Assorted Stuff

There are some things that cannot be shown, and yet words do not adequately describe them.

For example, Mickey and I have developed a nighttime ritual recently. Because of his massive amounts of shedding, I have been unable to snuggle him as often as I used to for fear of killing my washing machine and dryer with fur lint. This has resulted in him spending more hours a night out and about for exercise in the dining room, where shedded fur on a rug is easier to remove. His normal routine involves a lot of what I call "under-chair bunny yoga"; find a chair, crawl under it, assume the "loaf" position and meditate, then find another chair, repeat process, and so on. This is occasionally broken up by trips to the litterbox, which he seems to have decided is the best place for any photo opportunites that may be considered as he will sit up and prop his paws on the rim of the litterbox in a pose worthy of any ingenue on the red carpet. Afterwards, he will hop down, leave a few poops outside the box (souvenirs for the fans, perhaps?) and go back to meditating.

The new ritual begins with a tug on my pants leg, or if I am not wearing pants, a nose bump against my ankle and possibly a pawing at my shin. That has always guaranteed him some petting (and still does) and sometimes that's enough to make Mr. Mick happy and he'll scamper off to do some more bunny-yoga. Sometimes, though, he will move over to the blue rug in front of my husband's desk next to where I am at the computer and lounge. That is now my signal to get up and go lie down next to him so he can come over for the exchange of kisses. Sometimes, I will lie down on the rug first and he will immediately leave whatever he is doing in order to stick his face up against mine and give my face a good licking while I scratch behind his ears, give him an ear rub or pluck as many tufts of loose fur as he will tolerate before he goes dancing away with a happy little ear and tail wiggle.

He will only do this if we are alone, so it is impossible to capture video or photographic evidence of the ritual, but it is the sweetest of moments. No matter what kind of day I've had, it is always much cheerier afterwards.

The candle party I mentioned in my last post went quite well. Mr. Mick was the star of the show and was brought out by popular demand after the candle stuff was over for much petting and oohing and aahing. Many of the guests had only seen him in pictures and were absolutely overwhelmed with the in-person cute. His Majesty tolerated the adoration of his subjects quite well, content to snuggle against me while everyone petted him and told him what a gorgeous boy he was. He even allowed a couple of the guests to feed him some treats before he was returned to his cage for his afternoon nap.

In other news, my work on the Milo's Bunny square has been put on hold until after the holidays. I have finished one square and it came out lovely, but there's still one or two spots where the execution needs to be tweaked before I'm happy with it, and right now, I've got some other projects that need to be worked on for holiday gifts. I will be picking it up again as soon as the holidays are done, though; I just found out that one of my friends and his wife are expecting their first child in May, and I want to make a Milo's Bunny blanket for them.

A few more bits of PaintShopPro fun for you (since I still can't find my darn charger): these pics are all done with an effect called Time Machine, which will render an image in the style of different photography techniques; from the early days of Daguerrotype--

(click on these to view them larger, the effects are awesome)

to the Cyanotype of the late 19th-early 20th century--

to the look achieved with the box cameras of the early-to-mid 20th century--

to a more modern developing technique known as "cross-process" achieved by processing color film with chemicals designed for processing a different kind of film (for example, the effect shown is achieved by using chemicals for processing photo film on slide film)

Hmmm, I should try putting a bunch of these together and making an Andy Warhol-style Mickey poster or something...