Beth

This is my girl Hannah, who passed away at the beginning of July this year. She was a former feral who hated other cats, barely tolerated people who weren't me, and I loved my cranky old girl dearly.

Will, a brown tabby cat, wearing a pillow cone and laying on the exam table at the vet's office. He looks relatively chill here. He is not.

Welp, Will's vet visit itself was largely uneventful - he was well-behaved for the vet and even let the vet and vet tech pick him up. In the car, though, he complained loudly and tried to dig his way out of his crate. Also took his cone off and peed on it and the blanket in his crate.

oh buddy.

Moira, a chubby black cat, grooming Will, a brown tabby cat, who's wearing a pillow-style cone to keep him from overgrooming the irritated spot by his left eye.

Wish me luck, y'all - gotta take Will to the vet here shortly to get some irritation by his eye checked out. He's been a blob of sadness ever since I put the cushy cone on him. Poor little guy.

follow these babies here: @moira-and-will.bsky.social

I miss going to the Rusty Bucket! Rana and I used to go pretty regularly when she still lived in Indy, and even after she moved down to Bloomington we still drove up there from time to time.

A photograph of the Northern Lights as seen with the assistance of a camera, from just south of Bloomington, IN.

Taken just south of Bloomington, IN last night!

Photograph of the Northern Lights in the sky - a somewhat rare occasion in the midwest USA. The colors visible include green, blue, and pink, with the dark night sky visible at the right side of the image.

In other news, got to see the Northern Lights last night with the help of my camera - and I heard they might be even more intense tonight, and visible without camera assistance! Keeping my fingers crossed for that, I love the Northern Lights.

A little behind for #nanowrimo, but still managing to write every day - just shy of 17k words right now.

One thing that's weirdly been helping is to write out a scene by hand, get the ideas on the page that way to start, then flesh it out as I type it up. If it keeps me going, I'll take it.

Been working on writing a story for #nanowrimo, even though the organization that ran it in the past imploded. It just feels weird to not be writing something in November after doing NaNoWriMo most years since 2002.

Got some fantastic news this morning: Moira is giardia free!! (finally!)

Now to put this little food-crazy girl on a little diet - I didn't think to check and make sure the automatic feeder dispenser measurements were accurate, turns out someone's been getting more food than she needs lately 😅

Ooof. My marathon of teaching at least two sessions a week (if not more) since mid-September has finally ended - I now have a week and a half before I have to teach another requested session. 🎉

Thankfully I'm not feeling as wiped out as I would've last year, but still: I could use an extra day off.

Unexpected heartwarming moment of the day: chatting with the Chewy customer service rep about Will and Moira and how they'll be reunited tomorrow after Moira's second round of giardia isolation. ❤️ That was sweet and unexpected - I was just hoping to get my lost Fortiflora order reshipped!

I'm so sorry for your loss. 🫂

Oof. It's been a rough week. Dealing with round 2 of giardia treatment for Moira, and almost done with it - I'm really, *really* hoping this round is the last. I am so done with deep cleaning and doing laundry every day.

I swear, this comic just gets weirder and weirder

Sushi, a gray tabby cat with yellow eyes. He's sitting on a green linoleum floor, and is looking up at the camera.

Oni (left), a brown tabby cat, and Sushi (right), a gray tabby cat. They're both excitedly sniffing my hand, as I just showed up to take care of them while Sage was out of town and they were both very happy to see me.

Sushi is such a sweet little dude - I take care of him sometimes when Sage is out of town, and he and his brother Oni are always so excited to see me when I'm there. I really hope he recovers from whatever's going on with him - kitty health issues are scary.

Donate to Sage and Sushi, organized by peter hassel Hi, our friend Sage was just hit with a large vet bill for her sweet and young kitty Sushi. This couldn't … peter hassel needs your support for Sage and Sushi

Sharing this here to help boost the signal: my friend Sage's cat Sushi is dealing with some scary medical issues. They could use some help with medical bills, especially since Sushi's back at the vet with a fever and possibly paralyzed back legs. Every little bit helps.

gofund.me/4562265e8

Trip Hop

Welp, it's the first day of fall, and it's a rainy day to boot - time to bust out the Trip Hop playlist on Spotify! Not entirely sure when my brain decided fall = trip hop season, but it's been like that for a while now.

Listen with me if you want: open.spotify.com/playlist/37i...

The Photoshop and Illustrator workshops I teach are some of my favorites - I know them both so well, considering I wrote half the current Photoshop workshop from scratch and edited the heck out of the current Illustrator workshop, and it's so much fun helping students learn how to use the apps.

This is the first of four weeks in a row where I'm teaching at least two workshops a week for work - I'm actually excited about it, especially since it's all Photoshop and Illustrator sessions. 🎉

Good morning, Jinx! ❤️

A screenshot of the Word Hero interface, taken from the listing on the Amazon App Store. On the left side of the screen is a 4 by 4 square with jumbled up letters, where your goal was to make words from the letters where they landed on that grid. On the right side of the screen is a list of words you've already found, and the score you earned for each word.

Still, I'm bummed that it's gone. I had fun playing it, and I liked the ability to play with others without needing to go find people like in Words with Friends or other similar games.

RIP, Word Hero. You'll definitely be missed.

6/6

I don't blame people for getting frustrated for a sudden change to heavily-ad-supported/subscription model - it looks like the game had been out since 2011, and I think I'd been playing it since maybe early 2012, and I certainly wouldn't have been thrilled by the changes.

5/

Apparently the game went from "buy it once and play forever" to a subscription model in the past year or two, and if you didn't subscribe, the game was full of ads - given that it was ad-free for so long, a lot of people stopped playing out of annoyance, and eventually the game got taken down.

4/

Granted, I couldn't remember the full name of the game until just as I went to bed, so I looked it up again this morning when I got up - but it wasn't in the Play Store. A quick internet search brought up a Reddit post from someone lamenting the death of the game.

3/

Word Hero was fun - I enjoy Boggle-style games, and the individual rounds were pretty quick. My ex-husband and I would sometimes play it together and see who'd place higher on the end-of-game leaderboard.

I came back to it off and on over the years, and got the itch to play again last night.

2/

In today's instance of "I was feeling nostalgic for this thing but now it's gone": There's a word game I liked to play on my phone, Word Hero - I can't remember when it first came out, but I remember playing it on my first "Android" tablet, an HP TouchPad that I modded to run Android.

1/

ANNOUNCEMENT! My full collection of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode prints are now available for a two-week only limited edition window ending Sept. 27th. Find posters (and t-shirts!) inspired by all 30 SNW episodes at jjlendl.com/shop.

#StarTrek #StarTrekSNW #StrangeNewWorlds

This week has been exhausting, between work stuff and life stuff and the world in general. Once I'm done with work today, I'm gonna go burrow somewhere cozy with the cats and just exist for a bit, maybe reread some more of @scalzi.com's Old Man's War in preparation for the new book coming out...

My advice to people, as it has been since the USENET days, is simply this: Everything that can be made public on the Internet one day will be made public. Say what you want and what you feel is necessary, and remember it will be found.

a black cat stands in the middle of a path that winds through a brightly lit field.

A dream of the fields
study