My God, it's been something like 5 months since I entered anything into this tyrannical invention! Curse technology; at least if it were a paper journal, I could throw it out and pretend I never started.

Life is much the same as it was five months ago; work is insane because it's December, which suprises nobody. The new car is running fantastic. I'm so grateful for that change! I can leave work at 12:30 a.m. and not worry about breaking down on the freeway.

The new apartment is also great, esepcially with the addition of a desk for me and two sparkly new computers (complete with quite decent graphics cards) upon which to work and play. The big news at the moment is that Rikki has come home to live with us.

For those of you who don't know, Rikki is my cat from about 14 years ago. I left him with my mom when I moved out six years ago, but all this time I have missed him terribly. Rumor has it that he missed me too. In any case, he's getting on in life and has some medical issues which require special food and some peace and quiet - something hard to achieve with a 17-year-old girl, an 8-month-old cat and a 2-month-old kitten in the house. We petitioned our landlord for permission to keep Rikki with us, and go figure; he said yes. Hooray!

In the meantime...it's a bit of an adjustment. Rikki has not been apart from kitty friends ever in his life, and he's very, very needy. He's also very vocal. The long and short of it is that if he's not in direct physical contact with me or Andy (or even sometimes if he is), he starts making an awful racket. We're trying the "I'm going to ignore you until you shut up" routine, which is so far proving the most effective. After a while...anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour or more...he gives up and goes to sulk in his bed. He also stops eating and gets sick if he gets too stressed out. We've already been through one 36-hour food strike.

We love him dearly and he's driving us mad. I really hope this works out! At the moment, however, he's on my lap and it's hard for me to imagine things any other way.