mistressofmuses

On Saturday, everyone returned from their respective "trips." I have lots to catch up on.

Alex went to a model show in Kansas last week, so I brought the dogs and stayed with my mom and sibling for a few days, Wednesday through Saturday, since I didn't have access to a vehicle at home, plus didn't want the dogs to be alone for 9+ hours while I worked.

Berry Mad got to stay home alone, though we of course made sure she had a full pond and she got the last of the most recent batch of crickets.


She's so cute! Standing up all tall.

I was very worried about the extended time with the dogs in the house with Jaspurr, the new cat. Not so much because I expected anything to go badly, but just knowing that if something did go wrong, it could go extremely wrong.

Fortunately, nothing bad happened! Really... nothing much at all happened.

Jaspurr did stay upstairs basically the whole time, but he also didn't seem distressed about it. He did not hide or get anxious. He just didn't want to be around the dogs, though it seemed like he sort of enjoyed watching them. That was a relief, because that was basically my ideal scenario: cat with his own safe zone to stay in without needing to be confined, with no evident stress for anyone.


This was basically the whole three days: Bella in motion, Cy oblivious, Jaspurr judging from the railing of the upper floor.

Bella noticed the cat a few times, but was more jealous that mom would go upstairs with treats for him and to play with him than upset/interested in reaching him. Cy also noticed him a few times, and he had a meltdown about it every time, because he couldn't figure out how to get upstairs (as we had the bottom of the stairs blocked off.) Cy loves cats, ever since he got to "help raise" some orphaned kittens our friends were bottle feeding. Cy has some of the strongest paternal instincts I've ever seen in any animal, and he loved those kittens.

Cy did realize that sometimes he could specifically see Jaspurr in the hallway mirror, which reflects more of that upper floor than is visible from the living room, so he would just stand there and stare at the mirror and cry about it.

More pictures of the dogs:

Saintly Sister Belladonna, true martyr.

The dogs and I slept downstairs in the basement, so that we could shut the door on the dogs and give Jaspurr his house back overnight.


Cy was pretty happy about the basement sleeping arrangements, since the couch was wide enough for him to sleep on it with me.


Bella was a little less enthusiastic about the basement, because you can hear everything else going on in the house so loudly. I'm not sure if she knew it was people walking around upstairs, or if she thought the ceiling was haunted, haha. She'd walk around trying to figure out the source of the sounds.


Bella in the living room with the rainbow banana.


Dogs on couch.

Some pictures Taylor sent me while I was at work:


Couch dogs.


The saddest beast the world has ever seen.


Cy, helpfully assisting with opening the bathroom door.


Cy watching the oven dog TV.

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Alex's drive out to Kansas on Thursday was fine, but unpleasantly windy.

The hotel he stayed in was quite nice for a relatively inexpensive hotel. Dated, but clean and everything worked. (Which was better than we can say for the one we stayed at in South Dakota, damn.)

The Breyer Midwest model show was on Friday.

Alex did pretty well!


18 placings out of 50 models is pretty good. 6 NAN cards and one sectional champion! (Sectional champion also came with a prize model, "Sorry Not Sorry," which was a special run from BreyerFest last year. However, Alex already had this model, so he sold it to his table-mate, since she wanted one.)

BreyerWest/now BreyerMidwest has, for the last several years, had an event-exclusive model. These are only available to people who attend the event themselves: you cannot have someone else pick it up for you. This year was a glossy version of the portrait model Marc of Charm!


He's so shiny!

This is one of my favorites of Breyer's recent sculpts (sculpted by Jennifer Scott, an artist who lives fairly local to me, and who by utter coincidence is a mutual acquaintance of a DW friend of mine!) The regular Marc of Charm model is part of the general Breyer line, and we have wanted to see him in gloss ever since he was released. (Breyer sometimes does special gloss runs of other regular run models, but while others of his release year were, Marc of Charm was never never included in those events. We were SO EXCITED that he was the event model this year.)

The drive back from Kansas to Colorado on Saturday was also apparently very windy and unpleasant, but uneventful. Alex is super wiped out and unfortunately hurting pretty badly, but it was a good not-quite-weekend.

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It was nice to have a couple days that I got to hang out with Taylor and my mom, and while I started off being very stressed and anxious about the dogs and the cat, it all went just fine.

Monday was our last day in Arizona. Our flight was late in the afternoon again, so we still had some time to kill.

Taylor needed to work a half day, so got up super early. They worked in our hotel room for the first chunk of the morning.

Alex asked me to go to Starbucks and look for one of their Arizona mugs if I had a chance to. The nearest Starbucks was a mile or so away, so my mom agreed to go on a walk with me to go get some coffee and a souvenir mug, lol. They didn't have any Arizona mugs, but they did have a Phoenix one, so that's what Alex got, haha.


Little cactus beds in the hotel's courtyard. Not as exciting as all the cacti at the gardens, but I was still excited to see saguaros everywhere.

On the walk back to the hotel, my mom and I saw a cactus wren building a nest in a cholla!


We watched him for quite a while, flying off and coming back with more materials for the nest.

Two more of the wren:

A little after we got back it was checkout time. The resort was fully booked for Monday night, so didn't have any late checkout options. They did have storage for luggage, though. Taylor set up to finish their workday in one of the sort-of lounge sort-of restaurant areas. Mom and I hung out outside and just read or killed time on our phones. I think I fell asleep for a little while, ha.


There were flocks of grackles in the courtyard. They had lots to say and really hoped we had snacks for them to poach. (We did not.)


One of the bigger saguaros in the courtyard. (This one is just slightly visible in the first pic in this post - the second garden bed toward the top, but it's almost entirely obscured by the tree.) I do love how many of them have woodpecker nesting holes. We did see a few gila woodpeckers, I just never got a good pic!


And the little saguaros that are in danger of tipping over... this is how we keep them standing, I guess.

The flight back was fine. There was a lot of turbulence again, but we arrived fine. Taylor and I were across the aisle from each other, so we could at least make faces at each other about the screaming child. :|


Welcome back to DIA. I love you, luggage gargoyle.

It was miserably cold back in Denver. It was well worth the cost to park at one of the offsite indoor garages, since at least we didn't have to chip ice off the car. The drive back to my mom's sucked for a bit on the slick roads, but we made it. I picked up the rest of my stuff, and then she took me back home.

Didn't get home until pretty late, but it was nice to be back. <3

One of the group things that's always included in the company trip is a nice dinner. This time it was at one of the fanciest of the resort's restaurants.

We had a private area on the rooftop, which was quite lovely.


A nice view, even with the parking lots and all.


A lovely sunset. Again, even with the parking lots.

Four pictures of food:

Really tasty tomato soup.


Wedge salad. Also quite good.

For the main course, we had the choice of steak, chicken, or salmon.

All three of us picked the salmon.


It was so good! Cooked absolutely perfectly. Served over polenta, with asparagus and mashed potatoes as the sides. The potatoes were also shockingly good, ha.


Desert was a hazelnut cake with chocolate ganache and mousse, with a bit of caramel drizzle.

The desert was very good, but one of the waiters told someone who'd asked about it that "it has the flavor profile of a Twix" which was a) not terribly accurate and b) extremely hilarious to all of us at the table. We were all I think a bit tipsy at that point, but we all found it way too funny.

I went with mojitos for my drink of choice for the evening, and those were really good too. My mom went with those as well, and she also really liked them. I don't know if she'd ever tried a mojito before?

And then Taylor's boss gave all of us edibles, lol.

It was a really nice evening, and fun to hang out and chat with everyone. It started to get a wee bit chilly on the rooftop (though I think it didn't dip below the 50s, but there was a bit of a breeze) but they did have some portable heaters to keep it pleasant.

I think we tragically missed some drama later in the night where someone took a swing at some other dude on the dance floor inside and got dragged out by security? (Not any of our extended party!) We always miss the crazy shit because we're boring and wimp out earlier than most, haha. (Long day + three drinks + a couple hours of socializing absolutely did me in, lol.)

On Saturday we opted out of the group hike, since my mom wasn't sure her foot would be able to handle it. She felt okay to walk, just on easier terrain.

We picked two attractions along the Arizona Boardwalk. The first one was Butterfly Wonderland.

I'm very familiar with the Butterfly Pavilion here in Colorado, having interned there for a year. This place was similar, but also had some definite differences.

The biggest difference was that the Butterfly Pavilion is specifically an invertebrate zoo. They have sections devoted to non-butterfly insects and arachnids, plus the water section devoted to invertebrates of the ocean. There are a couple fish in the ocean section (something my internship supervisor was very opposed to, lol, but she was overruled because kids love to see Nemo and Dory, lol), and there's a dove that lives in the conservatory (having been "donated" years and years ago, so he gets to live his life out there) but for the most part there are no vertebrates.

Butterfly Wonderland bills itself as "A Rainforest Experience," so they do have vertebrates of various types as well.

But time for the butterflies!


I was very taken with how shiny the blue on this guy was! He looks like a holographic sticker.


When you match your meal.

( Nine more below the cut: )

And now for the not butterflies!


There's a koi pond in the butterfly conservatory!

( Seven more below the cut: )

After this, we sat outside by the carousel for a while to let Taylor have a break. Fortunately they started feeling better, and we were able to head to the aquarium after a little bit.

I spent last weekend going as Taylor's +1 on their company's annual trip. (And since my mom works there as well, she was also there.)

This year we went to Scottsdale, Arizona!

I thought our flight was early on Friday, but it was actually late. Taylor worked a half day before we headed to the airport.

We parked in an off-site garage that provides a shuttle to the airport, which was nice. Definitely easier to park than at the airport itself (and wound up being very good when we got back, ha.)


Happy belated birthday, blurry Blucifer! (I love Blucifer. He just had his 17th birthday on February 11th.)

The airport was... annoying as always, though nothing went wrong. Getting through security took forever, but moved steadily. Counting the three of us (mom, Taylor, me), we saw maybe 12 masks total in the airport? Ugh.

The flight itself was fine. I was toward the very back of the plane. I was seated next to one of the only other two masked people I saw on the plane: a teenage girl who was reading The Handmaid's Tale. Timely! While I had an extremely unpleasant woman in the row behind me, and a kid kicking my seat for much of the flight, at least she was fine to sit next to. There was a lot of turbulence both during takeoff and landing, which wasn't great, but everything was on time and we made it safely.

We met up with a handful of Taylor's coworkers and their guests, and took Lyfts over to the hotel.

(There were a bunch of those "Waymo" self-driving rideshare vehicles around, too. Hadn't ever encountered them before, didn't know that Phoenix was the third city to get them. Don't trust those fuckers, haha.)

The hotel was a resort-casino, haha.



Checking in was very slow, but we eventually made it!


But hey, there's a wall-safe in the room!

We found out the rest of the group was in one of the resort's many restaurants. They were at "Tash," which was apparently one of the fancier ones. We were warned it was hard to find, and they weren't really kidding. It's marked on the map, but with no indication that you have to go up a flight of stairs to get there.

But they were the best stairs ever:


Not obvious from a still image, but the rainbow does move. And the steps turn white when you step on them!

Taylor was grudging about having to find everyone, because they were tired. It would have felt wrong to be some of the only ones who didn't come socialize, though. Someone had ordered a couple pizzas, and when they said we could have some, we basically inhaled a couple slices each, haha. Suddenly we felt human and it wasn't at all grudging to hang out for a bit, lol. We each had a drink (and Taylor and I were both carded, lol. Flattering.)

Apparently about eight people in the party headed in, and then the last guy in line got stopped with an "Excuse me. Do you have a reservation!?" The boss's confidence just let the rest of them charge on in, lol. Apparently they worked it out long before we arrived, but it was a little funny.

We were glad we came to hang out for a bit, but we were also pretty tired from the day. Travel is always exhausting. So after an hour or so we headed back to the room to go to bed.

For all my earlier enthusiasm for the holidays, today really didn't feel like Christmas. It just felt like a Wednesday, lol.

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, I hope it was a good Wednesday!

I did do my usual baking:


Yule log cookies. (A sort of spiced shortbread-ish cookie with a sweet icing and nutmeg on top.)

I made these on Sunday night, and they turned out pretty well.

On Monday, I got up at a fairly reasonable time to get started on baking. Then the day was a bit derailed by errands that were in turn derailed by Alex having more dizziness issues, but eventually I managed to do it!

Unfortunately, it took a lot longer than hoped, so by the time I was done, I completely forgot to take nice pictures. I was in a hurry to get packed and head over to my mom and Taylor's, so I didn't have time to stage nicer ones, ha.


Kolaches! Blackberry and peach this year, again. They turned out quite good.


The cranberry bar things that I'd made. I forgot to grab a picture before I'd packed a few up. They were really labor-intensive, compared to things I usually make. (Just a lot more ingredients than I usually mess with at once. And I had to zest an orange! Lol.)

Unfortunately, they were underdone. :( I'd given them some extra time, and the edges were very much done... but the middle was still very soft. (It seemed okay when I did a knife test in the middle, but after giving it some extra time, I was afraid I'd overdone them, when I actually should have gone for longer.) Because the recipe calls for cooling completely and then frosting them before you cut them, by the time I discovered the underdone middle, it was way too late to do much for them. The edges were quite edible and very tasty, though.

Mom's surgery on Monday went really well! She didn't see the surgical site before they'd bandaged it, but sounds like they took a pretty big chunk out, which is standard for a melanoma excision. They weren't able to fully close the wound. But she's walking around, and all the news from the surgeon and from the genetic testing they did on the biopsy was really good! She's at the lowest end of the lowest risk on basically all the factors that they were looking at. The pain was pretty bad on Tuesday, but by today had improved.

I stayed over at mom and Taylor's Monday night through this afternoon. Taylor and I played quite a bit of Final Fantasy XIV, and reached the end of part two of Shadowbringers. (Lots of fun bits. The fantasy ghost DMV. "Our story," said by the up-until-now-silent-protagonist! OF COURSE HE'S HADES. Our catboy boyfriend's most unconvincing, immediately-failed heel turn right after his identity reveal, I love him. Ardbert, my friend Ardbert, canon enemy-to-soulmate [not AU].)

We did not do any of our traditional baking at my mom's, because she really didn't want to be on her feet for that long, and just no one seemed to have the energy. We're hoping to do some New Year's baking for the favorites, instead.

This morning we did our gift exchange - I got pajama pants and books, which was exactly what I wanted, ha.

Alex came by in the early afternoon, we hung out for a while, and then did our gift exchange with each other when we got home.


My favorite stuff from Alex. :) I'd asked for the little mothman plush in the front, but then Alex also got the other mothman plush and the shirt. And a set of pens, and a cool Over the Garden Wall tote bag, plus a notebook.

Then we settled in for our usual tradition: making a pizza and watching...


Christams [sic] Twister!

(but now Alex has fallen asleep, so I don't know if we'll make it through any of the other usual holiday movies.)

It feels very unfair that I have to go to work tomorrow.

Had a few relatively busy days, at least for me.

Turns out I spoke too soon on my last post... I'd mentioned separating the two katydids, Greenbean and Moodring, because they seemed to not really get along/possibly stress each other out. I concluded by saying that that meant we weren't likely to get any baby katydids.

Literally right after making the post, I went to harvest some new branches for them and clean out their cages, and...


Those are katydid eggs!

Typically, they'd be attached to a branch or something, but she affixed them to the top of the cage up by the zipper! These are actually in Greenbean's cage, which Moodring has been out of for a while, but I must not have noticed them the last time I did a cage-clean.

I don't know if they'll hatch - typically they overwinter as eggs and hatch once it starts getting warm in the spring. It's possible they won't hatch without the cooler dormancy period, or it's possible they'll hatch much sooner. We'll keep an eye on them, and see if we ever wind up with katydid nymphs.

Sunday:
I went over to my mom and Taylor's house after work. Taylor was finishing up an on-call weekend, but there weren't any emergencies, and we were able to hang out. We played more Final Fantasy XIV, getting through the Four Lords side quest series, which was fun. We also read some more of Sleep No More.


Mocha, stretched out across the back of the loveseat. (I cruelly had to move her so that I could use the folded up blanket. Unconscionable!)

Monday:
We continued hanging out, since Taylor got a comp day for having been on-call over the weekend. We played more FFXIV, getting through the Stormblood part of the Dark Knight quest, which made Taylor flail in their seat and screenshot large bits of dialogue for spoiler reasons that I've already had spoiled. We also started on part 3 of the main Stormblood quest line.

Spoilers for the plot of Dawntrail, from my second-hand spoiled perspective

As far as I can tell, at least one significant part of Dawntrail involves a society that has decided to do away with grief and sorrow by creating simulacrums of their deceased. I think I gather that it's sort of a two-fold thing, where they more or less remove any memories of the actual people, in favor of creating artificial, undying, but also "perfect" versions of them, so that no one has to ever be sad about losing someone important to them, but at the cost of remembering the real versions of them. I could be wrong about some of that! Taylor had not played the third segment of the Dark Knight class quest in a long while, and HEY, TURNS OUT A LOT OF THAT WAS ABOUT THE SAME THING. This little class quest is from YEARS ago, but seems to have inspired the new expansion pretty heavily.

We also finished reading Sleep No More, so next time we will probably start on The Innocent Sleep.


Mocha, all lit up and glowing in the windowsill.

She is the most *talkative* cat I think I've ever known. She also sounds extremely grumpy, like she's unhappy meowing, but that does not seem to ever be the case. She is VERY insistent for food, which I'm glad of. She's eating quite a bit, which is a good thing, because she's so skinny! She is definitely a *little* cat, but she should probably weigh closer to 8.5 or 9 pounds or so, would be my guess. She was 6.66 lbs when picked up by the shelter, maxed out at a bit over 7, then dropped back down to 6.-something after her dental surgery. She's not skin and bones or anything, but you can feel a lot of spine and hips. So I'm glad she's eating well.

I also rescued/relocated a black widow spider from my mom's sink, but she'll get her own post.

Tuesday:
Mocha's talkative nature presents itself the instant someone is awake. Taylor was on the early shift at work, so got up around 5:45, meaning Mocha was up and loud at 5:45, which meant *I* was up by 5:45 at the first yell, too. I'd gone to bed as early as I could, but for me turbo-early is still midnight, ha.

Alex wasn't feeling well in the morning, but eventually he was able to come pick me up, and we went to Hudson Gardens. They are doing a jack-o-lantern festival of sorts, so there are lots of carved (foam) pumpkins around the gardens, which are quite neat. (They'd be cooler lit up, but the nighttime event is a paid, ticketed event.) Walking around during the day is free, ha. Unfortunately, it means that there are a few areas that are closed off (even more so than already, since they'd doing a lot of re-growth of areas that have been eroded.) So less in the way of wildlife to be seen, but still a fun walk. This will also get its own post.

And when I got home, I'd gotten a gift in the mail!


spikedluv told me she'd seen something that made her think of me.
I love her! She is adorable and so soft! <3

Today:
Back to the dentist for a filling. Luckily that was the *only* problem they found at my checkup, and it was one I already knew about.

Back in June, I bit down on a chunk of gravel in some green beans. ("Steam in bag" type green beans.) A couple days after that, I noticed that a small filling had fallen out, so I'm fairly sure that was what caused it. Glad for nothing worse than that! Also glad there wasn't a problem that I waited a few months to deal with it... I thought my appointment was sooner than it was, and even when I realized it wasn't, it didn't hurt so it never felt like an emergency.

(But this healthy eating stuff is crap: I eat green beans, I bite a rock! I eat a salad and a couple weeks later we get a recall notice on our receipt that that salad from a couple weeks ago was recalled for listeria contamination! Dammit.)

I took the day off for the filling, since sometimes when I'm numbed for that it takes a very long time to wear off. It wasn't SO bad today, and I probably could have made a half-day work, but instead I took a nap and I'm really glad of it. Much as I hate that I burned another PTO day, I think catching up on some sleep was a good thing for me.

I took Sunday off of work in order to go to a baseball game with my mom and Taylor. I'm not really into sports of any kind (at least not the big team sports, though baseball is the one I'd pick if I had to), but their company goes out to a game as an annual event. They get a suite, so it's one of those private sections, and there's a bunch of free food and alcohol. A bunch of company clients come, and everyone gets a +1. So it's a good time once a year!

This year they were playing against the Cubs, so it was like a built-in consolation prize, whoever won. My mom is from Chicago, so the Cubs were her team when she was younger.


At the gate, a reminder of the last time the Rockies were good, lol. (Sadder with every passing year.)

( 4 more below the cut: )

The Rockies lost, 6-2. There were a few pretty good plays (the Rockies' center fielder had two really dramatic catches; there were some impressive home runs; lots of high-stakes "bases are loaded" type situations.) Kind of low-energy compared to other games I remember going to, and probably as many Cub fans in the stands as there were Rockies fans, ha.

It was at least fun to go to, maybe especially because I wouldn't ever pay to go myself, haha.

Last Monday (June 3rd), we went to the Denver Botanic Gardens with my mom and Taylor. We got a bit of a late start, as Alex had a doctor appointment that went more than an hour longer than it was supposed to. But we still got there with plenty of time to make it around the whole of the gardens. It also wound up being overcast, which was nice as it made the near-90° temps easier to deal with for hours!

I took... a lot of pictures. Like, I think I need to split this into four separate posts a lot of pictures.

The real star of the gardens while we were there were the irises, which were juuuuust after their peak, but were still spectacular. This first post will be devoted to all the flowers that aren't irises, ha. The second post will be the irises, the third will be all the animals of various kinds we saw, and the fourth will be the current art installation at the gardens.


The roses were just getting started, but they were already looking beautiful. And many smelled amazing, of course!

( Six more flower pics below this cut: )


Stealing a joke from my sibling: These flowers said #transrights!

There were lots of cacti blooming (and more were, I'm sure, absolutely beautiful a few days after our visit.)


The most spectacular of the cacti!

(I wish I'd gotten more pictures from this garden - there were more cacti blooming just as amazingly. Unfortunately that particular garden was from late in the day, and my phone battery was dying. I had to get a lot choosier with what I took pictures of!)

( Six more cactus pictures: )

The whole day was really nice. It was fun to spend the day together, and it was a really nice time to be outside. I'm so glad for the warm weather, and even in the upper 80s I didn't have too tough a time. (Taylor did a bit, but we took frequent breaks in the shade for them.) I was still pretty sore from the model show on the 1st, but surprisingly didn't have too much trouble with that, even.

More pictures to come!

This is what I got done last night:





I got the pencil lines painted over. The color I chose is about a 50-50ish mix of "pewter" and "carbon black", to mimic the color of the lead between stained glass pieces. It's a lot of tiny lines! I'll likely go over these a second time at the end, once the colored sections are done.

Verdict on the longer fine-tipped brush that I was using? Mixed. It did hold more paint, but even quite thinned, the paint didn't "flow" well through the brush? The paint higher up the brush would just stay there in a droplet about halfway up, not coming down into the tip, unless I used so much pressure it lost the fine line (at which point it would blob out, and I'd have to stop to clean it off.) Not sure why that was as much of an issue as it was. It's not one of the ultra-nice (expensive! so expensive!) sable brushes or whatnot, but is a mid-quality brand. It's a brand new brush, so not at all worn, and I made sure it was clean, so not getting caught on anything coating the bristles or anything. Possibly it's just because I am using cheap craft paints, which can have uneven pigmentation, but I did thin them, and the paint that was going onto the model didn't have any gritty or goopy bits. Ah well. I may go back to a shorter brush.

Going to hopefully work on colors for an hour or so tonight!

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Spent my weekend with Taylor. We finally finished all of the "A Realm Reborn" base game for Final Fantasy XIV. We'd finished the main quest line a while ago, but there are two additional "parts" after that serving as a sort of epilogue/segue into the later expansions, plus they wanted to do some of the "optional" side material, either because it's fun or because it's only technically optional, but leaves gaps in the lore if you skip it.

The writing quality definitely started to climb as the game went on, and I appreciate that it did sort of... explore some consequences of things that were initially played straight. (Hey, maybe building your own extrajudicial militia force that answers to no one is... not a great idea, even if it's dressed up as "putting together a force to support your good intentions to help the kingdom!")

We also got through the first part of the "Heavensward" expansion, which is quite good so far. (I definitely appreciate that monsterfucking is a canon plot point. Get it, Shiva!)

(Lots of Realm Reborn feels fairly generic fantasy RPG, but I will say that watching the documentary on how they did this full reboot of the game from the ground up really makes me appreciate it more, haha. The original incarnation of the game was *rough* from all accounts, and having to support it while also rapidly trying to just build a new game from scratch [but good this time!] in secret was quite a thing to have to do, haha.)

We also finished watching Bodies, which I quite enjoyed, and I think Taylor did too. We did our usual insufferable mutual bit about comparing it to comp titles in a snotty film snob voice. "We *get* it, you watched The Prestige, Predestination, and Cloud Atlas, and you played AI: The Somnium Files. Wow, how original. *eyeroll*"