BBKristopher.com

The website, especially the blog, hasn't been getting much love lately. A lot of that has to do with what I've been doing the last few months. Between learning more than I really want to know about Quantum Mechanics, Solid State Physics, Leech Brain Cells, and Electricity and Magnetism; Doing an extensive rewrite on Meredith MacKenzie and the Uruk Empire, and my new time sucking addiction to World of Warcraft, I haven't had a lot of free time. I still don't, really, but I'm going to try to make more of an effect to keep up with this blog.

So, on to stuff that's actually interesting.

I just wish I would.

This isn't the worst con crud I've ever had, but it sucks. A lot. Still, life does go on.

Right now, I'm working on the third draft of my second novel, Meredith MacKenzie and the Uruk Empire. I've finished 8 chapters, which works out to around 26K words, about 20K of which is new material. Pretty much the entire front half of the novel is being rewritten, while the back half will remain pretty much intact, though some of the subplots will get a bit more emphasis than before.

I'm actually enjoying reworking the story, but I'm running up against a problem a lot of part time writers have.

Lack of freaking time.

Katherine and I are both, for various reasons, vegitarians.

Yet we go through an average of 30 pounds of dead bird every month to feed our ravening little beasts.

And that my girlfriend is funny.

Kitty Legal

I've been putting this off because I knew it would hurt, but I think it's time.

Circe had been sick for a couple of months. She'd never been a very large kitty, but during the first few weeks in November, she started losing a lot of weight. Then she came down with a cold. Finally, we took her into the vet over Thanksgiving weekend. They told us it looked like she had Leukemia. Not the Feline Leukemia virus, actual cancer of the bone marrow. What followed wasn't pleasant. Trips to a specialist. A final diagnosis of lymphoma rather than leukemia. Chemotherapy in the form of a half a pill twice weekly.

Right after the first visit to the specialist, her appetite improved, thanks largely to a dose of prednisone. She started to put on weight. We were hopeful.

Then, last Friday, she stopped eating. We could coax her into taking a bite or two, but she wouldn't eat on her own. By Sunday, Christmas Eve, we were worried enough to take her into the vet a few days early to get her the next prednisone injection. After the shot, her appetite perked up again, but only for about twelve hours. By late Christmas day, she was back to the same level of appetite she had been Friday night.

Late Tuesday night, it became apparent that not only was she not eating, she was also in a good deal of pain. No matter how hard she tried, she just could not get comfortable.

We knew it was time, so we put her in the carrier and we took her to the emergency vet. They put a catheter in her arm and let us spend some time with her, most of which she spent either laying in our laps, trying to shake the catheter and tape off her arm, or trying to run the kitty triathlon. After a while, we called the vet in. I held Circe while she gave the injection. Circe went limp and we laid her out on a towel. We stayed for a while, then they took her away and made a clay impression of her paw prints for us.

And that was it. Our girl was gone. We won't ever find her on top of the wardrobe again. We won't ever hear her demanding little meow again. She'll never turn up her nose at the food we offer her again, never smack any of the other kitties around again, never shove our heads off the pillow again, never steal our seats again, never climb into our laps again.

She'll never do any of the dozens of little things I'd come to take for granted over the last eight years of my life.

I don't know if there's an afterlife, but if there is, I hope our girl is with her mother, father, brother and sister somewhere where there's lots of catnip to sniff, lots of mice to chase, tons of high places, and plenty of feather dusters to kill, rend, tear and shred.

Good bye girl. I love you and I miss you.

A few days before Christmas in 1997 I arrived in Dallas to visit Katherine for the first time. We had dinner at the Olive Garden, then drove back to her appartment in Denton. When we got there, six little pairs of eyes stared out at me from various spots in the room before vanishing with a speed to this day I still believe must have involved relativistic effects.

So, it's been almost two months since I last updated this. I think I'm overdue, so here goes.

In the last two months, I've:

Started my second year of college. I'm taking Stellar Astronomy, Stellar Astronomy Lab, Survey of World Religions, Survey of American History - Civil War to Present and American Government. The Religion class is disappointing, but the other classes are a lot of fun. I suppose you can't win them all.

Thursday and Friday night we went to see the new Harry Potter movie. Thursday night, we went alone. Friday night, we took my momma. Yes, Katherine and I are way more obsessed than you.

She (the new kitten) is actually a he. *Shrug* I can barely tell with the full grown cats. The hardware is internal on both genders with house cats, and being so young...

On the other hand, we do now have a girl kitty. The first one was terribly lonely, so we went and got his twin sister, so we now have Pandora and Pan. Somehow I think they'll be better known by their superhero names Panic and Pandamonium. I was leaning towards Chaos and Mayhem personally, but those are already taken and Mass Hysteria just doesn't roll of the tongue.