Ghost

We didn't put Faith-dog through surgery today. She was telling us she was done, so we let her be done.

We get her ashes back in about ten days and then we'll take her to the beach one last time.

So, some general updates.

It's been a while since I spoke about Faith-dog and how she's been doing lately, and the long and short is she's not been doing so well over the last month or so. She's stopped eating on her own, has lost a lot of weight and various other generally gross things I'm not going into here. Keeping things fairly short on this matter, she's going to the vet for the final hurdle next Tuesday for surgery. It's the final hurdle because while the chemotherapy she's been on has worked incredibly well on her and it seems for the most part the cancer has gone into remission and her blood is now all fine, there's a section of duodenum, near to where her stomach and intestine meet, that's rigid when it should be flexible. The surgery would be to remove that rigid section. Basically either the surgery will correct the final thing that's needed for her to have a happy four months to two years of life, or else they'll open her up and find there's nothing they can do for her in which case she'll be put to sleep. Either way, we feel going for the surgery is the best thing we could do by her given the circumstances. If it's her time then that's fine, she's fought very hard and is a wonderful dog and we'll be doing the best thing for her so she doesn't suffer, and if this fixes the problem and she can live out her days comfortably with us then that's wonderful. We'll know on Tuesday.

Aside from that... Lots of work and it's the final push. My last deadline as an undergraduate student is May 28th and then I have about a month "off" before I step into my role as Sabbatical officer. It's a bit surreal.

I don't know if I mentioned this, but the SU awarded me Part-time Officer of the Year for 2012/13. I have a little trophy and everything.

At the start of April we went down to Torquay and met up with my best friend from school who I haven't seen in years. It was amazing how easy it was to slip back into conversation with him. Still politically sound, still gay, things I value very much. He lives in London now and I'm hoping we get to see him a bit more :) We also got to see laboratory which is always wonderful. Actually, we drove done to Parr beach to visit him because dad got a new car and gave us the old one otherwise it would be scrapped. So we have a car, Skyler has a licence and that makes life a lot easier. Actually, when we went to Parr we stopped for lunch and I had the most amazing seafood pizza...that gave me some of the worst food poisoning I've ever had. It was so bad we had to crash at my parents' for an extra night because we were due to leave the little cottage we'd been staying in. Oops.

While we were down there my nan was staying with my folks too. Nan usually lives in the Midlands, but she's been very sick. She has heart failure and now can't be on her own so my mom had been her carer for several weeks. Now they've taken her back up to the Midlands and are in the process of selling her flat to move her into a place with fewer stairs and more people around 24-7. Until then, she's having a nurse stop by every day to check on her. I've been really worried about my mom and her emotional state because her brother has been helping but hasn't been physically with nan 24-7 like mom had been, and mom's sister only really wants to get involved when it suits her (or when money seems to be involved) so I've been furious every time mom and I have spoken about my aunt being generally selfish.

Since we got the car going back and forth to the horse yard has been much easier, and actually now Skyler is starting to actually ride Salsa with me on the ground lunging. It's been a really unique experience so far and I'm pretty pleased with what we've been doing even though I know pretty much nothing about horses. But I did go and bring her in from the field on my own for the first time a week or so ago and that was pretty awesome to me.

Also briefly been talking to pseudorca about OCs and whatnot and it's made me all nostalgic. I think after deadlines are done I might poke and prod at some drabbles with this characters because while some of the stuff is utterly terrible there's about six characters that I still have soft spots for and I think could be salvageable on some level. We'll see, I'd oddly excited about this. I've missed these characters. :)

Kind on the topic OCs, I wasted some time yesterday making little profiles for my Guild Wars 2 characters and that's been rather nice. I kind of want to mess around with them in terms of RPing and/or writing in general.

In other news, been watching a lot of CSI lately. We caught up on the last three or four seasons that we didn't already have on DVD and are now working our way through season 13. I gotta say, I kind of adore D.B. Yes. Good. I've also been watching Hannibal which I have mixed feelings about which kind of go from "YES, THIS PART IS AMAZING AND I LOVE IT!" to "...ph my god, what are you fuckers doing with these characters??" But then Red Dragon has been close to my heart for a bunch of years so... Yeah. Maybe later I'll do a longer post about this show and my issues with it in particular.

I think I've procrastinated as long as I can for today--better get to work :)

Apparently I'm keeping up this updating streak, for now at least, and I'm not entirely sure why now when I haven't been before. I think I'm just enjoying coming back to a format I pretty much spent the majority of my early net-life making some incredibly valuable connections on and much though I love plurk (and increasingly Twitter) for chattering, there's something nice about more detailed updates and the space to make longer comments back/with others.

Still, I'm updating for now so that's what I'm doing.

Faith-dog
We took Faith-dog to the vet again recently. She had an ultrasound and seemingly it showed one small mass in her intestine near her stomach, but that's all they found. Compared to a couple of months back when they were seeming a lot of irregularities along her intestinal wall, that's very good. It's still unclear if this is just some of the old irregularity which has yet to clear up or a new growth, but for now we're hoping for the former because she's doing so, so well right now. Still keeping fingers-crossed for remission in 8 weeks time when we go back to oncologist. She smells like hospital-dog now.


Here's her from a few weeks back because she's cute :')

Self
Now that I've had some sleep I'm doing much better. I've been planning some papers I'm going to write on which has reduced some of my panic a great deal, including one for a class on Art and War where I'm hoping to examine WWII propaganda in relation to Captain America, both circa WWII and in the current MCU incarnation. I've also been reading Hassler-Forest's Capitalist Superheroes, which so far I'm really enjoying, though it gave me quite a strange feeling after reading his chapter on Batman and V for Vendetta in terms of

Friends
We're also saw annephoenix recently and that was really, really lovely. I haven't seen her for a couple of years, so Skyler and I met her at the station then went to get breakfast at Giraffe and that was wonderful. I love going out for meals. It's really bad. But I really love going out for breakfast, but usually I'm not up early enough for that and it's sad. Anyways, Anne got to meet Skyler's horse, Salsa, and I think that was good for him because I know shit about horses.

Guild Wars 2
No-one fucking tells you to get map completion you need to damn well do the WvW maps too... I have very mixed feelings about this because I'm not a PvPer by nature, but overall it's just irritating because (at least whenever I'm on) Gandara doesn't seem to have a ton of control over any map so hitting the PoIs and Vistas is a pain in the ass. Still, while I'm waiting around to clear maps it means I can collect Badges of Honour for the coat part of the medium Invader's Armor.

In general though, I think I've figured out my final mismatched thief look via window shopping...
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Guess I need to hit more dungeons and get better at WvW... /firstGW2problems

Life Misc.
After mom and I had our fight about the undisclosed subject we have patched things up and Skyler and I are going down to Devon again this coming Friday. Nan has been staying with mom and dad lately because she's really not well and mom saying they're taking it "one day at a time" doesn't sound good. They're taking her back up to the midlands on Sunday so we'll hopefully get Friday and Saturday to see them, so I'm really glad we're getting to see both nan and my folks, if only for a day, while we're down.

SU and Uni
I've been dealing with the new LGBTQ Committee and they are...difficult. I can't fault them for not knowing how the union works, but I'm starting to find my patience tested by the fact that they seem to think that because they're taking over the society that means they can just ignore what everyone else is telling them, step on toes, and act like they've got some sudden monopoly to steamroll over any and all work that's been done so far. I like enthusiasm, I like they're interested and got lots of ideas, but I don't like how little they seem to be considering others and how only token awareness seems to be getting paid to areas of intersection. Boiling everything down, the big complaint seems to be that there hasn't been enough to satisfy the needs of the white, cis, gay men (not enough parties and alcohol, in other words). It's been a bit of a headache, but I'm starting to shift my position from friendly equal to more a voice with more knowledge and authority, and that's a bit difficult for me, but I don't like being walked over and ignored.

And now my classes are over for the year, time to buckle down to work until the end of May.

I've also been sick the last two days and that sucks :(

So, in a bid to relax and unwind and recoup, I've been playing a lot of Guild Wars 2 again lately (this will reduce again once I get back into the work swing) mostly with laboratory and...taking screencaps.

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Words have meaning.
Words do work.
Words have histories.
Words are bigger than you or I and how they are used matters.

Yes, you can gloss it over by saying it's just something you've always done, it's just a bit of fun between you and your friends, that you're not really sexist, racist, able-ist, homophobic and/or transphobic and that you're not using words with loaded histories and associations in negative ways, but your use of words does not magic meaning and history away. And if you think it does? Then you may want to reflect on how inflated your ego is.

I feel another tl;dr update coming on sometime soon about uni, fandom and general UGH, but not right now.

No, right now is the topic of GW2 and me sucking at jumping puzzles at the best of times, let alone a timed, evil one.

Just about every group I've been with has been reduced to sobbing piles like this one:



I hate this so much... :'( I don't even care about the slippers at the top (though it would be nice), I just want the achievement but at the rate I'm improving I'll probably manage it around mid-July next year.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

OH YEAH, I TOTALLY FORGOT. SKYLER GOT HIS INDEFINITE LEAVE TO REMAIN IN THE UK A FEW WEEKS AGO! AHHHHHHHHHH! IT TOOK FOREVER BECAUSE THE HOME OFFICE IS SLOW AS FUCK, BUT IT'S ALL DONE AND YAAAAAAY!

He can apply for dual citizenship in October of this year, and that's super exciting, but the main thing is he has indefinite leave of remain and I get to keep him. That's a huge relief and a big, heavy weight off our shoulders. Phew... :')

I am exhausted.

Skyler's folks flew over from Georgia on Wednesday, so it's been a very stressful week or so preparing for their arrival, early start to meet them at Heathrow, and today and yesterday has been spent taking them around Blackheath and Greenwich, and Kew Gardens.

And tomorrow? Tomorrow, we're taking them to Torquay on the train (dog and all), staying there for a week in Cockington and...they will meet my parents. At some point. Nervous? Oh, hell yeah.

Certainly looking forward to this from a lot of angles, but I'm also very tired right now and a little worried about the parents all meeting. I'm sure my mom and Skyler's mom will get along, and my dad and Skyler's dad will bond over ales or whatever, but the intermixing after that? I'm less sure about.

Watch this space, I guess. I'm sure there will be a bunch of photos and whatnot, but right now my brain is so much mush.

With the Olympics-proper over life is starting to return to London. See, after all the OMG DON'T GO TO LONDON IT'S GOING TO BE CRAZY warnings, no-one came into central, people living in London cleared out/stayed home, and Blackheath was desolate. The security thing has been overkill and uncomfortable, but we did go and see two days of the dressage in the Greenwich stadium because dressage is Skyler's sport. I had very little clue what I was looking at, but it was an interesting experience despite all the very mixed and cynical feelings about the whole affair. A lot of messy politics, casual nationalism, same ol' and same ol', but as I say it's been an experience. We also have tickets to the Paralymic musical freestyle dressage, which should be interesting.

Yeahhh...I'm sure I was going to ramble about comics, irritation with people on Tumblr, and plans for the new academic year, but it's 11:30 after a long day and we need to be up early to pack.

Ah, almost three weeks after the fact, a birthday photo round-up. Also known as the visual proof that Ghost was very spoilt on his birthday. Basically, this is a food post.

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And big belated thank you for all the birthday wishes ♥

Also, I took Skyler out on a Spider-date last night to see The Amazing Spider-man! ( Spoilers? Can you spoil Spider-man origins stories any more? )