serinde

It was warmer today, but of course by the time I swimsuited up and sauntered to the pool, it was partly-cloudy (the part in front of the sun) and exceedingly windy. Which is fine as long as you are in the water, but upon exiting for some serious lolling around and maybe reading, it was insanely chilly. So I swam for awhile and then came back to the room and, oh dear, played Ultima IV which there is a Mac OS X port for. But that's relaxing! So it's okay. NYAH

I was not going to spend the whole evening doing that, however. So I have installed myself in the patio bar (which is empty, mua ha ha ha; there is some kind of convention or gathering here at present but it is all oldsters so they are not so much with the night life) with a fruity drink and a jerked chicken snack and am alternately intarwubbing and working on the D&D character class Dr. Nick and I have been giving painful breech birth to for the past N months; something that I love to do, but never have a block of time at home that I am not urgently doing something else.

It is a very nice fruity drink. The weather is chilly and windy, but I have a jacket and I am wearing pants now, so that is okay.

Tomorrow: Happy World Land!

Bouncer birds!!!

(Patio breakfast at hotel. Napoleon's forces are not in sight.)

I was ready to "network" at lunch, where they were herding everyone into a hall and seating them randomly at tables. Naturally, therefore, I was sandwiched between impenetrable walls of non-English-speakers.

I feel like the little kid agitating to try Mom and Dad's (coffee/wine/bitter chocolate). I want to have what the grownups are having, and then I learn that it actually kinda sucks.

Well, that may be unfair. The conference hasn't actually started yet. But so far, things are off to a roaring start.

Checked into hotel, where I learned I had to schlep my shit up hill and down dale to get to the room. Well, that's okay, one of the things I liked about this place is that it's got three pools and fitness room and lord knows what. So I slog to my room (which faces a parking lot, not the gorgeously landscaped interior).

Which has stained carpet, a rusty rickety ironing board, an iron that was actually coming apart (but still turned on! Fire hazard much?), a lamp sans bulb, and a noticeably musty odor. AND THE FREE INTERNET DOES NOT WORK. (I get signal but no DHCP. Calling guest services was, of course, useless and made my eyeballs bleed with rage.)

After serially discovering these things, and not having eaten in too-long, I phoned sweh with minor meltdown, which he fielded with his usual capability. I got a new iron delivered, and ironed my clothes what needed them. I carried my laptop to the lobby (where it works fine), and then had a rather late dinner (mediocre at best; and a mandatory 18% gratuity? excuse me?) and a glass of wine (IT FITS IN MY PER DIEM. SHUT UP), then sat outdoors on a bench in the lovely lagoon area using internets, and then carried my laptop still connected back to my room so it did not have to faff with whatever brokenness is happening on the ghetto side of the complex. And lo! I am in bed and having internets, and I care less about the musty smell.

I need to be at the conference center by 8:30 tomorrow (8 probably better). I am not sure where to get breakfast. I was going to splurge on room service for once in my life, but I will be damned and in hell before I consent to paying $11 PLUS 21% gratuity PLUS $3 "delivery charge" (isn't that what the gratuity is for?!) for a glass of juice, a bowl of Special K, and a bran muffin. Even if Uncle Patterson is picking up the check. (And I bet the coffee would suck.) This would be a good use for a Starbucks, actually: then there would be strong coffee AND virtuous proteinful breakfast sammich. But I haven't seen one. (Also I do not have a car.)

Edit: Also, it would seem that outside-my-window is the favored motorcycle drag strip. Oh, Florida, you so wacky.

1. Look at blouse hanging to dry, ponder "I should sew that button back on now"
2. Pick up button from dresser.
3. Put button down to hunt for sewing kit.
4. Find sewing kit.
5. Fail to find button, which is large and sparkly and really should not be missable.
6. No Profit.

I did indeed get a call (if not quite the expected one), which was Steve, in considerable distress, asking me to please come to the house at once without delay. This of course I did, and after the usual hour-and-a-half of transit on tenterhooks, got home. The vet on call at the animal hospital determined that Mage's current and pressing issue wasn't an abdominal thing, lord knows what that might have been, but at least now he was showing clear signs of final stages of a brain tumor or other neurological disorder. He'd actually gone blind sometime in the last 24 hours, and wasn't able to walk without wobbling, and couldn't hold up his head. Tests could be done to prove this, but the vet said that in truth there was nothing to be done, whatever they found. So they made Mage comfortable, got some liquids (and I think some calming drugs) in him, and when I got to the house we drove up to the hospital to say goodbye.

I will say this for Oradell: they may cost the earth, but they have a really nice facility. They have special small, comfortable rooms where you can sit privately with your pet and make your adieux. So we did that (and the doctor was amazingly kind, even as vets go--I've never met a mean vet), and bawled a lot, and then I held Mr. Mage as the doc put the quietus into his IV. It was as quiet and peaceful and kindly as such a thing can be, and beforehand I didn't think I would be up to any of it, but I can state now that I feel much the better for having been there with my kitty to the end.

Then we cried some more in the car, then drove back to the house and had tea and gave Ranger some salmon and cried some more; and now I am printing out my STUF for the conference, since I sprinted out of work trailing all kinds of loose ends.

Mage is in the Land of Eternal Cheese, where no one takes away your people food and then laughs at you for being Chunky & Aggrieved. He is drooling on everyone there and making little huff-puff noises instead of purring, because everyone is scritching him and no one is paying any attention to any other cats at all.

(All the habitués of chez nous, in its various incarnations, are encouraged to post Favorite Mage Moments in comments here. I'd like it a lot.)

At last, the decline of civilization has been neatly charted.

Piewacket has taken against her kittens. She has ignored them for the last ~18 hours, and hisses when they come near her. I tried bottle-feeding them, but although I know they're hungry--they crawl all over me and root against every bit of warm skin they encounter--they don't seem able to grasp the whole bottle concept. Five helpless little tiny bundles of fluff frantically crying and crawling on you, fighting to live, and you can't do anything for them; that's slit-your-wrists territory there.

nedlnthred, briony530, caelfinn, nancaurelia, and I went to the Sheep and Wool Festival this weekend. Since I have an enormous sack of yarn that I haven't done anything with yet, I restrained myself from the shiny pretty things, and made but two purchases: 1) A large skein of undyed soft Falklands wool to make a baby blanket for some friends who have one in the oven, and 2) some seriously loud softness to make fingerless gloves to wear at work, for which I have a direful need. Happily, those shouldn't take long, even at my glacial pace of construction.

I intend to do the blanket in a set of mixed cables reminiscent of the Irish fisherman sweater, the happy couple being very much of that persuasion, though caelfinn tells me that those sweaters actually originate in the '50s. Not so much with the cultural heritage. Oh well, I think it'll still look nifty; briony530 has a full-size blanket in that idea and it's quite handsome.

We met ilaine_dcmrn and her two girls at lunchtime, and trysted for dinner & good conversation with hlinspjalda andalistrina, fiber luminaries of the faraway north. All in all, a good weekend, if ass-freezing cold. (Because why? I DIDN'T WEAR WOOL. I win the moron hat.)

Mage is not any peppier. He does eat and use the catbox, but he spends the rest of the time curled up under Steve's computer chair--he doesn't even want to come for snuggles in the Big Comfy Chair, which historically sitting down in that meant you'd have him in your lap in 1.2 seconds. Or faster. Sometimes he would show up in between your butt and the seat cushion before you'd finished lowering yourself.

His blood and urine are normal; the ultrasound shows nothing. He just...isn't well. Tests from here start getting increasingly expensive and invasive, and if it's something that esoteric they probably can't fix it anyways, particularly for a 14-year-old cat.

I do not think I am prepared to deal with this possibility at this particular point in time.