Shadee’s Blog

So I guess the whole flu thing left me a tad loopy.

Today I got all nostalgic for some reason and decided to see if I could find any of the old MSX games I used to play. For those of you who have never heard of the MSX, I’ll explain what it is to you.
Actually, no… no I won’t, go read about it yourself ya lazy bastards

Anyway, I found a great emulator called BlueMSX.

And a bunch of the old games I used to play when I was a kid. Like Bakery, The Castle and Antarctica Adventure. Of course most of them are still annoying as hell to play and I got bored of them pretty quickly But it was fun to go back in time for a bit. And unlike some Emu’s this one’s not a pain in the ass to set up or get working either and it seems to be running the ROM’s really smoothly.
Well, as smoothly as the games were written anyway

The game I probably spent the longest playing again was Antarctica Adventure. It’s simple yet addictive. Basically a time trial racing game… with a penguin…

It’s a shame my mom is on vacation (well not for her, I’m sure she’s having a blast ) because this last shot I’m posting will probably have her both laughing her ass off and crying at the same time XD

The Castle was a game my family and friends used to play every day ’till like 4 in the morning because it was so addictive, and it had become a bit of an obsession for everyone to get to the end and finish it.

Unfortunately when they got close they found out that the game was bugged near the end, and it would just give some crappy lines across the screen and crap out…
*Insert rabid Donald Duck style tantrum*

So yeah, good times!

-Dee.

And we were gonna go watch Dark Knight on Sunday too damnit!
But that didn’t end up happening. Didn’t feel so great and I certainly didn’t want to infect anyone else with this.

It started Friday night when all of a sudden it felt like I’d swallowed a cup of glass shards.
My throat hurt really bad especially when swallowing. And it’s kinda been going up and down over the weekend. It’s the worst during the evenings, nights and during the mornings when besides it hurting I also wake up feeling as if there’s something nasty and solid stuck in my throat. During the day it seems a bit better though. So I dunno what it is, I’m guessing probably some kind of flu bug or infection.

So I guess I’ll keep drinking lots, and keep eating lotsa soup, ice cream and Advil like I have been for the past few days and hope it’ll clear up soon. And if not then I guess I’ll have to give the doc a visit.

Meh, we were supposed to do fun things that weekend
Better luck next time I guess.

-Dee.

I was hanging out in the inn of Shattrath because L70ETC was playing there. But then they kinda disappeared mid act. That kinda sucked but I figured hey, the show must go on right?
So I decided to take the spotlight for a bit of cow dancing.

Certain people in the crowd seemed quite attracted to my Tauren hunter and were on me faster than bears on honey. One of them even turned into a Blood Elf for me lol

So yay! My hunter made some new friends

Don’t worry if this entry doesn’t make any sense btw. It will to some XD

-Dee.

I read a thread about it this morning and found out that it’s going to be pretty soon, so I went to the official site to have a quick peek to see who the guests will be.

Of course as always I’ve never heard of 90% of the people appearing but I spotted a few in there that made me go “Oh wow! I’d love to meet them!”.

Here’s the short list of people I would love to go to Dragoncon to see:

Robert Englund (How can someone not want to meet Freddy! :D)
Robert Picardo (<3 the holodoc :D)
Michael Dorn (Worf, nuff said! :))
George Takei (don’t need to tell you who he is unless you’ve been living under a rock)
Micky Dolenz (I loved the Monkees when I was a little girl, and Micky was always my fav lol)
Adam West (The one and only real Batman!!)

So yeah, shame it’s such a ways away because besides just the celebrity guests it’s always seemed like such a fun event to go to.

Ah well, maybe next year

-Dee.

We had an appointment on Saturday to take Sophie to the new vet. She needed some shot updates and needed new heart worm meds.

Saturday morning when I put on her collar I noticed that her left ear looked a bit dirty so I tried cleaning it out a bit. Got a lot of nasty earwax so we figured we’d mention it since we had to go to the vet anyway.

Sophie did really well, even though she whined a bit in the waiting room. It was a new vet but I guess the smells are the same because she didn’t like it one bit lol. Anyway, she got her shots, and the vet had a look at her ear. Turns out she’s got a bacterial infection in there. So the vet gave us both ear cleaner and liquid meds to put in there.

So poor Sophie. She hates having crap put in her ear, and poor me, because I have to wrestle her down and force it in every day for two weeks. Just finished our second day. She was a bit better about it than the first day. She only tried to run away once.

So yeah, she’ll be gaining a bit of weight these two weeks. I feel so bad for her hahah so she’ll be getting lots of treats if she cooperates

-Dee.

… Well, not really.

But last night as I was cooking dinner I saw a bug on our kitchen window screen which I’d never seen before (Since I’m used to European wildlife, a lot of things out here are new to me). It looked kinda freaky so I had Mord take a few pictures of it for me, and after I was done burning dinner, melting plastic food storage containers and ruining kitchen towels cleaning the plastic off the stove (I was a real klutz last night and I made sure to sit my ass down for the rest of the evening so I wouldn’t hurt myself or anyone else) I took a shot of it too.

This is the one I took:

Neither of us had a clue what it was and I didn’t bother to post it last night because the camera’s battery was empty (which took a long time to get empty unlike my old camera’s so yay!).

But this morning I put the recharged battery back in and actually had a chance to look at the photo’s. It’s even creepier this close up. And of course I had to find out what it was. So after a bit of searching on the net I believe I’ve found a match. It seems to be the Nymph (young version) of a Wheel Bug. Which is one of the largest members of the assassin bug family. (If anyone disagrees then please correct me. )

So I’m glad we didn’t kill it, because they’re very useful since they eat a lot of pests.
And I’m also glad I didn’t pick it up, since I also read that it can give you a pretty nasty bite when it’s ticked off. Well the adult version can anyway, don’t know about the nymphs but I’m not going to take any chances

So yeah, another weird but interesting back yard discovery

-Dee.

I was out in the back yard this morning when out of the corner of my eye I spotted something tiny hovering above a flower bush in our neighbors’ yard. When I had a better look I found out that it was a hummingbird! I didn’t know we had those around here so that’s pretty cool. It was searching the flowers for nectar. So I quickly went inside to grab my camera. Of course by the time I managed to grab my camera, fumble around to attach the telephoto zoom lens and get back outside the little hummingbird was long gone. I was kinda expecting it but worth a try anyway.

Then when I was about to go back inside I noticed this large shadow gliding over the trees. And again.
And again…

So I looked up to try and find out what was casting it. Then I spotted this guy

So yeah, it’s not what I went out to take a picture of but I’ll take it
He was really high up so I’m amazed that between the distance, the bird moving and my shaky hands I managed to actually get him in the shot.

Can’t say I know for sure what kind of bird he is. My first guess would be a red-tailed hawk though.

-Dee.

If it hadn’t been for that damn chain link fence some of the other shots which I took but hadn’t posted before might have turned out alright.
(That’s not entirely true though, because yes, I’m aware, if it hadn’t been for that “damn” chain link fence I probably would have been mauled and/or eaten before I could have taken any of the shots but let’s look past that for a sec :P)

I wasn’t going to post any of the shots with the chain link in them because they’re just not very good. But I’ve been requested to put them up anyway, just to try and look past the obvious problem which I couldn’t really do much about and instead look at them from a caption-that-could’ve-been-had-there-not-been-a-fence-in-the-way perspective and maybe still learn a bit from these shots. (Note that some might not look like they have any chain link in there but they do, sometimes the focus almost manages to blur it out. I sneaked that wolf pic I posted in the other thread in for that reason too because you almost couldn’t see it.) The shots have all been re-sized to 20% of their original size btw. I didn’t really see the point of posting the huge versions in this case. I’m also aware that some shots are taken from weird angles and that the composition of the shot is a tad weird, but in most of those cases I was just trying to find a way to get the animal in the shot while trying to bypass at least one of the layers of fencing.

So anyway, here are some of them for the people who were interested :

Aoudad (African Goat)
Fisher
Fisher closeup
Fishers in and on a log
Fox
Fox itching
Kodiak Bear closeup
Ringtail Lemur
Ringtail Lemur closeup
Ringtail Lemur sleeping closeup
Lioness closeup
Lioness lol
Rhesus Monkey
Vulture eating
Hyena (this one hurts the most. He was looking right at me and I love Hyenas, so I really wish I’d had a chance to get a clean shot But understandably these were behind triple chain link fencing so there really was no way around it)

Guess I’ll just have to go on safari one of these days

-Dee.

Our hermit crab Stumpy has been with us for almost 4 years now. And he’s gone through quite a few molts and shells. Today I was giving him some fresh food and water and noticed that he was really active and showing off how big he was. He tends to get really active after he’s fully recovered from a molt and goes into a really energetic almost hyperactive state, digging, climbing.

Which should not be confused with the occasions when he’s digging up all his little plastic trees, throwing things, including his food bowl, around his enclosure when he’s in a fit of rage because I did something wrong, like not organize his food exactly the way he likes it or put his plastic trees and shells in the wrong places (Yes, he’s a very opinionated and high maintenance crab, and even though I’ve been known to exaggerate things a bit once in a while for the sake of comedic value I’m not making it up this time).

Anyway, back to the point.
As he was stretching his limbs I realized how insanely huge he is now compared to when we first got him. So I dug up the little shell he was wearing when we bought him, got Stumpy out and had Mord take a comparison picture for me while I was making sure he didn’t run off.
He’s got his legs pulled in a bit in this shot but I’m sure you can still see the difference

Click the pic for the omghuge-version.

-Dee.

Letting the dog out for a quick last pee in the evening on bare feet = bad idea.

This morning I found out that my feet are covered in mosquito bites
I always thought having a bite on your finger or hand is the worst place because they tend to start itching a lot when you pick things up and are doing every day stuff. But man was I wrong. At least when they’re on your hand you can try to avoid touching things with those particular fingers/places on your hand. But you can’t really avoid walking

So ya. Major pain in the butt (well, feet). Especially since the bastards didn’t just get the top but also managed to get a few bites out of the very bottom of the side and the hollows of my feet (I was wearing a short sleeve T-shirt btw, so why they had to go for those near impossible places instead of my bare arms is beyond me).

So blah, I’m gonna put on some shorts. That way at least I’ll only be annoyed by the ones I’ll be walking on and not by my pant legs constantly making the top ones itch as well

-Itchy Dee.