Making a Mask!

And it's fun, fun, fun. I saw the stuff on Goblin Art and thought, hot damn, that's pretty and really out of my price range. So the Library Overlord and I got together with some plaster strips, and made base masks of each others faces. It was good times.

A little fun foam, duct tape, and paper mache later, I have this handsome fellow:




I'm letting him dry one last time overnight, then tomorrow we enter the fabulous world of acrylic paints. I may spreay him with a primer first, especially on the horns, which are awesomely ridged via wrapped elasti-cord:



It's going to be a good year.

About OK

Thursday night Mr. Sweetie called me and told me that one of our rats, About (of the infamous Out and About) was acting funny. Her left eye was droopy, and she had no balance. He thought she might have had a stroke.

We talked to Hastur, who has more experience with rats than us, and she recommended a good vet. We weren't able to get time off on Friday to drop her off, but we called the vet that evening and she said to go ahead and drop them both off - she'd see them the same night!

So it turns out that what happened is that About got a middle ear infection somehow. She's got antibiotics to take, and in about a week should be fine.

Score!

I learned how to move pictures from my phone to my email! It's good to know I am not entirely without hope in technological matters. Here is the first batch, which will of course be pictures of Maggie, since I know yall have been dying to see them.





As you can see, she is a beautiful, smiley-as-hell dog. Who gets into trouble, and also into Rudder Fountain.




This is the tree that fell on Mr. Sweetie's parents' house, after some handy chainsaw work. The stumps are not all of the slices - the stumps are all of the slices that were of a given size (large enough to be sat on, small enough that the chainsaw blade could slice all the way through the tree), and ALSO level enough to be chairs, which is what they're going to be. They're drying them out, and then they'll lacquer them and have 'Furniture courtesy of Hurricane Ike' burnt into them. I love my in-laws. Also, that tree? Farther away than it looks, as I was standing WELL OUTSIDE the garage when I took that picture.


Ok, this was just awesome. We were driving PrimaryBrother back to Austin, and stopped by a pecan store on the way (if you have made this drive, you know the one I mean - it has a sign you can see for miles) so I could go to the bathroom. In case people drop by (giant! sign!) after hours, there is a vending machine, WITH A GODDAMN PIE IN IT. It's a pie machine!


This is Dr. Icthys, who lives up at work and keeps me company. He is a grumpy, grumpy fish, which people tend not to believe until they meet him, and watch him try to beat the shit out of stationary objects like my inboxes, the wall, and his food container. And speaking of the walls!


Them's my walls. Covered in art, my favorite pieces drawn by friends. I am very proud of my walls, and the effort that goes into finding work-appropriate stuff that's still actually funny.


My sister's tattoo, that she got not knowing it was a logo for something or another, and would like for me to figure out a way to change into something different. Specifically, a peacock, that "looks persian", and doesn't suck. I haven't drawn in years. No pressure or anything!


This is where we're going for my birthday this weekend. It is a happy, happy place, where I can get this:

Maggie OK

It's been just about 24 hours since her seizure/faint/whatever on Sunday, and she has been her normal self the whole time. She got into trouble while I was in the shower, chased rabbits while snoring on the couch, cuddled up next to me and then farted, and tried to knock over my soda and claim it for herself. All is well.

Holy Crap, Maggie Had a Seizure?

Today Maggie and I walked to the dog park for the first time (she’s been before, but I thought the walk would do both of us good). We hung out for a while, I brought a book, she jumped in mud puddles and loved on people with her muddy self.

Then after a while I saw her walking up to me, but she kept falling forward, like her front paws wouldn’t support her. I thought maybe she had burrs on them, and went to go see, and when I got to her she fell over and was twitching - almost vibrating - and her heart was beating really fast, and she wasn’t able to focus her eyes, and seemed disoriented. My first thought was Holy crap, seizure!

A very nice lady from a local vet clinic came and helped me hold her while Mr. Sweetie was on his way (and dude, we have found a new vet, let me tell you), and by the time he got there (maybe 4-5 mins?) she had stopped trembling and was starting to recover, and by the time we got her to the car she was normal again. We took her to the A&M Small Animal Clinic (only place in town open after 6 on sunday), and got her checked out.

The doc said that from the symptoms she had, it was probably either a seizure, like I had thought, or a hardcore fainting spell from a sudden drop in blood pressure. They did an ECG for her heart, and tested her for heartworms just in case, and everything came up fine. Mr. Sweetie is sleeping on the couch with her tonight, and I’m staying home with her tomorrow, in case anything else happens, but she will probably be just fine. We just got home, and gave her a bath (she was still really muddy), and hopefully won’t have to worry about anything more tonight.

Everything is probably fine. Worst case scenario she has some form of epilepsy, and having had that myself it doesn’t freak me out too bad. She’ll eat anything softer than her teeth if we let her, so I don’t see a problem giving her pills if that’s what she ends up needing.

So how was your sunday?

It's Been A While Since Massive Failsauce

So I made my first batch tonight, which may or may not be a failure.

I ran my recipe through a lye calculator, with an 8% superfat, melted my oils in the pot and added my lye water (and HOO BOY they do not joke about the fumes - had the fan on & front door open, would’ve opened the back but didn’t want the dog running around). It didn’t start getting creamy, but it did start getting bits of opaqueness floating in the clear, with a texture like applesauce. Then, all of a sudden - BAM! - it’s like pudding. I did my happy trace dance, and added in the clay I wanted as an additive, put on the lid and turned it to low to cook.

15 minutes later I came to check on it, and instead of a hard solid mass, it looked like vaseline. I wasn’t sure if this meant it had gelled or not, so I decided that it must not’ve, and added about a cup more water (2lb batch).

15 minutes after that, it still looks like vaseline, only more… fluffy? By this time I’m running around panicking, so I added a 14 floz can of coconut milk and a dram of peppermint EO, because I am an idiot. Some of it mixed in with the soap, some did not, so I don’t even know what’s going on now.

Another half hour after that, it’s mostly still vaseline, a little creamier, and with a good bit of excess liquid in the pot. I panicked again, because I have somewhere to be tonight, so I just prayed the liquid stuff is liquid soap and not just slightly brown coconut milk, and molded the lot of it. I figure it’s either going to be funky soap, soap that I need to rebatch, or I will know that I need to watch it like a hawk next time and get a better scale and a thermometer.

It feels waxy when I touch it, but it still zaps my tongue, and now I don’t know if it’s the peppermint or the lye doing that. I feel like I missed a vital memo somewhere in my research, but I don’t know what.

Making soap RIGHT NOW!!!

And OMG I has Trace!