My whole life seems to revolve around my cat these days. He has us twisted around his little claw. Our routine has been set by him - up between 6-7am (even on weekends), feed Stevie, make coffee (it's needed), take Stevie outside for his morning frolic in the garden. Stay outside for a couple of hours on the weekend, come in when Stevie wants to take a nap. Do whatever we like while Stevie naps (though he has expressed a preference for a certain computer game Dom and I play), then when Stevie gets up around 3:30pm it's time for another trip outside. Stay outside until it's time to feed Stevie, then he'll take over Dom's chair and go to sleep, leaving Dom stranded, or go to sleep on my lap, making me totally unable to do anything else. At around 10pm, Stevie wakes up and lets us know that it's now time for us to go to bed (and to give him his bed time treat). Only to wake us up again between 6 and 7 the next morning...

This is how Stevie likes things.

Who else is doing NaNoWriMo? :)

1. The Fabric of the Cosmos, Brian Greene
2. The History of Sexuality, Vol 1, Michele Foucault
3. Economia, Geoff Davies
4. Jane Eyre, CHarlotte Bronte
5. The Mask of God - Primitive Mythology, Joseph Campbell
6. THe Passion of the Western Mind, Richard Tarnas

Hrm. Plus some random fiction.

Character		Description		Campaign
Feiryn		Creepy Serpent Sorcerer of Dooooooom!		HotBlooded
Mariella		Faithless (Fey?) Weather Witch		Dragon Coast
Xyn		Mirrorborn Rogue-turned-Illithid from the Hive		Planescape
Annemette		Politically-motived, high-born cleric of Beshaba		Dark Mother
Porphyra		Naive half-drow ranger		Hero School

I really need to write up the stories of each of these... one day...

It is morning again. Wake up at 6:25, listen to drivel on the radio while waiting for the news. Listen to the news, get meowed at and tapped on the head by Stevie. Procrastinate and roll over, wait for the weather forecast. Fall asleep. Get woken by claws in the scalp. Glare at Stevie, get meowed at. Get up. Stevie purrs and rubs up against me. Go to the kitchen, decide Stevie's breakfast from such delectable delights as "beefy flavoured chunks" and "tuna banquet with (mythical) whole prawns". Feed Stevie while he tries his best to knock the whole thing on the floor. Put the kettle on, clean out Stevie's kitty litter while waiting for it to boil. Make coffee, check sky outside, take Stevie out or sit at the kitchen table and write while Dom's in the shower. Once he's done, hop in, dry hair, get dressed and leave for work, usually arriving by 8:30am.

Post from mobile portal m.livejournal.com

Dom has been really helpful with suggesting things I could do that might interest me. One of his suggestions that seemed feasible was reading. I haven't had new books in a long time, and I'm bored with the ones I have here, but I think that if I had some new books I would be interested in doing some reading. I've been looking up what books I might be interested in and have come up with the following books by Julian May:

The Saga of Pliocene Exile

• The Many-Colored Land
• The Golden Torc
• The Nonborn King
• The Adversary

The Galactic Milieu Series

• Intervention
• Jack the Bodiless
• Diamond Mask
• Magnificat

Now we'll have to try to source the books from second-hand bookstores, but I'm looking forward to having something new and exciting to read! :)

1. Update the budget.
2. Weed the garden, at least a little bit
3. Do as much washing as possible - including the sheets!
4. Tidy the lounge room
5. Wash the dishes
6. Sweep/mop the kitchen floor
7. Clean my computer desk
8. Go shopping for more food/kitty litter for Stevie
9. Put clean clothes away
10. Do some kind of exercise (yoga/pilates class?)

Stevie hurt his paw today while he was out in the garden. He was attacking the bees that like to settle on the rosemary bush, and must have swiped a sharp branch. He keeps licking his paw, and won't let us near it. We've taken a look and it just seems like a small gash on one of his pads, but we'll keep an eye on it over the coming days.

Stevie actually managed to not wake us up until 6:30 this morning. This is a vast improvement on his recent routine of waking us up at 4:30 in the morning. He does, however, think that we are supremely lazy, and swipes us on the head to tell us to quit being so lazy and get up.

Stevie has also taken a liking to a small blue bear that has "Stephanie" written on the front of it. He carries it around and attacks it. I'm trying not to take it as a personal insult or some kind of cat voodoo.

Stevie only drinks water out of the glass on my bedside table, the glass on my desk, the shower.

Stevie has some strange divisions between Dom and I: I'm the one who gets tapped on the head in the morning, Dom gets his feet attacked. Stevie only drinks out of my glasses of water. Stevie only stands/sits on my keyboard. I think I may just be the sucker here.

It has been a packed few days. Here are 6 of my favourite photos. For more, click through. :)

Lording over it all Originally uploaded by Miryai	Two Boys :) Originally uploaded by Miryai
1940s Style Originally uploaded by Miryai	Casablanca Originally uploaded by Miryai
Cat Portraiture Originally uploaded by Miryai	Spring is here!! Originally uploaded by Miryai

Theme change for the change of season.

No posting today. Too cranky after a night out last night!

1. Vacuum the house
2. Sort out health insurance
3. Put my car in for a service
4. Fix up the direct debit for the gym
5. Plant the jonquil and daffodil bulbs
6. Clean up the dead plants around the letter box
7. Put away all of the clean/dirty clothes in the bedroom
8. Clean the shower

Just a quick snap of Stevie and Dom from my phone - I love how he's just as interested in the screen as Dom. :)

Well, I've been semi-productive today. Dom and I went costume shopping with Peter and Emma this morning, and Dom now has a Casablanca-like suit - white suit jacket, black pants, white dress shirt, black bow tie. I didn't think that a white jacket would suit him, but he actually looks really dashing in it. We will make a good pair at the 1930s/40s Spring Swing Ball we're going to at the Australian War Memorial on Friday. :)

I also bought myself an absolutely gorgeous asian-inspired formal dress from the Salvos for $7.50. Awesome.

After we came home, I updated the budget, which always takes awhile. And it started hailing outside for about 30 seconds. There's still a lot of stuff that needs to be done around here - some tidying, vacuuming, weeding, planting of bulbs, mowing the lawn, about 5 loads of laundry.

Stevie has continued to be a little terror. We put out some meat to defrost and, savvy to the fact that Stevie would probably be after it, we put it into the cupboard above the stove. Now, as far as we can tell, there is NO WAY that Stevie could get into that cupboard. But he did, and we walked into the kitchen to find Stevie shredding the plastic bag surrounding the mince. Argh. He's a very intelligent, willful little ball of fur and claws.

I'm going to try to finally play some Mass Effect again tonight. Damn I love that game. I kind of want to play it slow just so it will last longer. I'm also going to try to continue my writing. I've switched to paper and pen, and I'm finding that it is working well for me because it makes it a lot harder to go back and change things, which means that I spend more of my time moving forward instead of editing what I've just written.

Stevie's now sitting on Dom's lap while he's playing Assassin's Creed, which we picked up from EB for $20. He's a cute little thing.

Last night Dom and I were woken around 2:30am by Stevie going absolutely berko. We had winds of around 100km/hr last night, and the place was shrieking like a banshee. Stevie was running around the house, from one room to another, back again, over the bed, under the bed, zooming around the place.

We finally got back to sleep, only to be woken up before my alarm went off by a paw tapping me on the face. Apparently this is Stevie's way of letting me know that he wants fed NOW. And ignoring him gets more tapping, but with claws unsheathed. So I opened my eyes to bright orange eyes staring at me, before the owner sneezed all over my face.

The house is looking... vaguely better. I traded off washing the dishes tonight for scooping Stevie's poop. Leading to Dom calling me "poopascoopa"....

Stevie's now sitting on Dom's lap watching him play Jade Empire. And I'm procrastinating about doing anything at all. Again.

Posting from LJ's mobile site this time.

testing my new blogging app.

Very grainy photo, but had to show off my infamous purple beanie!

Click through for photos of the actual snow. :)

Recent quotes I've liked.

"The worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them." (George Orwell, Politics and the English Language)

Clevinger had stared at him with apoplectic rage and indignation and, clawing the table with both hands, had shouted, "You're crazy!"
"They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.
"No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.
"Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.
"They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered, "They're trying to kill everyone."
"And what difference does that make?" (Joseph Heller, Catch 22)

".. Outside the hospital the war was still going on. Men went mad and were rewarded with medals. All over the world, boys on every side of the bomb line were laying down their lives for what they had been told was their country, and no one seemed to mind, least of all the boys who were laying down their young lives. There was no end in sight." (Joseph Heller, Catch 22)

"The great enemy to clear language is insincerity." (George Orwell, Politics and the English Language)