Chuki turned 7 this past Wednesday, we think. He was a rescue kitten after-all, and we estimated his age at 8 weeks when we got him in July 28th, 2001, but later the vet thought he might have been 5 or 6 weeks (!) since his teeth were small and he was still suckling at our fingers, like he had been separated from his Mom before 8 weeks. We didn’t update his “birthday date” though, so May 28th it has been for the past 6 years.

Yeah, kitty birthdays are dumb to some people, but we don’t have any kids and have to take it out on someone.

We bought him some toys and a “Furminator” (found Via Mary-Robinette Kowal’s blog this weekend, more on that later) and I cracked out the bead case and made him a few new necklace collars. He liked the wooden bead one best, so he’s now sporting a fancy new collar for the summer months.

Then we ate 1 piece of cheese each and took birthday photos.

For some reason it has this library of really dorky photo frames you can use on pictures taken on the phone, such as this fantastic one I used to turn the feline Hoover, Ollie, into a wild west gunslinger.

Ever wonder what one of those sparkly cat balls looks like when a cat chews it open and turns it inside out?

No, me neither.

So, I’m wasting time and I found this site that generates a cyborg moniker based on your own name. I did one for Chuki and, considering the fact that Chuki is a fuzzy little cat, neither humanoid nor particularly efficient at manslaughter, the result was pretty funny:

Mine isn’t as dramatic, but is kind of appropriate since I am a pretty curious explorer anyways:

I’m having fun playing with all this fun Internet stuff aimed at bored teenagers. I think Wednesday is my “re-living my Internet childhood” day.

Ollie is staying at our house for a bit while we cat-sit for Colin and Em, and he’s learning a few things from our cat, Chuki:

1. Climbing up towels to sit on the towel rod is harder than it looks.
2. I don’t fit on Chuki’s window ledges.
3. Chuki is allowed in the backyard but I’m not because apparently I’m a “flight risk.”
4. My food is okay, but when I try Chuki’s food they say “No” and “Bad.” I don’t know what it means when your food is “No” and “Bad” but Chuki still keeps eating it. I hope he doesn’t get sick.
5. Dust bunnies don’t taste as good as you’d think.
6. Chuki likes to spoon, but only if no one is looking.
7. Chuki told me that if I lick the spilled beads from the dungeon studio floor, little colourful dots will appear in my poop.
8. I don’t fit under Chuki’s couch.
9. Apparently, no one meows while Uncle Adam is watching “24.”
10. If my head is under the bed but the rest of me is not, I’m still invisible.

I can’t really explain why I am so restless lately. Not in the large sense, the “what am I doing with my life?’ sense. On a smaller scale, “what am I doing at this exact second?” Most women “putter” and that’s fine, but I interrupt my puttering to putter with something else, and so on so at the end of the day I have started 82 projects and finished nothing.

It’s getting to be that way for my art, too. I am so excited about so many new techniques I want to try and many new pieces of equipment I have bought, (against the advice of my credit card) that I can’t sit down long enough to actually do anything. Case in point – yesterday. I was making a clock by dismantling it and flipping the plate to make it run backwards.

In the middle of this, with half the clock gears scattered around my workbench I noticed a bead on the floor – a pretty expensive lampwork glass bead and perfect choking size for the cat. I picked it up, got out my bead bins and put it back in its compartment. I was about to close the lid when I noticed some really nice clasps I had from a necklace I took apart a few weeks ago and I got an idea for a new design of collar for Chuki (the aforementioned cat, who does not like collars, but will proudly wear his tags if I put them on a nice beaded necklace for him.) so I pulled out the supplies and started beading. Partway through THAT I remembered that I was going to make a homemade bead spinner and this would be the perfect project to try it on. Out came the glue guns, dowels and a margarine tub (Okay, yes, I did throw away ¼ tub of margarine for this, but I really wanted to try it and had no empty tubs) and off I went. At the end of the day my workbench was littered with clock parts, beads, a beading tray, my wire storage box, 15 handmade wire beads I had just finished and three books on woodworking that I had found while looking for the fire mountain catalog. I had started a total of 9 projects and finished a total of none.

At this rate, it will be 2008 before I have anything to sell on ETSY.