Oh my god I forgot to mention-- my college has a small colony of feral/community cats and I successfully managed to get one into my townhouse. I got her some vet care, she was surprisingly very healthy so really all she needed was some vaccines. I put some weight on her (she's very small so she's like 6 whole pounds at a healthy weight) and then found her a home with a nice young couple and their deeply, deeply stupid orange kitty. Her name is Goop (she had some kind of upper respiratory infection that that cleared a few days after I brought her inside but she was SUPER snotty and gross).

She is hands down one of the smartest cats I've ever come across. She was the only one in the colony who would make the rounds through the townhouses for food, and she didn't want any physical contact because that was how she was caught to get spayed about a year and a half ago. It took me about a month straight of putting her food in a cat carrier to get her habituated to the point I could close the door on her and she wouldn't end my life. The only way I got her inside in the first place was multiple months of feeding her in the doorway of the house and she walked in on her own in December. She lived in the bathroom for about a month before I put her in my room. The entire time, it was more like having a weird roommate than a cat.

My room is small enough that it was impossible for us to move around without getting into one another's personal bubble. We worked out a system together where the one of us that needed to move would clearly telegraph their intended path before moving (for me I would extend my leg and hold it there to give her time to move out of the way; she would do something similar but would stare at her destination and then at me and wait for me to move). When I had to get her into the carrier she HATED it. One time I had to leave her in it overnight for an appointment in the morning, and the entire night I heard her experimenting with the lock. She scared the shi

…

Ishmael update:

- my knee problems are actually structural and not as a result of acute injury my kneecaps are seated/tilt inward, which pulls connective tissue (my iliotibial band if anyone's curious) taut against my bones and I've been basically shredding/inflaming that tissue for the better part of a decade lmao. It took my college's athletic trainer 15 minutes of fiddling around and asking me to do things to figure that out. For free. No fucking clue why no one could have seen that 6 years and several thousand dollars worth of testing ago, but alas. We're not sure if I have permanent damage or if I'm going to need corrective surgery. That's another orthopedic appointment I need to figure out. I've been getting some physical therapy two days a week and it's been helping. We love having answers!

- I'm presenting my capstone tomorrow! I'm exploring the efficacy of management methods for invasive species, and how those methods may differ across species. If the rest of my classes go well, I'll be graduating this May. Job hunting has been... less fruitful. My dream for YEARS has been to work at National Parks as an interpretation ranger, which-- for various reasons-- is not in the cards right now. Everyone who'd be working federally is turning to the states and other seasonal work, so that shit is crazy competitive right now. We'll see how it goes! If things really aren't working out, I'll slink my way back into camp just to give myself some breathing room for a couple months while still working in a related field.

- My 20 credit hour semester has thoroughly kicked my ass. I've been trying to give myself room to do other things besides run myself into the ground being an academic weapon, but we're in the homestretch so things are getting Crazy. In the past two days I've gotten like 3 hours of sleep lol. The good thing is that with the way my college schedules classes, all but one of them will be done at the end of this week. I have maybe one exam early

…

lmao Ish update

knee injury: nothing showed up in the scan but I'm in pain every day so that's Fine I guess. I now have a cane at the ripe old age of 22

college: in my senior year, dying but I'll probably make it. Staring down the barrel of a 20 credit hour semester in the spring.

in general: got a tattoo on my calf! It's an emperor moth in front of a sword. It has many meanings and also none at the same time (I got it for a reason but I find a lot of enjoyment in asking people what they think it means + what it means to them) so she's got layers to her now. In getting it, it appears that it sort of reset the nerves in my leg, so I no longer experience chronic pain in my knee (the one I injured like 5 years ago, not this summer). No one really knows why that happened??? I'll take it tho

I'm also taking horseback riding lessons and having a swell time! I really enjoy learning about horse behavior. 95% of communication (horse-to-horse and horse-to-human) is about pressure and presence, which is something I just innately understand and apply to the majority of animals I handle anyways. I'll be continuing through the spring too! 

I know I talk about camp and it's usually the Big Events that are Pretty Bad, but I cannot stress enough that that's only like 10% of my experience and the other 90% is highly enjoyable but not very interesting to talk about

SpecterTheGreat wrote:

Heya Ish! Regardless of login frequency, it's always nice to see you and your updates.
Are you on vacations? I assume that you're busy based on your post, so I hope that things can be sorted out without classes loading up your schedule. It's hard to commit to several things at the same time and more so if it's something out of your control. So, seding good wishes and hope you can figure out what is the best course of action to take. Stay safe!

My pattern of behavior is that I'll slide back in here with ridiculous activity at the start of a semester, but the millisecond my midterms roll around I completely forget about doing anything here and then the anticipatory dread stacks up until 10 days turns into 4 months lol. I've been doing trips and stuff, like going up by the Great Lakes and disappearing into the woods of Michigan's upper peninsula for a couple days (if y'all ever find yourself near a designated dark zone where the night sky is really clear, I highly recommend going out of your way to find a spot to stargaze). I'm not going back to camp this summer-- looooooong story short, I have no desire to align myself with the council anymore, so I have more free time on my hands than I've had in 4 years. Trying to take some things slow and focus on my health but I really need to nail down a job with the same kind of engagement I'm used to that also isn't completely soul-sucking

Ishmael jumpscare!

Done with classes for now, but I’m stretched so thin these days that I just can’t really find my way back here regularly nothing sticks for me anymore. but I really did think I had been back here at some point after the beginning of January! I feel horrible that I constantly leave people in the lurch so it might be time for me to officially step back and resolve myself to my habit of coming and going without tying up other people in plots I never complete. Maybe I’ll come to a decision on that the next time I return from a long absence. We’ll have to see.

All that aside, I’m sending my strength to those of you still in the trenches of finals haha

Opulenti's mouth twitched ever so slightly, as if he was inclined to disagree on several fronts, but the general needed to pick his words carefully. The Devout was not one of those pompous courtiers that he could speak his mind and face no repercussions. "I know what a temple is." he replied, his tone matching hers which, in a roundabout way, was technically his own. "Many people treated this grove as such. There are stories of people bringing their sick and injured here to be healed by the attendants."

So, my dad got laid off last week. And with that comes the end of his benefits which included health insurance. If you're unaware how American health insurance works when it's provided through your workplace, if you're laid off/fired you are-- in most cases-- able to hold on to those benefits until the end of the month, and then if you so wish you can go through something called COBRA to still retain those benefits to some degree until you're fully covered again (a gross oversimplification). 

HOWEVER through some HR wizardry, the company managed to weasel out of providing that coverage so we're in the lurch until the COBRA goes through, and even then we would likely not be staying on that plan (it's very expensive) so I can't get anything important done until we figure out the plan going forward. I've been able to get some basic stuff done but uhhhh

Ishmael wrote:

I love chronic pain I am so excited to be moving upwards of 60 pounds of things down two flights of stairs while moving out this will definitely not have long term consequences for my physical health yes whoohoo yippee

Remember this? This wasn't just chronic pain! I have been most likely walking on a cartilage tear in my knee for the better part of 4 years  

In order to know for sure, I need an MRI, which I can't get until our medical insurance situation stabilizes, which probably won't happen until at least February or so. It's not like it's an emergency, I've been walking around and doing physically strenuous activity for this long so my knee probably won't explode or anything but I'm,,,, A Little Frustrated that I can never seem to have things go right when I'm trying to address my myriad chronic problems 
 

Bliss huffed again. "I'm sure he thinks that's what he's doing, but I can handle myself. He just needs help realizing that."

She looked up as a chunk of earth crumbled off the edge of the path that switchbacked above them. The sliver of a figure could be seen quickly backing away from the edge, and the sound of footsteps receding towards the summit quickly faded.

"Great," she grumbled. "More random people."

|xxxxxxxxxx|xxxxxxxxxx|

The weasel realized the others were in hot pursuit and started to try to get away from them in earnest, snaking over the rocks as fast as it could while frequently looking behind itself. 

Also on the Pequod thing that's so funny to me! I had figured everyone was just kind of aware of what it meant but that's so interesting. I also use "Starbuck" as a last name when I'm filling out sketchy online forms that don't need my real name  because I think it's funny.

Big vouch for reading Moby Dick! I need to reread it because it's been probably about 5 years or so but I loved it when I was in middle school. Something about Ahab's fanaticism really struck a chord with me. "From hell's heart, I stab at thee" is such a fun line. What a guy

GalaxianExplosion wrote:

May I ask how grapefruit tastes to you, if you've eaten it before? I remember seeing something about the cilantro gene being the same one(?) as the grapefruit one so xD.

I've had grapefruit before but it was a super long time ago because it interacts oddly with my medications. I don't remember liking it a whole lot though but I can't remember if it was because of soap taste or not

I have the "cilantro tastes like soap" gene! I very lightly dabbled in genetics a couple years ago because my family is prone to a couple genetic health stuff and I was getting watched for Hashimoto's which is a thyroid condition that has been a thing within my family for at least generations. It's really cool to see what we can figure out from genes

I'm all for a secret santa or the shared canvas! I think it'd be fun to do the shared canvas outside of holiday stuff as well

Echowo wrote:

Like a horse?

I'd pay money to see people fight like horses

I've had a fic for Ishmael's Anatina arc rattling around in my skull for some time now. I guess it's not actually a fic because it's my characters and my storyline but,,, y'know.

It was originally going to be my NaNoWriMo project, but the month got away from me and I didn't have a whole lot of time. I usually lock down into a kind of survival mode the first 12 weeks of the semester and I have hardly any mental/physical energy to do something that requires that many creative spoons. I'm doing really well right now, so I might pick at it during this time and over break, as well. I always get nervous sharing my writing but paradoxically I have a hard time writing anything if I don't share it.

My compromise that let's me still have some creativity but less self-imposed pressure is themed music playlist. I might go with that to warm up to and start off with. I'll definitely share that one, I like seeing people's interpretations of those.


I'm generally easing back into roleplaying as a whole, not just here but other spaces/platforms as well. It's something that's very fulfilling for me and I like doing it, and it helps me a lot. I have a lot of creative energy and oftentimes nowhere to put it.