshadow - Elaine Cunningham, henceforth referred to as EC
Elfsong - EC
Silver Shadows - EC(Yes, a second copy. I ordered the first one online, a new copy, but then found an old copy from when it was part of the Harpers series at the used bookstore this weekend while waiting for the order containing the other to arrive, and since my copies of Elfshadow and Elfsong are both old Harpers copies, I picked it up so it would match.)
Daughter of the Drow - EC
Tangled Webs - EC
Windwalker - EC
Depths of Madness - Erik Scott de Bie
The Radiant Dragon - EC
Chicks in Chainmail - Anthology (You can't not love an anthology with a short story that sends Hillary Clinton to Valhalla.)
Realms of the Elves - Anthology
Skeleton Crew - Stephen King
The Tales of Beedle the Bard - JK Rowling

I've only finished six of those, most of them are new. Still been lazy about reading. Sigh. I'll blame Hanali. She's incredibly distracting, being two months old and all. I haven't bled this much since Erevan was tiny.

I'm listening to a bootleg recording of a 2007 performance of Phantom of the Opera with Ramin Karimloo and Leila Benn Harris. LBH's Think Of Me is combined awesome and lulz. She has a very very girly young voice most of the time, very teenager-sounding and slightly pop oriented throughout the song. And then she busts out the Claire Moore cadenza(!) and her final High C is this full-on operatic dramatic 'where the hell did THAT come from?!' thing. It's great, lol.

He hasn't come back yet. At this point, he's not going to. Coyotes or dehydration got him. It's been 100 degrees plus every day. The story I *want* to tell myself is that he just took after his namesake, got bored with us and went to go find a new family he felt needed a little more siamese in their lives. Maybe that's what I'll go with. No way to prove myself wrong, at any rate. And it's the kindest option to my heart, to think that he's still out there somewhere, nipping at someone else's ankles.

He always seemed a little off. Not quite healthy. Nothing I could put my finger on. His breathing always seemed weird, and his fur was always kind of off. He was always constantly bathing himself. His breath reeked of death, and at 5 months old when I took him into the vet with worms she said he had gingivitis. As a kitten. wtf. He could never jump worth a damn and was always falling or missing. He couldn't stand being on the kitchen counter even when there was food there. When he got fixed, the day afterwards when I brought him home he seemed to stop breathing until shaken twice while Arwen was fine. I wonder perhaps if coyotes weren't a kindness, if he really was sick somehow like it sometimes felt he was. Better a quick snap to the neck than a long slow agonizing decline, perhaps. It doesn't make me feel any better, but... Or perhaps if he really was sick he did that thing cats sometimes do where they just go off to die alone when they know it's coming. He got snippy and didn't want to be held like usual or come to me the last few days before he got out. I was worried about him. (We've been too poor to go to the vet or I would have taken him.)

The last photo I took of him:

Taken with my cellphone, excuse the crappy quality.

A picture of him and Arwen:

The single video I took of him:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGy3NI5YWPI

List of some of his nicknames:
Shitten
Fluff Beastlet
Dorkamese
Crapcat
Chicken
Siamecium
Gelatinous Siamese
Flufflet
Dorklet
Erevanator
Van-cat
Chickenshit
Fluffamese
Nerdamese
Tabbamese
Siamby
Crapamese
Siamese
Sweeney
Needles and Razorblades
Cowardcat
Cowardly Lion
Rotten Little Shit
Rotten Little Shitten
Chickenshit Crapcat
Dorkburger

Endearing things he used to do:

He adopted Arwen as his 'mother'. He would always try to nurse on her, while she groomed him. He did this in entirely the wrong place, however, and the white fur on her chest was always stained yellow from his saliva, rofl.
He'd climb up on top of the back of my chair and then flop down between the chair back and my back and just lay there.
He'd steal my chair if I moved.
He'd come jump onto my lap and flop down. If my arms happened to be in his way, he'd flop on top of my arms.
He loved the mouse cursor.
If I wasn't paying proper attention to him at the computer, he'd come sit in front of the monitor.
He loved to pounce feet under covers.
He'd bite your ankles when he was hungry.
If you wadded up paper to toss it in the trash he'd come running hoping you'd throw it for him or just plain miss. If you missed or did throw it for him, he'd grab it with his teeth and run off down the hall with it.
He loved sleeping on chair seats. He preferred the lounger in the living room, it's beige and blended best with his fur.
He was a rotten little thief and was always knocking stuff off the desk to either run off with it or just ignore it.
He loved soda bottle caps. Adored them. Once he scratched at the door to be let into my room, ran in, jumped on the desk, stole the bottle cap that was lying there, and ran off with it.
When he jumped on my lap and missed, he'd let me catch his hind end with my hand and hold it, rather than actually moving forward to be all the way on my lap.
He'd come jump on my lap while I was trying to go to the bathroom and then just lay there on my lap. He'd often miss. I have a lot of scars on my thigh.
He did a great boneless cat impression, just kind of oozing onto you. Hence 'Gelatinous Siamese' as one of his nicknames.
He loved to be held, when he wanted to be. You'd pick him up and just sit there with him in your arms and he'd just relax and sleep on you. It was adorable.

I'm probably forgetting things. I'll update when I remember.

I'm going to miss him. :-/

Just please come back. 

( Meme )

We're going to visit a cave tommorow. I am excited about this. I love caves.

( Star Trek spoilers ahoy )

In summary, awesome, but I have one huge glaring thing that keeps it from being totally awesome. But ignoring that, it was easily among the best Star Trek movies.

Man I've been so lazy with trying to write stuff. Major annoying creative dryspell. I don't even have ideas for my D&D campaign right now, heh.

Erevan is eating my ankles again. Rotten siamese.

-

The Spring sky: under
a canopy of azure
hangs the gibbous moon

'Summer' instead of 'The Spring' would sound better, but that's not for another couple of months. Although it sure seemed hot enough for summer today when I went out to look at the rose bushes. (And 'crescent' sounds better than 'gibbous' to me for moon phase, but at that point we're not even trying to describe the actual sky anymore.)

And while I forgot about this entry for a few hours, I seem to have actually gotten some writing done. This bit of it concerns a character I made as a PC but never got to play, who is currently an NPC in the campaign I'm running. In the present day, he's Isri Arellan, high priest of Corellon Larethian, and the highest-ranking priest in the holy city of Serestal. Those who object to the fact that he's a drow largely keep it to themselves, as he has been a priest of Corellon for over four hundred years, during which time he has done much for the Elven people and been a hero dozens of times over. His hobby is sneaking back down into the underdark to find young drow who find themselves less than enthused with drow culture and bringing them back to the surface to teach them how to be elves. He was given a chance once, one he took and has never regretted taking. He often attributes it to his god, and seeks to repay the favour by making sure that others get a chance as well. I'm quite fond of Isri.

This rather badly deals with that chance he took that led to his life on the surface as a priest. ( More bad writing ahead )

Dear allergies, please go away. Thanks.

Today was supposed to be the weekly D&D session, but one of the players couldn't make it and I was out of it anyway, so no D&D this week. Or next, since the same player will be out of town. Meh. Oh well, at least it gives me time to plan and prepare stuff. Not that I need to do any for next week, since we'll still be in the same place and at the rate we go still won't finish it. >_>; Perhaps I'll slightly alter the plans for that area to wrap things up so we can actually get somewhere.

Got a quick random piece knocked out. I don't write often, and I'm not very good at it, and it shows. This one deals with a PC I've used in D&D in the past. He was called Nai Calus at the time, but the name was reused from elsewhere and I've finally given him his own name, Vel Theryn. Vel was a Bard the first time I used him, and later a Bard/Swashbuckler, and none too good at either. You could make Bards great in 3.5, with lots of optimation and splatbooks, but I'm not much for optimizing and we weren't allowed to use splatbooks in the second campaign past the Swashbuckler class being allowed. Ephram would also have been a Bard, though a fairly high level one. If I were doing them in 4e, ironically, I don't think I'd use the Bard class at all for either. Ephram possibly, but Vel would be a Swordmage. Vel is shown here in the aftermath of his uncle's untimely death.

Not the best I've done even by my own low standards, but the point of trying to get something done every day isn't to produce a masterpiece, it's simply to get into the habit of trying to do something and hopefully improve with practice.

We shall see how this goes.

It's a nice comparison for different scales, seeing which ones it sounds almost the same in, which ones it sounds odd in or entirely off. 19-TET sounds almost normal, Bohlen-Pierce is nearly unrecognizable, 5-TET odd, Blackjack tunings are as utterly bizzare as ever... Great fun.

The piece called 'Transformation' on this page, in 17-TET, is currently getting a lot of listen by me.

Solemn Song For Evening - Andan, available from here(You want 'Movement 2', for some reason strikes me as being the kind of music elves might produce. Probably a combination of the slightly tree-hugging spoken part and the slight alien feel of the singing and background music due to the scale used.

I have yet to get anything done like I wanted to. Still having the sleeping trouble, bah.

I think I'll try to see if I can get at least *something* creative done each day of May, even if it's just some sort of lame haiku. Force my brain to get working again.

Being unemployed for a year and a half has done nothing at all for my Asperger's. The adjustments and progress I'd made from working a job where I was forced to interact with the public daily have pretty much been lost at this point, and all the old anxiousness and uncomfortableness has returned. I've gotten to the point where I can't even bring myself to call people I don't know at all anymore, and can barely bring myself to answer it when it's someone I don't know. Heck, I haven't even been able to bring myself to talk to some of my relatives.

It's... Uncomfortable. And annoying that I can recognize that I have these problems, but somehow never seem able to somehow force myself past them. I don't handle talking to people well, I come off as... Strange I guess is the best way to put it. And I know this, and it makes me afraid of trying to do it out of fear of being seen as... Well, as myself. I don't want to be seen as 'that weirdo', but it's pretty much unavoidable for me.

Hell, it even shows in my writing style. I go on forever, go off on tangents for ages, and produce massive walls of text while utterly failing to get my point across. It's... Depressing to consider how utterly bad at communicating I am. And most of the time I don't even understand exactly *how* it's 'wrong', just that compared to normal writing it *is*. You'd think I'd pick something up, as much reading as I've done in my life in lieu of a social life, especially when I was younger and had no contact with anyone outside of my mother and the small number of equally crazy people in the special ed classes I was always in.

Sometimes I honestly think that if there were a cure for this, a way to change who I am, even recognizing that it would be pretty much the end of me as I currently exist, I'd go for it. Not understanding the world and the people around me is a terrifying thing. And I'm someone who finds the idea of having who you are somehow changed horrific. But being the way I am... Sometimes it seems like I'd be better off not being that way. Usually, even.

And that's probably the worst part of all.