Mood: Chilly

What's this? We have a second bunny hanging around our house. He's (she's?) been a constant visitor to our front lawn and backyard since we moved in; we probably see him at least once a day. I never see the bunny on any of our neighbors' lawns, so I can only assume there's something drawing him to ours. *Looks suspiciously at a certain young black and white bunny sitting innocently on the couch* Toby, I think you're having a torrid long distance affair with this wild rabbit. I see you perched up at that window pretending not to look at him (her...?). What a scamp. My bunny, the heartbreaker. But they're two bunnies from two different worlds. It's like Romeo and Juliet but with long ears and fluffy tails -- and like all Shakespeare it can only end in tragedy. D: I tell you, I will have no part of it! Plus this rabbit is like three times the size of poor Toby and would probably squash him flat.

It's funny because every time Mason see's the other rabbit, he rushes out of the house with his airsoft pellet gun like an overzealous protective father -- only instead of caring about illicit bunny affairs, he is more perturbed that the rabbit is shitting on our lawn. It is kind of annoying, because I can't bring Toby outside in a backyard pen if there's wild rabbit feces that could make him sick. We'll have to see if this furry stranger decides to become a permanent resident or not.

I got my new Edmonton library card! I didn't have time the other day to spend a lot of time at the local library, but I did take a quick peak around. It's disappointingly small. :c I thought it had two floors like the St. Albert library but it turns out it's only one; though the fact that I can transfer any book from any of the other Edmonton branches to mine is pretty neat and makes up for the lack of physical shelf space. I immediately put a hold on The Time Traveler's Wife which I've been meaning to check out for a while, before realizing that with the bigger city comes the much bigger hold queue. (405th in line... *Sweatdrop* Should have expected that with all the movie hype.) Thankfully Sarah is kindly lending me her copy or I'd probably be on the waiting list until next year.

I'm getting very excited for the new Batman game Arkham Asylum being released on the 25th. Paul Dini himself is reportedly heading the script, and Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill are both reprising their roles as Batman and the Joker respectively (though from what I've seen from the trailers, Hamill has toned his readings down to something significantly darker than his work on the original Batman animated series' *glee*), and word is there are parts of the game you can actually play as Mister J~ THAT IS EPIC FTW. :B Mason's promised to only play it when I'm in the room so I don't miss any of the story or animated sequences. Depending on how frustrating and hard the game controls look, I may actually take a stab at playing this one myself. Maybe.

Mood: You see this happy fox? He's a happy home owner!

The very belated moving-in recap.

YAY NEW HOUSE! :B We have officially been living in our new home for one week~ Happy week-aversary, us! I love this place, and it already feels like home. *Snuggles down in her chair all cozy-like*

Right. The big move. To start with, it was surprisingly quick. With our convoy of happy helpers and a giant 14' U-Haul truck, we loaded all the vehicles, carted them to the new house, moved everything in, and were already relaxing and eating pizza out in the backyard in just two and half hours. Much love and thanks to our army of wonderful family and friends who came out and lent a hand. *Hearts you all*

The only hiccup in our otherwise smooth moving day was the discovery that our giant rear-projection 60-something inch television wouldn't fit down the bloody basement stairs. We made sure to measure the width of the staircase and door beforehand, but we completely overlooked the sheer height of the thing. =_=; The low, dropped ceiling in the stairwell was like "HAHAHAHA, EPIC FAIL." So in the end we abandoned the effort and resigned ourselves to the fact that we will have to invest in a new T.V. in a month or two, and until then are using our smaller bedroom television for the basement.

Our new neighbors seem nice, they even brought us homemade cake as we were moving in! :3 They're an older couple, though in fact it seems like a lot of older people live in our area, so it's made for a pretty quiet street so far. Everyone's lawns and gardens are all nicely taken care of and meticulously manicured -- I feel like I'm under pressure to make sure I have lush green lawns and extravagant gardens with lanterns and little garden gnomes. I'm not much of a gardening girl -- I have some nice pots with some flowers out front courtesy of my green-thumbed Mom though, does that count? *Desperately tries to not kill little flowers* *Sweatdrop*

We're more or less unpacked. There's still a couple boxes laying around in some corners and the upstairs living room is scattered with pictures and wall stuff that needs to be hung (as well as has a giant freaking T.V. sitting in it that I badly need to list on kijiji.com so we can get rid of it), but we're mostly done. I'm going to use this weekend to go check out the library that's right near us *excited* and take a gander in at the rec center across the road to see what they offer. I love that we still ended up close to a bus depot -- depending on how much time I have in the morning, I can make the 10 minute leisurely stroll to the transit center or just run out my door and wait at the stop right outside our crescent. My daily commute to work and back is a little longer now, but I don't really mind. (On the topic of the ETS, holy hannah is it hard track down bus passes in Edmonton. I thought all Shoppers Drugmart's sold them, but apparently not; I went to three different places before finally finding a 7/11 where I could buy one.)

Update to previous post: Toby is doing much better~ (I'm so glad he's finally back home. Extra thanks to the Glory Hole crew who took such good care of him for those four weeks before we moved.) The vet wasn't completely sure what caused him to get sick -- she didn't think it was a GI problem, and figures more it was just all of the stress in the past month, with the moving from our apartment to the Glory Hole then to our new house; and then having all of the people over at our house the other night so soon after moving him in. He seems fine now though, he's back to his old self, gorging himself on food and being hilariously silly. *Hugs*

He seems to really like his new room~ :3 He been binkying around and crawling all over his new sofa, and I'm going to try to build him a little window seat out of NIC panels this weekend so he can look outside. *Bunny joy*

Mood: Worried, stressed, but a bit better now.

Bunny drama.

To everyone who's been text messaging and FBing me regarding my somewhat cryptic tweets last night: Toby is doing okay now. Yesterday morning and early evening, he was fine; eating and running around and being completely silly like usual. Then in about a span of two or three hours he did a complete 180. I went to give him his dinner just after 9pm and all of a sudden he refused to move at all, he wouldn't even touch his food or react at the sight of his favorite pineapple juice or raisin treats. He seemed to just lay in a corner of his room and only moved every couple minutes to change position as if he couldn't get comfortable, and I found what looked like watery stools on the carpet.

Two different bunny health signs signaling immediate vet attention, so at 10pm I rushed him over to the Emergency Vet Clinic downtown. There was a lot of waiting when we got there, but eventually a doctor came to do a physical inspection. She noted that his temperature was too low and did a lot of feeling and prodding of his tummy which was a bit descended but she said was hard to tell what it was filled with, whether it was a blockage or food from earlier that day still. She originally wanted to keep him overnight to give him IV fluids, but came back after a while after consulting another vet and they decided that since: a) they weren't extremely versed with rabbits, and b) having him stay overnight and being handled repeatedly by strangers would have put too much extra dangerous stress on him, she said the best bet was to take him home for the night to watch him and take him to his regular vet in the morning if he hadn't improved.

We got home just after 1am, I put a blanket on him to keep him warm (he squirmed out of it after ten minutes or so), scrubbed his litterbox clean, and put out some fresh veggies for him to eat during the night if he wanted; then stayed up till 3 buried in rabbit books and web health guides. When I woke up this morning he was in the exact same position he was when I left him last night, with no solid feces or eaten food, and his ears were really cold. For the first time I thought I heard the bunny teeth-grid sound of pain. I took him down to Tudor Glen as soon as they opened and he's been there all of today. I finally got an update from the vet office after lunch saying they'd managed to raise his temperature by putting him on a warming pad, and were force feeding him a couple times through the day with a syringe, though thankfully he was finally nibbling some hay on his own. He may be able to come home tonight.

I don't know how parents go through this sort of thing with human born-from-your-flesh offspring. I spent the entire morning trying to distract myself with whatever I could do to keep from being a anxiety-ridden, crying wreck waiting for the vet to call. I cleaned Toby's room from top to bottom and lugged away all of the extra rugs we were using on top of the regular carpet because I don't know whether or not he was ingesting the frayed edges of them or what. My sister phoned to check up on the situation and out of no where I just started sobbing into the phone, then a co-worker phoned with work-related questions and at the mention of how Toby was doing I embarrassingly started sobbing again. I have been completely useless today, and I realize there are people who will never understand the emotional attachment I have to Toby or why someone can get so upset over an animal, but I also know the other people who can relate to the feeling that they're not so much pets as they're members of your family. Much love out to Chelle who came over during her lunch to provide sisterly comfort even after I got the positive report back from the vet~

I hope to talk to the doctor when I go to pick him up and see if she knows exactly what happened. It seems like GI stasis, but I don't believe the watery stools and body temperature drop are symptoms of that so I'm not sure what the problem really was. I hope he's back to his chipper self when I bring him home. *Love*

Mood: Anxious

Toby's on a little vacation away from home right now. I was told that my bunny wasn't allowed to be here while a Realtor is showing our current place to prospective buyers, so we managed to find him a place to stay for an indefinite period of time at the Glory Hole (with much thankful appreciation to Mike, Dan, and Marc) either until the apartment sells or we move to our new house. Personally I don't see why people coming in to view the apartment, or some real estate agent, or anyone for that matter, should get to proclaim that my pet rabbit isn't welcome in our own home -- but apparently that's just the way it is.

It was strange waking up this morning and seeing the empty corner of the office and realizing I didn't need to feed him. I can still go visit him every day since he's only a five minute drive away, but I can't help but still be worried about him. There's a difference between us leaving for vacation and having someone come over to our place to look after Toby where he's comfortable -- and packing him, his playpen, and all of his stuff up and leaving him at someone else's house. He was still pretty stressed out when I went over to see him tonight with the completely new place, new people, and all the new noises. It's a bit concerning considering rabbits are such evolutionary gongshows in so many ways to start with, one of which being that their health is so dependent at times on their stress level. I'm going to try to go over and see him each day, to check he's okay and settling in and eating enough -- and I don't want him to think he's been abandoned. :c

I miss my bunny.

Mood: Rabbits are entertaining

Ingredients:

1 half of a broken slinky
1 bunny

Directions:

1. Take slinky half and thread one end of it around ceiling wire of cage, just enough so it's secure but leaving most of slinky dangling in air.
2. Take bunny and place him by dangling slinky. Dance slinky around a bit to get bunny's attention.
3. Wait as bunny curiously pokes at slinky, pushes it around and stretches it out. Slinky will inevitably spring back abruptly and swing wildly around like a rubber punching bag and almost bean bunny in the head.
4. Watch bunny freak out and binky around in hyperactive joy.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until laughing hurts too much to breathe (or until bunny comes to a complete stop and is simply too tuckered out to move anymore.)

Hilarious.

Countdown until shiny exciting house possession: 43

Mood: Glad it's Friday

I downloaded the Firefox addon "StumbleUpon" and it stumbled me across an amazing UK artist named Russ Mills. One look through his gallery and I've completely fallen in love with his work. After July when we're done saving for a house and hopefully not dirt poor, I'd love to buy one of his large-scale prints to hang above the bed or the sofa~

I'd also still really like to own large prints of this piece and this piece from dklette.com. I saw them at the Christmas craft sale and thought they were really cute.

*Can't wait until she has a house and more empty wall space for art* *Hearts*

A happy first birthday to adorable Toby! He turned one-year-old today~ *^^* I took him for an annual checkup yesterday and the doctor said he's a perfect picture of bunny health! *Cuddles her Toby*

My plan for this weekend more of less consists of drawing and Guild Wars, two things which I've been increasingly wishing I had more free time for. *Sad* I just got Koss back from being stupidly captured and I have to get him to level 20 like the rest of my heros. *Rolls eyes* I have a very love-hate relationship for Koss, being married to him and all (because in the GW universe, I've decided that Koss is Ula's goony husband, because I'm a giant unbelievable nerd and think up backstories for my role playing characters like that -- and there's just something about that giant afro that screams a perfect match to my Ula who is overly butch.)

In any event, Koss, who already has proved to have a bit of a habit of being absurdly stupid (he constantly draws unnecessary badguys to us or is running off and getting himself killed when I tell him to wait at a flag) is true to his nature and goes and gets himself captured by the enemy. So I come in all heroically to save his ass, and what's the big oaf doing when I find him and the other prisoners? DANCING. Torture? Beatings? The regular hostage stuff? Oh no, with Koss it's all "Fuck that, man -- we ordered pizza!" and dance parties. Some times I question Guild Wars' character developers. (And I just found out Koss ends up running off with Meloni later on in the game. That bastard. I don't know what Ula ever saw in him anyway.)

... I think I've surpassed on my omgNERD quota for this blog post, so I should go now. ¬_¬