Crafty

Cat made stuff for the Cabbage Patch Kids. Comfort is now the cutest Cabbage Patch Kid on the planet. Cat finally finished the shirt she's been working on since before school started - she had to make substantial alterations to the pattern - which annoyed Cat to no end, because it was supposed to fit the classic Cabbage Patch Kids, no problem. But all turned out well. Cat also made the cutest jumper on the planet. Comfort is now well stocked in flutterbies. Mrs. Cat's Mom will be jealous. The flash made the jumper look more blue, but really it's a plum purple. Without the flash it was blurry, so I included both.


Also pictured here is Sean-Spud in his PJs which Cat did two weeks ago. They're very warm, so Sean hasn't been wearing them much yet. But he wanted his picture taken in his new clothes with Comfort.

Adventures of the Snowdrop

Cat has been working on grad school stuff - slowly but she still has plenty of time. She was delayed by getting sick last weekend. It was a weird little thing - she was really sick for like 36 hours, and then she was fine, just a little tired. Anyway, not much got done over the weekend. Just the absolute necessities. But now her references have everything they need to reference for her, and she has most of a resume and most of a personal statement. Those things are going to get hammered out this week so she can have everything ready to put into applications in one go. She's also studying for the GRE with Sean (big Sean, not Spud - Spud wouldn't help her very much . . . ), and some on her own.

Today was a Traveller day! Almost as much fun as DnD days! Anyway, two weeks ago, the Snowdrop (a modified noble's pleasure yacht owned by Sera Richelle Llewellyn, Baroness of Umkahkuu) was employed to make use of the not-so-famous-but-very-intelligent Professor Van Hawkins's latest experiments - aka chemically enhanced weapons and explosives. The thing they were supposed to make use of this on was a base for insurgents with a free-Earth agenda (not very popular in an Imperialist setting, alas). There were grenades, and a really big fire, and the ship's hired gun was badly injured (no one was surprised) and the engineer was almost killed (everyone was not happy - engineers are important! Not that hired guns aren't . . . ), and Sera Llewellan had to bad mouth the nightside starport manager. But everyone made it out okay in the end and they retreated back to another system - one far enough away to hopefully not raise suspicion.

There they played on the fancy space station. Drake Reed (the hired gun) got in a bar fight over a not happening pool game, Chester Mannix (the pilot) and Chad Ahron (the engineer) went shopping, bought toys, guns, and candy, and saw a news report about they haven't been caught yet for blowing up buildings elsewhere in the sector, and Sera Llewellan lost her artificially intelligent robot when some navy sneaks wanted to see what kind of info he had inside of him. After paying off the port security for Reed's misdeeds, and kicking them into gear to help with Sera Llewellan's problem, Captain Gerrick Ransly and the rest of the crew (minus the delinquent Reed, who was kept on the ship by the Baroness's hand maid and her tranquillizer gun) got together to muster out the robot from possible harm.

After a bit of speculative buying, the Snowdrop is preparing to depart to deal with some pirates several systems away, hopefully for more profit this time. I know everyone will wait anxiously to hear the continuation of the Snowdrop's exploits, to be continued three weeks from now, when people are mostly done taking stupid tests and things. (Cat won't be, but that's okay - the next Traveller game is the week before she takes the GRE - which isn't a big deal since she has plenty of time to prepare for both)

Discussions of the week: New nouns in Japanese since they've learned basic sentence structure, the syntax of African American English, resumes in Theatre Seminar (convenient, eh? It's supposed to be), and measured perspective in scene design.

Onset of Fall

This week, Miss Caitlin is discussing the history of the development of African American English, Theatre Graduate Programs, Japanese Adjectivals, and circles. It is sort of a full week, but Miss Caitlin is enjoying a little more free time because she is not leading a game this week. Instead Miss Adrien is, therefore allowing Miss Caitlin to play. She has to organize the next week's space adventure, but she already has some ideas for that. Perhaps Tipsy will regale you with more information about the starship Snowdrop at another time. After all, she is far more interested in that than I am.

Miss Caitlin is enjoying her work at the library. While she mostly just shelves books, she also has the opportunity to do other things, like discussing with an eleven-year-old the pros and cons of reading Brian Jacques' Redwall books in chronological order versus in the order in which he wrote them. She hopes that they will eventually give her more involved jobs later.

The weather was beautiful today, with a high of 70 degrees. The whole week is projected to have highs in the low to mid 70s. It is Miss Caitlin's favorite weather. She plans to enjoy it while it lasts - keeping last winter's ice storm in mind.

Schoolness

We're back at school and Cat's been to all of her classes at least once. Cat says Japanese is pretty cool, especially since there are people who are worse at it (yes, even with only 3 days of class, she can tell). Theatre Senior Seminar is like Theatre-group-therapy- because-no-one-knows-what-they're- doing-for-the-rest-of-their-lives. Cat's glad it only meets once a week. Scene Design got taken over by the new Theatre teacher - which threw Cat. Not that this Janet person isn't nice or not a good teacher, but Cat was mentally prepared for a Ron class. African American English involves a lot of reading, so I'm glad it's Cat that's taking it and not me. Of all the classes, Cat's the least sure about that one. She thinks she'll do well, but it will be more work than she expected.

In more interesting news, Cat got her Traveller rulebook (finally) and she has some characters and a spaceship (how often do you get to say that?!). She's working on stuff for them to do with their characters and spaceship.

Some people might find this interesting - Cat dyed her hair again, so now it's all one color. It's pretty close to her original hair color. The sun-bleached part was really getting to her.

We have a new addition to our house - Shawn Samuel. He's a perky little kid - all the same, Snibbly and I have been staying away from him. He's nice to the other animals, particularly Clem, but the other animals are on a more even size with him - Snibbly and I are afraid of the damage he might inflict on us. Maybe when he's older. . . Cat's settled on the nickname Spud for him, but only when her friend Sean is around. Otherwise, things would be way confusing.

Other than that, things are pretty normal. Cat's working on homework and studying for the GRE. She has to sign up for a date still, but she's working on it. She hasn't been writing as much as she'd like - once the spaceship thing gets off the ground, that should improve.

University

I cannot say how much I regret the lack of information I have provided this summer. Miss Caitlin has been enjoying work, though it leaves her overheated and fatigued. This week she has spent preparing for our departure.

Tomorrow, we return to University, though Miss Caitlin's classes do not begin until the week following next. She is in for a busy semester, though she has only thirteen hours of credits. She will also try to write most of an essay to receive Honors in English, as well as resuming her work on her novel series. This she has promised to Miss Allison (friend of my dear friend Gip) and Miss Courtney (companion of the esteemed Hamlet the Younger). Everyone in the room, humans and pigs alike, had been disappointed to hear of Miss Caitlin's lack of diligence concerning her own writing. I remained silent, though I was secretly overjoyed when the young misses extracted the promise from Miss Caitlin - I feel it will do her much good. I only hope that Miss Caitlin's friends will remember to encourage her, remind her, and guilt her into working.

Miss Caitlin will also be working on a science fiction role-playing game with at least some of her friends. I feel this will detract time that she could otherwise be working on her novels, but Tipsy is extremely excited about it. She keeps babbling about "space cows." Like Miss Caitlin would allow something so ridiculous in her game.

In other news, the beautiful Comfort will be accompanying us on our trip to University. Miss Caitlin has greatly missed her oldest friend's company and is glad to have her traveling with us. I only hope Comfort does not get into trouble.

Happenings

Cat's busy with camp, studying for the GRE (which is this sort of test thing she's taking in August - I guess it's sort of important), and reading Harry Potter. She's also working on the final make-up design for her costume for the release of the new Harry Potter book. Most of her time is taken up by camp though.

Now on to the real news. Anyone who knows Clem will remember that he was suffering from a beanie deficiency. This deficiency was making him look thin, ill, and distinctly un-Clem-like.


There is good news however. After Cat and Mr. Cat's Dad located the tackiest beanie-pillow currently on the market, Cat and Mrs. Cat's Mom ransacked the pillow for beanies for a Beanie Transfusion into Clem. The procedure started at approximately 3:30 and took about 45 minutes to complete. It was principally performed by Mrs. Cat's Mom because of her superior knowledge and experience in stuffed-animal emergency care. Clem is now resting comfortably, under the care of his friends. Mrs. Cat's Mom has informed us that a secondary procedure might be necessary once the new beanies settle. This would be done sometime in mid-August, before our return to school.


Let us all hope and pray for a complete recovery.

Cat Stupid and More Pictures

Sorry this took so long. Cat was stupid. First she made us take baths - both of us, even though I wasn't nearly as dirty as Snibbly. It was not fair. Though she didn't put me in the dryer and she did shove Snibbly in there - heehee. I got to air dry. Anyway, after that, she started work at camp, and then the computer was off most of the time during the day and Cat was tired and crabby at night, so we didn't get to play on the computer. Grr. We're in K-town now, checking up on the apartment and paying bills. It's kind of creepy - no one's here but us (Snibbly, Cat, and I) and the My Little Ponies. Clem and the bigger animals stayed at Mr. and Mrs. Cat's Parent's house.

So, without FURTHER ado, Greece Pictures Part 2:

Our first picture is from Mycenae - Supposedly this is where Agamemnon was buried. Not sure about that, but it was the grave circle of a very important dude. So important that later generations extended the wall to included it in the settlement - something that the Greeks usually didn't do. They liked to keep dead people out of their cities. So that they made and exception means they revered the dead here big time. They found at lot of stuff here. It's in the National Museum. I didn't see them. I'm okay with that.

This is in Nemea - near where the Nemean Games were held. They were kind of like the Olympics, or the ones held in Delphi, except they were done in honor of some dead kid. Anyway, this is the Temple to Zeus there. It was cool because you could actually walk on the Temple. We're inside the Temple in the picture, but it's hard to tell.

This is us at the Venetian Castle overlooking Nafplion. It was cool because you could climp all over it and there were murder holes and blind alleys and arrow loops and other cool things like that. There were seven separate towers that were supplied separately and had to be taken on one at a time in case of siege. It was a defender's heaven and an attacker's nightmare. Cat wanted to spend more time there, but no one else did, so she couldn't. She wanted to find how to get to all seven - instead she only could play in two. It was really hard to find how to get around - everywhere there were places you could see (and they could see you) but you couldn't see how to get there. Cat said that was part of the defensive thing.

This is at the other Venetian Castle - the one on Acrocorinth that wasn't as cool. This is part of the main keep. Behind Cat (who's taking the picture - duh) is like 10 feet and then a huge drop down to the plain below.

This is us and the plain of near Corinth. We're on the top and on the edge of the arch things you can see in the other picture. It gives you an idea about how high up we were, right? Cat didn't have too many problems with heights on the trip, but this was one of the times she was kinda nervous. We all got up and down fine (though Cat kept throwing us in the bag up or down. She said it was so we didn't get in her way. Hrmph.)

This is us in the Theater at Epadarus. You can sit at the back and hear things perfectly that are going on on the stage! On of the girls in the group sang "Build Me Up Buttercup," and we all heard her perfectly. One of the professors dropped a coin at the exact middle where the sound is the best and we heard it in the back row. It was pretty neat.

This is us in front of a smoking sulfur vent on the volcano place on Santorini. It was the closest thing to real volcano-ness we saw on the whole island. That and a lot of black rocks. Snibbly and Cat thought it was really cool. I thought it was kinda lame. No lava. Snibbly got really dirty here, because he kept leaping about, trying to look at things on his own.

This is us on the boat. See the volcanic island is in the middle of Snatorini's bay - Santorini is shaped like a crescent in case you didn't know. Cat says it has to do with the volcano thing. Something about the last big eruption that was a long time ago. Anyway, to go where the sulfur vents are, you have to go on a boat, since it's on a little black island in the middle of the crescent.

This is us and the little black island that the volcanic stuff is on. Far in the distance on the left, you see the southern part of the crescent. Beyond the bigger black island is a smaller one that Cat says is older, but still newer than the eruption, and an even smaller, older island that is the same age as the crescent. Cat says the little island used to connect to the crescent - so the cresent was like a big donut almost. There was still a little opening for the sea to come in the middle of the donut. Cat says they know all this because of the rocks, so I should respect them more. I still say they're boring.

This is us and Fira. It has pretty houses. They're all done in white and blue for waterproofing. Seriously. Everyone's like - oh, they're so pretty, so exotic, but really, they have to put paint on every year for water proofing and white is cheap, so they use white. They don't have a freshwater source on the island, so they collect and purify rainwater from all flat surfaces. That's why it has to be waterproof.
Here's us and the sunset in Ia. It's supposed to be really awesome. We thought it was way to crowded to be awesome. But that's alright - sunsets are pretty anyway.

That's it for our pictures. After that, we went back to Athens, shopped for the next day, and then got up really early so we could be at the Athens airport at the butt-crack of dawn. Cat was sleepy and her ears hurt on the plane ride. Then it took her a really long time to readjust to the time difference back at home. We visited with Cat's Grandparents - we'll be visiting them again soon for the 4th of July. Her Grandpa's doing well - he's doing things he's not supposed to and annoying her Grandma and everything! For the 4th, they'll be able to drink the wine Cat bought for him in Santorini.