The Great Merger

As you may have noticed, some of my blogs - Rats in Pants, Truth in Lies, and 3 and 20 Black Birds - have gone missing. Nothing was lost from them, however, as they've all been merged into one giant blog: A Nest For Two!

I decided to create ANF2 a few months ago with the idea of it being a "couples blog" where Tene and I could share our thoughts and memories about our lives together. After talking to Tene over the weekend about it he helped me to realize that I already did this (Rats in Pants) and that the number of blogs I had at that point was ... rather absurd. I've cut the number of blogs I run down to two: this blog, and Criss Cross Asterisk. I am considering merging Criss Cross Asterisk with this blog, but I'm still undecided if I'm going to or not.

The biggest change you'll see is that I'm going to talk about anything and everything: From cooking and cleaning, to crafts and writing, to clothes and housewares, to simply living my life with Tene and the Girls. Also, from time to time Tene himself might post! It seems like this will definitely be much more efficient than managing some eight blogs :)

Possible Changes

I'm considering integrating the majority of this blog to my newest (yep, another one) blog, A Nest For Two. I may not, but right now I'm thinking about changing this blog to being completely about the rats, while I talk about Tene and I on A Nest For Two.

I'm not certain what to do.

Switching

I'm moving/integrating this blog with my new blog: A Nest For Two. It seems that it will fit better there.

Name Change

Sing a song of sixpence, a bag full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie:
When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing;
And wasn't this a dainty dish to set before the king?

The king was in the parlour, counting out his money;
The queen was in the kitchen, eating bread and honey;
The maid was in the garden, hanging out the clothes,
There came a little blackbird and nipt off her nose.

Sing a Song of Sixpence; Mother Goose

So, I decided to change the name of this blog, following from the Mother Goose rhyme above, and a few other things.

1. While I will be including things on crafts, this is more likely to be very strongly a cooking blog, not a craft blog - due to the basic facts that I do not have a sewing machine, and I don't do many crafts; yet I do have a kitchen, and I'm aiming to cook and bake much more often than I currently do.
2. My recent acquisition of a specific web domain is leading me to rethink some things. I'm looking to orient my personal site around ravens and crows, so renaming this blog to something including "black birds" feels appropriate.
3. Yes, I changed the number in the poem - I prefer 3 and 20, and I believe that is how the rhyme was originally told to me, since it feels more correct to me when I repeat the poem than "4 and 20."

That's about it. I hope to get some graphics for this site up soon, and now that I have a set idea in mind, it will be a lot easier for me to do.

Thanks for reading!

Life Goes On, Things Change

A lot has happened since my last post. Lets see if I can get them down in the order that they happened.

First off, I got married! Stephen Weeks (Tene) and I married on June 12, 2009 - just a tiny civil ceremony at the city county building. Our witnesses were our friends Nic and Marjut, who live in Finland and happened to be visiting Utah at the time. Others invited were our immediate family, and one of my stepsisters (who took photos), and that's all. In total, there were 16 of us in the room. We're considering doing something bigger later.

The next day Tene and I moved into an apartment complex. We have a cute little loft apartment, that feels a little big than it is. We need to get ourselves a couch still, but we mostly have everything we need, which is good. One unfortunate aspect is that the complex doesn't allow pets aside from service animals, and when I asked them specifically about therapeutic pets, they said they didn't count as service animals. So I might not be getting rats again for a while. Which is unfortunate. (I'm still going to try, though. I mean, they would help me out a lot)

I also got to go see VNV Nation when they were in town. That was really fun and I got all done up to see them. I really enjoy their music, and they were awesome to see in concert. It was also a lot of fun to get dressed up like I did. Even better, I got to meet them! I thought it would be a bit more fun, but we were the last people to go see them at the Greywhale they were at, and they had to run off to do a soundcheck for the show, so I guess that it not being as exciting and fun as I thought it would be is forgiveable. I also learned of a new Industrial band that I really like, one of the groups VNV was touring with - Ayria. I also got to meet the singer for their group, and she signed my CD. It was really a lot of fun. Tene and I also went to the afterparty at Club Vegas, but I was soooo tired and dead by that time.

The only other thing that's been really big and going on in my life has been working out all my health problems - both mental and physical.

On the physical side, before Tene and I got married I went in and had a CT scan for some bumps by my left eye. The bumps hurt a little, and they are growing and multiplying. The CT was done to figure out exactly where the masses were (which it revealed quite well) so that I could go in for surgery to have them removed and biopsied. I go in to see the doctor who will be doing the surgery on July 31 - hopefully we'll be setting up an appointment for the surgery that day, and I can get it done with. The downside to the CT scan was that it found a mass inside my ear. I haven't had a chance, yet, to see an Ear-Nose-And-Throat doctor about that so far, but I'm pretty sure it's not too urgent.

On the mental side - I am back on Zoloft (50mg). I have felt better since I started taking it than I have in .... quite a while. I'm happy, I'm enjoying my life, and my anxiety has been manageable! It's amazing. My motivation and creativity are still not here, however, and I've been having stomach problems (nausea and cramping) since I started taking the meds. Hopefully those will fix themselves and I'll be just fine, but I may have to tweak my medication a few more times before I'm good to go, not that that is very surprising or anything.

I also have some creative projects in the works, but you can go read all about those over at Truth in Lies!

Some Changes

So, I'm going to be making some changes to RiP soon. One problem I'm having with this blog is that it doesn't really have a dedicated purpose. I thought I had a purpose for it, but I don't like the idea of using Rats in Pants for rants and such. Unfortunately, the name "Rants in Pants" (and the url rantypants) was taken, so I'm going to be trying to think of a new name for my ranty blog.

What Rats in Pants is going to be for is documenting my life - specifically my life involving my rats (although I will mention other things, like school, meds, and the like). I know that's what I use it for now - so there won't be any changes as far as the rest of you are concerned.

A content change that I am going to include is information on rats in general - health care and the like - as I learn it and incorporate it. I may also add some information on other small pets, but don't bet on it.

Some of the other changes I'm going to be doing is changing the color scheme and such, as well as the image at the top of the page (hopefully to a photo of my new girls once I get them :) ). I'll be removing the BlogLog, but will be keeping the friends and family blogs, as well as the sister sites (my new blog will probably not be listed in the sister sites section).

In other news, the new cage is almost complete! For those who don't know, a few weeks ago I bought a cage from Martin's Cages. The cage is HUGE! :) It's 30"x18"x36", and has a decent drop pan (3" high sides - which means my floor will stay clean :) ), a full middle section, and two balconies, with ramps attaching all of them. I had a cage of almost this size (24"x14"x26") before, also from Martin's, but learned the hard way that plain Galvanized steel is very very bad for leveled cages. That cage rusted within a few months. As a result, I spent a few extra dollars to get this cage powder coated, which is supposed to completely eliminate the smell problem.

The cage comes separated, which I don't mind. Less shipping costs for me, and the cage is pretty easy to assemble - especially since Martin's sends you everything you could ever need to put it together. Like, four times over. Now, there was just one thing I wanted to do that I had not done on the original cage.

The flooring of the cage is wire, which is okay, but could be potentially dangerous to the rats small, fragile feet. There are plenty stories online of ratty feet getting trapped in the wire - and of sprained and broken bones. This is especially dangerous for smaller, younger rats (like what I'm getting ... ).

So, I decided, in my infinite wisdom, that I should make a tray for the full middle level. First, to give my rats something to rest on without having to go all the way down to the floor level. Second, to make the cage safer for the rats. And third - to make it less messy. Well, the tray is being made out of plexiglass and solvent glue. I was planning on having a full bottom layer, and four sides. This ended up not working. So, what I have now, in pieces, are 3 pieces that make up the bottom of the tray, and the 4 sides. It isn't pretty, but it will do what it's supposed to.

In the course of this project I did learn a few things.
- You can buy large sheets of plexiglass from Lowes. They will not custom cut things for you, however.
- Solvent glue is easy to find ... the hard part is finding a local seller, and then finding their building (I was lost for half an hour trying to locate the dang place)
- You cannot cut smaller squares out of plexiglass. There is no way to make a cut that only goes 5" in, and have it not break the entire piece of material.
- "Scoring" means using a knife to cut the plexiglass, not two or three times, or even four or five, but, like, ten. Anything less and it doesn't snap. Also, they need to be on both sides of the plexiglass. It helps it break straighter.
- Don't expect a straight edge. (I can only hope I can fix the problem this caused)

I hope to finish the cage by this weekend, and have contacted "Skye" (a local rat breeder).

Header!

I did something creative! First time I've had the ambition to do anything in a decent while. It's a header for this blog, and I'm going to make one for Rats in Pants as well! I couldn't decide whether to put the pen on top or under the words, but I think it looks better above them, and it doesn't obscure them too much. I'm quite proud of how it turned out.

Well, I don't really have much else to say. The image is in .png format, so it probably doesn't show up properly in Internet Explorer, just as information.

No pen nib would be that clean after using it, but I couldn't get it to look right when I was trying to color it.