oh, mama raised me well

december was filled with cats, some surprises, but also my mom's health declining faster than any of us ever anticipated

there's another cat in the house after a five-person manhunt around the neighborhood for him, pet-sat for friends, not enjoying the weather finally cooling off, some art has happened, grand jury duty finished up shortly,

i've been meaning to make a post for, like, the last two weeks lol

random things happening

the shitty feral neighbors moved!!!!!!!!!!!!! the handyman told me that they paid their rent up thru june and would be moving by july but it turns out they broke the lease and bailed last week b/c tony reported people whose voices he didn't recognize in the house over there complaining loudly about how awful it was.

turns out, it was their UPSTAIRS neighbors (i was under the assumption that, kind of, everyone i saw over there was part of the whole house and the shitty neighbors had somehow rented the whole place) who are cleaning the lower place out and moving in there? idk if the landlord is renting them the whole place or what exactly is going on, but they're chiller and SO much quieter than the ferals, so that's already a huge improvement

not making it to anthrocon this year, which is a real bummer. my mom can't watch the house (for a couple reasons) and the cats and i can't pay anyone fairly to have to feed beans so frequently lol. if it were just finn and oryx, i could ask someone to stop by and make sure their dishes are full and scoop the box, but beans needs extra care AND he's prone to pooping in the kitchen/outside the litter box and i can't afford to pay someone to deal with that

tony and i got out for a walk the other day, stopped at the little metaphysical shop down the road from us that i've NEVER gone in since moving here lol - very nice little place, chill owners, and they have a cute black catten named chance!! we also stopped at circle k and got taquitos and walked over to the cemetery to eat them where a HAWK landed on a tombstone near us before flying off real low




beginning of the month was, apparently, the 100 year anniversary of the first goodyear blimp flight, so they had all three blimps out taking loops around the city. i got some good photos of them above my workplace and it was pretty cool to see them out together in formation

in the first pic, there's a tiny speck off to the left of the blimp on the left-hand side - that's the helicopter that was doing the route with them to get photo/video and stuff. so tiny in comparison!




i biked up out to merriman falls at the end of last month and the ride OUT there was so nice, it didn't even feel like i was exerting myself, but the ride back felt ROUGH lol it also doesn't help the very end of it before i get to the house, i have to basically walk the bike up the hills in the neighborhood back there so i get home and i'm just D-E-D dead

but on the way out i stopped at each of the trailheads (which is, like, 3 + big bend b/c there's a nice little wooden deck to chill out on and it's about the halfway point)

while in merriman valley, stopped at the happy tails thrift and got a cute scarf, two card decks, some nice embroidery thread, and some wool balls for oryx (she keeps stealing the dryer balls)




after dealing with some shipping bullshit, tony's birthday presents for me finally showed up lol - he'd originally ordered a richard siken zine from someone on etsy and it never showed up, he contacted the seller and they re-sent one and IT never showed up, so eventually he had to request a refund and the seller got real shitty/guilt-trippy about it. like, sorry!!! i would've loved to have had the zine, but idk why nothing you've sent has gotten here, soooooo....

the keychain, postcard, and spooky stickers are from Enthralledyet and the opossum stickers are by niipon! he said he ALMOST bought me one of these shirt, both of which i lost my mind at



i have also acquired a bunch more chickensmoothie uma stuff lol













finally, here's some unfinished sketches from this year so far

saw the crane wives with sam, got the bike out and went to the thrift, got some art done, met a cat, cleaned up the porch a bit

last time i did an update, our HVAC was all fucked up

THIS TIME, we got hit my a ransomware attack (last tuesday) that's basically cut us down to about half of what most of the branches do on a day to day basis - us included. currently no public computer access, and no mobile printing. we can do b&w copying on the printer/copier that doesn't have the fancy coinbox (where you put in your pin to pull up your print jobs from the computers), but our workaround for people needing to print from things they can access on their phones is to email it to the branch + we'll chuck it on a flash drive and bypass the coinbox to print it our on the copier

(which i don't like informing patrons they have the ability to do b/c another branch does that as one of their defaults and we have things like mobileprinting available for a reason - learn to use it or ask one of us to walk you thru it)

so it's been an interesting week. we initially expected this to only last a couple days, before admin let us know it was a ransomware issue. the first two days, we didn't even have staff internet or wifi, but they did get that up reasonably quickly. still can't access the network, which sucks, b/c we keep most of our stuff on the staff drive, since many of us (myself included) work on our files at both our desks and at the circ desk when we're assigned to it. but now they're inaccessible until that gets remedied

on the upside: we've had no phone usage for the last week and i sure hate answering the phone

we can still check out materials and do typical library stuff, but our patrons rely on us for the computers and printing, so it's been a lot of idling around and finding things to do (i should be working on the CD inventory, but i digress). summer reading ALSO started today and i had to set up a google form to collect the basic info so we could add that in once they got the sign up panel back up (which happened later that day, so at least the list of patrons i have to port over is short)

---

otherwise, stuff has been pretty normal. trying not to be bummed about not being able to attend anthrocon this year. still taking that week-ish off, tho. i have the vacation time, i may as well. maybe something will fall into place or we can pop out for a day or something, idk fingers crossed, but not expecting anything

(i posted this and then remembered stuff i intended to post about lol)

i moved desk stuff around! because a bunch of stuff got put to the curb at the house down the road and i acquired a big wood/metal desk! (also also a little laminate table that is janky, but i wanted something for the basement and it works perfect and i won't feel bad trashing it later)



but i made an L desk! i'm still adapting a bit to it, i really think i need a better chair. i'm using one of tony's old ones right now, but the work chairs are SO nice (they're like $1500 hermann miller chairs lol) so i'm pretty spoiled by them lol. but at least now this gives me AND the cats some more space

that weekend (memorial day weekend), i ALSO put the garden in and went for a morning ride up the towpath to the farmer's market

i think the plot here still doesn't have enough replenished nutrients, but i'm supplementing it with some plant food. stuff on the left side is doing alright, b/c that's where i expanded the plot to, but right side is struggling a little bit! it was also hot af last week so hopefully the more normal 70F~ temps now will help



also jury-rigged together a trellis kind of thing b/c i have two kinds of cukes i want to vine up and also some snap peas

what's in the ground: cherry tomatoes, 'mr stripey' tomatoes, jalapenos, cubanelles, poblanos, long sweet peppers, mini sweet peppers, brussels sprouts, snap peas, cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, probably some peppers i'm missing lol

also have a bunch of stuff hanging and in pots: short carrots, two different wild strawberries, lettuces, pineapple sage, lots of sprouts in case the ones in the ground don't thrive. peppers do pretty well in pots, worst case scenario



farmer's market was small, but i DID buy some lemon peppercorn sausage and spring mix. the ride up was pretty nice, but it was also my first ride in two years lol so of course i decided to take the 45min trek up the towpath and completely forget that there are some small hills

i was also dumb and didn't eat before leaving b/c my morning brain went 'well there's a mcd's halfway, you can stop and get a small breakfast and chill before going the rest of the way!'. a fool. i WAS smart, tho, and packed some banana bread (which i made the other day!!) and that helped lol

overall the ride wasn't TOO bad, i just gotta get my stamina up again

i also saw a blurry vulture

---

wednesday, i spent the day in cleveland with my mom and lydia (step-sister) b/c bud was having his throat surgery (cancer returned, he opted for removal of the issue rather than chemo again, so they removed his voice box but still found some cancer cells along the blood vessels that he'll have to undergo chemo again for - please understand that i do not need sympathy for this, i am biting my tongue + simply being there for my mom), which meant spending all day at the hospital b/c it's a 6-8 hour surgery and then we were there later b/c he was pretty coherent after recovery and wanted to see us

but it was a beautiful day in cleveland, which was great. mom and i got breakfast down the road, i took the bus out to asiatown and got koko's and some noms from tink holl. got dinner from the cheesesteak place around the corner, but mostly hung out in the parking garage and bullshat or worked on art stuff



(also pasted some of my zines around university circle)

he'll be in the hospital for 3~ weeks, so i suspect i'll be drug back up there again eventually

may went by way too fuckin' fast

we had about a week and a half of 80F+ weather and then it was back to typical spring flip-flopping

yesterday was super nice. we did a lot of running around and socializing, but it was quite enjoyable

we hit up the punk rock flea market out at the fairgrounds. they were downtown last year, but since the sakura festival was scheduled for the same weekend, i think that's why they got relocated. it was HEAVILY attended - there were a TON of people, which was awesome to see. it was packed because of that, tho, and was a bit more of a challenge to browse. but we bought a couple little things b/c i had some birthday money leftover



the titan a.e. production sketch was an awesome (and very well priced!!) find! there were two, but my budget couldn't swing both lol so i got the one that'll look better framed. also grabbed the men in black cyber-cine litho.

tony scored the biollante clear file and the unleashed pins (sketch, clear file, litho, and pins from art toons), as well as the werewolf patch (from kingguro!!). i got the kitty earrings (from rabbit + rain - also uuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh they have rose coffin earrings!!! i didn't see them there) and the knife pin (also from kingguro)

---

after the flea market, we ran some errands. i picked up a brussels sprouts start and another (different) type of strawberry start at petitti's. picked up some groceries. then headed back home to drop stuff off and grab tony's fursuit. then we headed down to the sakura festival downtown!


(okay this is actually from close to my neighborhood, the trees downtown were a bit past their peak bloom)

it wasn't anything spectacular, but it was decently busy. someone local organized an impromptu furmeet, so we figured we'd at least link up with folks. an old friend, satre, was also coming down to attend and we hadn't seen him in AGES. we also got up with chris and sam and, eventually, after running into a variety of furries, the four of us branched off and we to get food. we struck out at the sushi place, but chris suggested a local brewery that serves food, so we did that and it was a nice way to finish off the day. we chatted and ate (tho half of our food came out really late - it WAS delicious, tho lol) and shit and it was just really nice

---

i also cleaned the porch up a bit the other day and pulled my bike out. thankfully the tires are still good! i didn't ride it at ALL last year, so i was hoping i wouldn't need to buy new ones x_x



now i've just gotta....commit to getting on it and riding regularly again. the electric scooters have really spoiled me

---

last weekend was really nice, as well. i took a couple days off vacation b/c i get my birthday off anyhow. my mom came up on saturday and we drove around to see the herons and hit up some of the plant nurserys. we were gonna work on my garden, but i'd torn up quite a bit of it already anyhow and nothing needed to go directly in the ground, so we just got out and enjoyed the nice day