I am bad at this…

I need to get better at this.  So.  HELP ME CHOOSE A DERBY NAME?!

Derby?! you say?  Why yes, I have started Fresh Meat with the Christchurch Roller Girls Dead End Derby.  I LOVE IT.  And I need a supercool name.

Acrimonia, Shamrocked, Slamrocked, Shamrock and Roll, Tremors, Princess Slaya, Or something else, feel free to suggest things!

I need to get back into this.

I read one of my last entries and it made me giggle, especially this part:

Also I completed an application to volunteer at Christchurch Women’s Refuge.  I figure doing a few hours a week will help get me back into the swing of things so I am ready to go by next year when I get to start my course again.  If they don’t have space for me to volunteer, I am going to volunteer at Victim Support.  I am hoping to get in at the refuge though since it is where I would like to work after I get my degree.  If they already know me, it’s a foot in the door!

Two years on, and I do indeed work there!  I just stuck around until eventually they started paying me!  It is a nice change, I have to say.

This morning I met Kenneth’s father (yes, after almost a year of being together because timing is a thing) and then took Kenneth to the airport.  He is headed for the big gaming conference in San Francisco (he’s a video game developer) and then he’s taking an extra week to travel around a bit.  He has booked tours to the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon which is awesome.  Then when he gets back we’ll celebrate our year anniversary which is technically while he’s away.

Today I bought myself a kitty clock, you know one of those with the tail that wags?  Except I put it by my door and every time I leave my room I look up and there’s this black shape there and it scares me.  Kind of pathetic, non?  I love it anyway though.  I think it speaks to my cat lady qualities.

Speaking of the cats, they are all doing well!  I should put some pictures up, but perhaps another day.  The birds are well too!  Loud, as usual.  Quinn got a claw stuck in my bed canopy yesterday and while I tried to help him out he bit me which was less than fun, but at least he didn’t hurt himself, just my finger!

I am going to be taking Irish classes this year, starting on Monday!  I think I am dragging Alina along with me too, which is awesome.  The classes are out at the Christchurch Irish Society which was originally founded because Eamon De Valera was coming to visit New Zealand in the 40s and Auckland had an Irish Society and CHCH didn’t, so they scrambled to found one.  The building is now all dusty and old, but I like it!  And a lot of the class members (I say a lot, but there’s like 10 of us) are from Ireland, so I can practice speaking Irish with the correct accent, unlike being taught German by Americans.

What else, let’s see…  Next week one of the housemates is having adenoid surgery so I’ll take her in for that and drive her home.  She’s been on the waitlist forever, so this is great.  I think I’m the only one home with her next week on Saturday as well, so I’ll play nursemaid and take care of her.  She should heal up quickly though, hurrah!

Hurrah!

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christchurch is a great city, real life things, visas and such

I applied for my resident’s return visa today!  It’s an Australian visa because that is where my permanent residency is, but I need THAT visa, to get the New Zealand one when I come back to the country in August.

Also I completed an application to volunteer at Christchurch Women’s Refuge.  I figure doing a few hours a week will help get me back into the swing of things so I am ready to go by next year when I get to start my course again.  If they don’t have space for me to volunteer, I am going to volunteer at Victim Support.  I am hoping to get in at the refuge though since it is where I would like to work after I get my degree.  If they already know me, it’s a foot in the door!

We had some wonderful friends over yesterday for dinner.  Their house was flooded during the huge storm and they are staying with parents for the time being while it’s fixed.  It’s a stressful situation all over, so we thought we would cook them something awesome (lasagne) and have brownie and ice cream for dessert.   It was nice!  But speaking of weather, there’s more wild weather headed towards NZ and while the North Island is going to get the brunt of it this time, instead of is, we might get yet more heavy rain.  That is uncool.  Christchurch doesn’t need any more badness!

<3

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floody shaky christchurch, photos of cats forever, yay family

My family is the actual best.  Just so you all know!

The weather has been wild here lately and there was much flooding, though our house was safe.  Poor Christchurch.  It’s nice and sunny today though!  Even hot, but I have popsicles.  They are important. I am looking forward to heading to the US in the northern summer, yay!  That’s really all that is happening around here at the moment.  But cat photos!

Echo in her favourite place, on the neighbour’s roof:

And sleeping in the laundry the other day.

I have less photos of Ariadne because she tends to look like this:

She does not hold still and she always looks a bit haunted.  But she’s wonderful!

And Helios on the fence outside my window, looking magnificently pudgy.

 

Kitty surgery!

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echo echo echo, so many cats

Echo is fine!  I took her into the vet in the morning and picked her up at around 4 in the afternoon.  She was so ridiculously drugged it was crazy.  Her eyes were huge and she couldn’t walk well.  The vet told me Echo probably wouldn’t have an appetite and she would probably sleep for the rest of the day because of the drugs.  Echo proceeded to inhale a bunch of food and then she stayed awake all night which was SO MUCH FUN.

By 10 am she was back to normal, drug-wise.  And since the surgery was just about dealing with her teeth, they said she could go outside today.  I let her out and she proceeded to jump out my window, curl up on the floor outside my room, and fall asleep.

She’s been there for like 6 hours, though she came inside once to cuddle and for more food.  Why she couldn’t sleep in my ROOM is beyond me, but whatever works!  She’s back to her old self, jumping on tall things and having too much energy for her own good, sleeping on the ground excepted.

That’s my girl!

OOPS

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flynn the lovebird, quinn the lovebird, yep that's basically it

HELLO LOVELY FAMILY.

I have been very busy, mostly taking care of sick cats.  Echo is fine now, but she decided to cost me lots of money by getting ill on a public holiday.  Thanks, toots.  And because I then spent a few days watching her instead of sleeping, I avoided the internet quite a bit.

But hi!

The other news is that I got another bird.  I was actually on the trading site here in NZ looking for a small carry cage for Flynn.  In the cage listings there was an ad for another lovebird.  The ad had been up for four months and little wonder because it was in the WRONG PLACE.  And in the photos, the bird’s cage looked disgusting.  I couldn’t ignore that so I decided to go check it out and it was even worse than in the photos.  The cage hadn’t been cleaned in months.  The drinking water was covered in algae and the food had a lot of poop in it.  The bird was covered in nicotine stains.  So I took him with me and we visited a vet the next day.  The bird was miraculously okay aside from malnutrition, but the vet was horrified at the state of his feathers so he asked for the info and made a report to the RSPCA.  Which is good because I was going to if he didn’t.

My plan was to sell the bird on since I only really got him to get him out of that place.  But Flynn got along so well with him instantly (which apparently never happens with lovies so hurrah) that I’m keeping him.  His name is Quinn and he’s a Peach-faced Dutch Blue Lovebird.  His feathers are still stained, but he looks WAY better than he did at first.  And once he molts he’ll be back to normal.

In the second photo you can see his tail is all chewed because the other bird in the cage with him (they wouldn’t let me take that bird too, I tried) was beating Quinn up out of boredom because they didn’t have any toys to play with.  When I took Quinn the put the other bird into a different, bigger cage though so I hope it’s okay now.  Especially since they’ve been reported.  Quinn’s beak is still stained greenish because of the algae water and it’s still a little beat up but he has calcium now so it’ll sort itself out in time.

He wasn’t used to people at all, but now he will sit on my finger and it’s awesome.  And Flynn continues to be delightful.  So there.  My life is animals.

I HAVE HAD QUITE A WEEK. More about it later.

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adventures in not gardening because bees

Guess who has two thumbs, smells faintly of raspberries, and managed to squirt raspberry conditioner straight up her nose at the shop while attempting to smell it.

If you didn’t guess This Girl, I’m actually kind of sad for you.  Seriously though my hands were shaking and they kind of squeezed and it went right up in there and all over my finger.  Which meant I had to wipe it on my shirt covertly.  Which was kind of difficult, considering how hard I was laughing about it.  I nearly fell over.

ANYway, shopping eventful but completed.  I was going to dig the broccoli out of the garden but I can’t.  Bees.  So that’ll happen later or never.  Because bees.  I kind of never want to leave the house again considering I have had to do things this entire week and it’s exhausting me, BUT it feels good to like…exist in the world.

Eventually I will take the Gothmas tree down…  Tomorrow.  I will stay at home and clean my room and vacuum and take the Gothmas tree down.  Place your bets not on whether this will actually happen or not!

Flynny

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flynn the lovebird, my mother is bound to mention I have not included a pic of the garden but it is al the way outside

Kelly requested more photos of Flynn and so I provide.  Also a video.

And the video is on Youtube here!

Lifesaver

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complaining about technology, yay for programs that fix it

I hate Windows 8 so so so so much.  SO much.

BUT.  My friend Laura who is awesome and amazing and like SO pretty told me she has WIndows 8 too, and hated that she didn’t have a start button, so she downloaded something called Classic Shell which puts a start button back on the task bar for Windows 8 so it runs less like a tablet and more like a computer.  Which is what I bought so it’s obviously what I wanted.

It’s a free download, so if you have WIndows 8 and lament the loss of a Start button too, there is hope!  It’s so nice.  Because before this, I had to GOOGLE how to shut the stupid thing down.  And how to get to My Computer.  And how to get to Windows Explorer.  AUGH.  Least user friendly version of WIndows EVER>

Sad sigh

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bewarre complaining ahead, first world problems

I finally had to replace my beloved purple computer.  The battery just stopped charging and when you add that to the fact that it takes about 20 tries to be able to hit the start button just right to make it come on in the first place, it was just time.  I am annoyed though because it means I now have Windows 8.  Which I don’t think I can use the language to express how I feel about it in a family-friendly environment.  You can use your imaginations.

It’s also smaller that my old 17 inch computer, which I am not pleased with.  I LOVED the size of it.  I’ll get used to it though.  It was necessary, if frustrating.  Plus the guy at Dick Smith Electronics gave me a discount because I was nice to him.  SCORE.  So I got forty dollars off the already on sale computer.  All up, it was 150 bucks off.  Not bad for 8 gigs of RAM and 750gb of storage space.  It still has an i5 processor which my old one had because I upgraded it back in 2010.  But it doesn’t overheat like Old Purple did which is another reason I finally had to bite the bullet.

Flynn continues to delight me, and my cats remain cuddly, perfect princesses.  I don’t think there’s any more news and I really should stop complaining since I was able to actually BUY a new computer so this is all like the biggest first world problem ever.

I would rather have bought a car though.  Ah well.