Go forth and fill your libraries with media.
Seriously, thanks to everyone for being so amazing and patient. You are the reason I love Vox.
Short version: Cheeto has become ginormous and likes to shoulder-tackle us with love and affection. We call this "flumping" - he'll get a running start in the hallway, thunder down the straightaway, leap onto the bed, and then land on his side on top of us. It's different from Ham's more dainty, more reserved, and yet more slobbery "flurfing" -- in which he finds a comfortable spot with his head next to mine on my pillow and then commences purring and patting my face with his paws while drooling and licking his lips. Yeah, I know.
I've come to the conclusion that Ham might be mildly autistic. He completely lacks social skills; he'll go from being hissy and yowly and aloof to contorting himself in order to be petted Just Perfectly, and he shows his love by standing with his hind feet on my lap and his front feet on my shoulders while headbutting me in the face hard enough to give me a nosebleed.
Ham did have a bit of a rough patch in August, right before we went to Montana. He developed a real corker (pun intended) of a UT crystal and had to go in for surgery to unplug the pipes, so he boarded at the vet while we were on vacation instead of hanging out at home with our awesome Goth girl catsitter. Now he eats the fancy expensive prescription food. I'd switch him to raw if he would consider anything other than pea-sized dry kibble to be food. Especially since Cheeto has ballooned to almost comic proportions on the prescription chow. :P
Cola, the long-suffering Corgi, is the world's best condo dog. She's compact, beautiful, and sweet. She likes to run off-leash at the dog park and hang out at our feet in the TV room and sleep on our bed on the days that we let her. There was that one time she ate my one-of-a-kind patchwork leather with brass studs knee-high boots, and I won't lie -- I'm still bitter. But mostly she's awesome to the max. While we were in Montana she learned how to swim and even ended up playing on a board in the lake of her own volition.
October: I met Alton Brown and I dyed my hair blue and purple. The former was pretty amazing; he's one of my two biggest influences in wanting to be a professional chef one day. The latter is like having plumage.
September: I saw baby goats and panda cows at the county fair, and I cleaned out my garage in the middle of a thunderstorm.
August: The boys and I saw picas, taught the dog to eat huckleberries, and hiked in the wilderness in Montana.
I hope this finds all of you peeps well!
I was just told that the Amazon Conduit will be fixed by tomorrow. I will post here as soon as I get word that it's back up and running.
I know this has been frustrating and I am sorry there wasn't more I could do to make it less so. I really appreciate your patience though.
Cheers,
