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[Katzaniel]

Anyone miss me?

 

So, uh, sorry for the long, unexplained absence. Wedding planning kind of took over my life for a while there, and after I'd missed about a month, I was too scared to log in here because I knew I didn't have time to catch up properly. But the wedding is over (yep, it went well), and the honeymoon is done (we went to Victoria, BC) and I'm back at work, but only part time. I'm actually really excited about that, because among other things it will give me time to work on various personal projects like getting myself a game portfolio and working on my latest scheme for a novel that I might actually write to completion. (Not that I've ever actually given up on a story. I want to finish them all, someday.) So, I plan to dedicate a few hours a week to the Pen. Patrick, I haven't forgotten that I promised you some images for the black skin. If you didn't find someone else to do it. And I know I need to update the search list in the Piazza. I have completely neglected my guild leadery duties, and I still have plans for the SWG. Of course I need to find out what the current Elder issues are and offer my help on anything I can help with, and I certainly plan to catch up on some of the stories and poems and things around here. And, just to tease you guys a bit with this info before I actually do it, I plan to find that picture thread and possibly post a few pictures of the wedding for you guys.

 

So, it will take me a long time to catch up and get back into things, but I should be back for good now, and able to dedicate as much time to this site and to my writing as I ever did.

[Wyvern]

"Katzzaaaannnniiieeeeellllll!"

 

Katzaniel freezes up and braces herself at the sound of a familiar reptilian voice, which echoes closer at an alarming rate. Wyvern spreads his wings and pounces, narrowly missing Katzaniel and glomping a faceful of Cabaret carpet instead. The tigertaur winces at the sight of Wyvern removing his snout from between two floor tiles, but slunches her shoulders and just stares as the lizard revels in a leftover piece of candy found under the carpet fibers.

 

"*Ahem* Great to sssee you Katz, welcome back." Wyvern grins and shakes Katzaniel's paw, then pulls her in for a quick hug. "I certainly missed ya. How about a quick drink?"

 

Wyvern licks his lips and stares up at the ceiling as he digs deep into his belt pouch. He eventually pulls out half a bottle of Bruteweiser, a quarter of a lime, and a sixth of an Almost Dragonic Brand Indestructable Beer Mug™. Wyvern stares down at the broken fragment with a snort, then uses it to uncap the bottle and hands the booze to Katz.

 

"I wouldn't worry much 'bout adminissstration, all that leaderly mumbo-jumbo's been under control for a while now... just takes the right amount of bribes and a lil' flattery on the side. I think that just having your creative presence around here is enough to inspire, though, so don't hesssitate to join into things and have a little fun." Wyvern pauses, then nudges Katz with a scaly shoulder and lifts his snout to her ear. "Though I would like to see those wedding pics when you get a chance."

[Patrick]

Katz!

 

*tacklehuggles, helps you up and tacklehuggles again*

 

We missed you! Glad to hear that the wedding went well and definitely waiting for pictures!

[Appy]

Welcom back

 

*huggles*

[Zadown]

Heyyy!

 

Glad to see ye return.

[Peredhil]

Peredhil wanders by, smiles happily, and hugs her until she's well-hugged

 

Congrats!!!

[The Big Pointy One]

...beat you to it... ;p

[Katzaniel]

So I just spent most of this morning writing up an email for my friends and family about our trip to Victoria, BC for our honeymoon. It's not exactly the fiction writing that you guys are used to getting from me, but I thought some of you might be interested.

 

 

Tamaranis and I got into the Victoria airport sometime in the early afternoon, then made our way outside with our bags to get the fresh air and a view of the city while we dragged out our maps. I made the day of some helpful woman who noticed our maps and wanted to know if she could give directions somewhere: no, we certainly are *not* close enough to the inner harbour to walk from here. So eventually we opted for one of those bus things that takes a bunch of people and then trundles along dropping them off one by one. It takes longer, because it's going every which way in the city before we get there, but we figure it's just an opportunity to check out the city - *and* it's cheaper. How awesome is that? So the ride to the hotel took an hour but we're not tired yet, nor tired of looking at all the beautiful trees.

 

Our first nice surprise is the restaurant across the street from our hotel, entitled "The Old Spaghetti Factory". Right across the street! We ended up eating there twice, and it was *great*. You get a big meal for a decent price, and it's really really tasty, and for just a bit more you can add a soup or salad, but you really don't need to because you also get lots of bread with your meal, and afterward some ice cream. Mmmm.

 

Our hotel room, by the way, was great. Big comfy bed, balcony with a good view (we did sit out there drinking tea for a while one day), a huge TV which we never used, and a kitchen complete with dishes and pots and stuff.

 

So we wandered around the inner harbour a bit and took note of the things that looked interesting around there, that we might want to do. Throughout the trip we'd look at that list and decide which one(s) we felt like doing that day. We never felt bored, and we never felt like we had to rush to do everything, we just did exactly what we had time and inclination to do.

 

So it would have been the first or second day there when I went online and figured out which whale watching places seemed good. I had two that looked like the best ones, with naturalists on board and some percentage of outings having a sighting (although one of them *did* claim, "We often have 100% success rate" - meaning, quite clearly, *not* 100%, but they wanted it to sound like it was). Then we headed out toward the grocery store - we wanted to buy everything we'd need to make wraps so that we could save time and trouble for lunches. We eventually got there, but not that day - we were waylaid by a whale watching place that I hadn't seen in my online scouring, so we stopped in to ask a few questions. And lo and behold, they hadn't filled up their 2:00 so if we wanted to go that day, we'd get a discount. Everything else seemed fine, as good as the others I'd noticed, but when we paid and then left (having about 45 minutes before we needed to meet them, a street or two down) we wondered if we hadn't made a mistake. It was discounted - was there a reason? He'd mentioned mist - maybe we should have waited a day or two until it wasn't misty any more. Anyway, we went back to our hotel room, grabbed anything we thought we might need, and met up with them. I also bought a nice rain jacket in case we got wet.

 

We spent a while oohing and ahhing over the scenery of the harbour from our boat, and then Tam and I went up to the deck at the front and enjoyed the wind in our faces for a while. We decided to head to the upper level - and got there just as the naturalists were freaking out about "It's the second time today that we've been the first to spot them!!" So we got to see the orcas (killer whales) right away after they'd been spotted, before anybody who was still on the main level and before everyone on other boats. (When orcas are spotted, the boats all radio each other and then everyone on the water comes to see). And apparently these orcas only come up every four days or so, so if we'd waited a day we wouldn't have seen them. Also, it turns out that we spotted them while we were on our way to see a humpback whale that had been spotted earlier, and the orcas were heading that way anyway. So at one point, we could look one way off the boat and see the orcas, and look the other way and see the humpback.

 

Not that either one was constantly above water. But if you watched, you could guess where they'd come up next, and when everyone got excited you could scan the water around there and usually find them right away. It was a pod of four orcas that we had, and they were a bit out of sync so you'd get one and then three right away after. They were very beautiful.

 

So not only were we lucky enough to see the orcas at all, but there are all sorts of rules about boats on the water near them - not allowed to move closer, if they come to you, you have to turn your motor off and whatnot. But at one point the guy driving (what's he called, the captain? Or is that something special?) managed to get it just right, and we were stopped with our motor off and the orcas came up *right by our boat* and then swam underneath us. So that was pretty amazing.

 

We also got to see some seals. There were some little ones (smooth, black) and some bigger ones (furry, brown). The big ones reminded us a lot of bears. They'd howl and growl at each other, but most of them were too lazy to do anything. There was this one who kept growling at another to get away, but he kept lying back down and he never did chase the other one off. And there were two that were actually fighting each other a bit - they didn't even notice the little seal who'd started out between them and had to escape to avoid getting stomped on.

 

We got some really neat videos of both the orcas and the seals, so when we get a chance, we'll show you all.

 

I think the next thing we did was the bug zoo. When we got inside, we started worrying that it might be just for kids, and there sure were a lot of kids there, but I'm glad we went, anyway. It was pretty neat. We got to see stick bugs and leaf bugs, and how hard it is to tell the difference, especially the leaf bugs, to real leafs. Usually they look like browned or torn leaves, not symmetrical like you might think, because they don't want to get eaten by things that eat leaves any more than they want to get eaten by things that eat bugs. We also saw a colony of ants, where they pointed out to us how the bigger ones are soldier ants, and they showed us where the ants "bury" their dead (in leaves). We saw some hissing roaches, which apparently hiss to keep away their main predators, lemurs, whose main predators are snakes, whose hissing the roaches are emulating. These roaches do not bite or sting. They are not dangerous in any way. They're about the size of a pink eraser (a little fatter), and not only are they not dirty, like you'd think, but they're actually antibacterial so *we're* dirtier than they are. Tam commented that the cat would love one.

 

We also saw tarantulas, and because I don't like spiders very much, but I have gotten over my phobia of them, I made myself hold it. I will admit that I didn't hold it long - he kept handing it to people and then talking for about five minutes; I held it on the condition that he was ready to take it back immediately if need be, and I held it for about 30 seconds - but I still did it. Tarantulas are pretty neat because they have hairs that they throw like porcupine quills at enemies - itchy for humans, more dangerous for other bugs. I also held a scorpion. The guy showing us the scorpion kept flicking its tail and then lifting it up and swinging it and stuff, to show how docile it was. I didn't hold it then - not right after he'd made it angry! - but just before we left, another group was going around, and *she* didn't do any of that. No one else in that group would hold it, though, so I figured I would. It was kinda neat.

 

We also went to Butchart Gardens. We couldn't walk there from our hotel room, but there was a bus depot about a block away that went right there, so it still worked out well. The Gardens were made from an abandoned limestone quarry, starting more than 100 years ago and being built onto even today. There's not a lot to say about them except that they're quite beautiful. Oh, and that there's this neat fountain (put in by the Butchart's grandson) that moves around as it sprays water, and it sprays varying amounts of water so that it goes higher and lower and from side to side; it's really neat. There were some rhubard-like plants at its base, which I thought was interesting. Also, the Japanese section of the gardens were neat: very minimalist, but very very pretty. We found a miniature waterfall there, too. And a long piece of bamboo set up with a lever partway down; it was kind of like a drinking bird in that it kept filling up with water, falling down, emptying, and falling the other way. So cool. Lastly, I should mention that I was attacked by a tree in these gardens. We were resting on a bench and it hit me in the head with an acorn. How rude.

 

Another thing we did is that we took a day trip to Seattle. This wasn't really planned, except that we knew that Salinye and her family lived there and that we'd be close to them, but we didn't really contact them until probably the second day we were in Victoria. She emailled back a day or two later saying that my message had gotten sent to her junk-mail folder and it was lucky she'd found it at all: was she too late? Nope, so we called her and talked a bit about how we might get down there, and eventually settled on a kind of complicated route. We took a ferry to Port Angeles, where Tamaranis got to stand on American soil for the first time in his life, and where we both had these amazing deli burgers in some little restaurant there. Then we took a bus which took a ferry to Seattle. (Yes, the bus drove onto the ferry. We were allowed to get off if we wanted, but we had to be back on the bus before it drove off the ferry again.)

 

We met Salinye; I had been vaguely worried that there wouldn't be much to say in person, but there were no worries there. Her husband turned out to be a geek, so that helped. They took us to an authentic Mexican restaurant, as they had heard that we didn't have any here. They also showed us the Fremont Troll, which is a great big troll made of cement, climbing out from under one of their bridges. It's crushing a car with one hand, so that tells you about how big it is. We also got to meet their kids, who were pretty adorable.

 

The last day, we went to the Royal BC Museum. We'd also been considering going to the Miniature Museum, but there were a lot of miniatures here, so we didn't feel like we'd missed much when we didn't have enough time for that. Their travelling exhibit at the time we went was about the Titanic. The best part about that was that they had actors coming out into one of the rooms and telling the stories of some of the passengers. They were dressed like the people they were supposed to be, and they were very descriptive; it felt eerily real. The two that we heard were the Captain and the "Unsinkable Molly Brown". She was a first class passenger, but a suffragette and philanthropist: when she got onto one of the lifeboats (we missed this part, but apparently she was forced on after helping many others get on) the guy who should have been in charge was panicking - it was her who made everybody row so that they wouldn't get cold.

 

There was also a really neat "century" exhibit there. I thought at first that it would just be about life a hundred years ago, but it covered everything *starting* a hundred years ago up to today. And it had really lifelike reproductions - up to the point where one area had wind blowing in a window (I walked around and there was a wall on the other side, so the wind was definitely intentionally inserted) and no matter how far I peered through windows or around corners, it looked like it kept going. At one point, Tam thought that we were missing part of the exhibit because there was a gate that looked to lead down an alley, but we couldn't open the gate. It was just part of it all though. It only *looked* like it led somewhere.

 

So, that's about it. We both had a great time: we commented on multiple occasions how nice it was. It was the perfect holiday.

[Patrick]

We met Salinye;

Now I'm feeling jealous.

 

That bit aside I'm glad that you had a fun trip!

[Mynx]

*hugs*

Great to see you back, and I'm glad the wedding went well

*adds a forehead lick for good measure*

[Tralla]

That sounds like a fantastic holiday, Katz! Congratulations on the wedding and everything else, too! I'm glad you enjoyed my home province so much. It's a shame we couldn't meet up, but I'm a lot farther from Victoria than most people seem to think. =( I took that trip from Victoria to Seattle, too, once; it's very pretty, in an extremely rural sort of way. Welcome back!

[Wyvern]

Thanks for sharing your Honeymoon experiences and wedding pics with us, Katzaniel. :-) I really enjoyed reading through your visit to Victoria, I'm glad that the two of you had a great time and that it worked out so well. You definitely make Victoria sound like an appealing place to visit, though I don't know if I could ever convince myself to hold a scorpion! Definitely share the videos of the orcas and seals with us if you get the chance (I'm secretly hoping for some recorded vocal commentary on'em). That's awesome that you guys got down to Seattle to see Salinye and co., they were awesome people to hang out with in Cali. :-) Come to think of it, I should contact them to see if I can catch'em the next time they pass through here...

 

Anyway, congratulations Katzaniel. :-) It's great to have you back.

[Salinye]

Pfft! You wasted your honeymoon time visiting SALINYE? Dang, you guys must have been DESPERATE for something to do. Really scraping the bottom of the barrel with those plans.

 

We LOVED your visit. You have an open invitation to visit anytime. However, now we are in our new house, which is only 2 years old, so no remodeling madness to sit through. :0)

 

Let's see, you two make it 5 people that I've had the pleasure of meeting from the Pen. I haven't been disappointed yet!! :0)

 

I've been away for so long, most people probably don't even know who I am. (I like to be mysterious.)

 

Anyway, congratulations again. I can't wait to see you again!

 

Oh, and for those who haven't met me, don't let them fool you, I'm every bit as much of a geek as my husband. I just hide it better!!

 

~Shelby