Virtual Quill

Dad's home, safe and sound. What more can I say?
I can say a lot, actually, but I'll keep it at feeling a deep sense of relief. We heard from him at around dinnertime on Christmas Eve, and he was in our arms by midnight. No present could ever produce the same feeling.
It was left to me to clean up the loose ends. First I fixed the identity theft issue caused when the moths that ate Dad's clothing at the motel also stole his credit cards. Then I sent a few strongly worded letters to the motel's owner seeking damages for their employee running off a customer into the Wild. They responded with a generous settlement, probably due to my using Herd Thinners, Inc. stationery.
Finally, while Dad is indeed home, so is Kell. She and the rest of the world's predators have gone on strike, so for our family finances that motel settlement money will come in handy.

It’s hard holding one’s breath for twenty-four hours, but that’s been my situation since we got the awful news that Dad was missing. I know that I should hope for the best, and that’s what I’ve been doing.
We’ve pieced together what happened at the motel where Dad was staying for the ISP convention. The trouble began when a swarm of moths broke the window to his room and devoured all of his clothes while he was in the shower. So far, just an inconvenience. However, a vicious snowstorm was blanketing the area, which knocked out all the motel’s power and phones. Dad ventured outside to go to the front desk, but as he did the towel covering him was blown away by a gust of wind. At that moment the motel clerk on duty (an enormous ursine) stepped out of the front door to see a naked rabbit standing in front of him. Instinct and appetite took over, but Dad outran him.
I’ve wondered why Dad didn’t stand and fight the clerk; with his wrestling experience he certainly could have had a chance of holding him off long enough to explain that he was a guest. My theory is that he now has a family that depends on him, and that factored into his decision to choose the flight option. (From the picture we saw, it was one of the largest bears I’ve ever seen.) I think a standard-sized predator would have gotten a battle from Dad.
Kell’s been frustrated since her boss won’t let her go find him. Instead, R.L. hired Canine, the Bounty Hunter from TV, who immediately went off in pursuit with his camera crew. As I write this, we’ve heard nothing from Dad or the Canine. Kell’s going nuts, and Rudy and I aren’t faring too well, either.
Yes, I said Rudy. He won’t admit to being sick with worry, but I caught him eating the grass buried under the snow in our front lawn. He claimed he was looking for a pencil he’d dropped in the fall.

I’m back in Domain, where everything appears to be running smoothly for once. It seems as if one disaster or another befalls us every holiday season, but for now trouble has passed us by. Of course, that will depend on Dad safely traveling to the ISP con on Friday, and returning on Sunday. (Why they’re holding it the weekend before Christmas, I’ll never know!)
Fenton and I went over to his family’s tree, and made the insectivore equivalent of popcorn strings. Yep, insect exoskeletons instead of popcorn. Bugs come in a wide variety of shapes and colors, and strung together are quite festive.
Speaking of holiday cheer, Tammy wrote to me from their lighthouse on the North Carolina coast and said that they won their local decoration award...again. It helps that her husband and son are both fireflies.
Finally, Rudy and Fiona were banned from putting ornaments on the tree. They can’t resist placing most of them on her ears.

Finals are done, and Rachel seems to have passed her Herbivore exams. She had to study to like mad to learn the shapes of the leaves she’d been trampling into pulp all her life, but she pulled it off. I could empathize with her, as it reminded me of my efforts to get caught up on the basics of an insectivore diet as a high school senior. Rachel even started eating some non-trampled vegetation, and found they had a lot more flavor. We’ll see how that goes down with her family when she returns home! (Rachel’s girlfriend Joan, meanwhile, prefers oats.)
Tumbleweeds are blowing down the dorm’s hallways, meaning that most everyone has already left (especially the plant eaters). Fenton and I practically have the whole place to ourselves, except for the resident advisor. She’s a Border collie who also works in the genetics lab, so I know her pretty well.
I closed up my lab research for the month, and packed for home. The holidays are in full swing back home, and I still have shopping to do. Dad is on a tight schedule as well, since he has to go to an ISP conference the week before Christmas, in order to promote Hare-Link. I hope he doesn’t get snowed in!

Fenton and I spent the weekend doing the final set-up procedures on Hare-Link's wi-fi system for the Domain city government. Using the existing hardware still intact from the previous work we'd done, it was a simple matter of activation and testing. As Dad said, it's not the big dreams we once had, but it'll do. Then he started humming a song by a bunch of AARP members that went, you can't always get what you want.
For me, the big news this week was the breakthrough in stem cell research that would enable me to work on stem cells created from adult tissue. That would make my life much easier, as I could finally use federal funding. (Of course, I was planning on being able to do that anyway in January 2009 when a new Administration took over.)
I have final exams this week and after that we go on break, so when I return to the lab in January I hope to see some policy changes.