Virtual Quill

One consequence of Gran and Elanor working at Aby’s Auto Repair is the interest they’ve attracted among older males. Aby’s happy since it means more business for her, but I’m not sure about the intended objects of affection.
In Elanor’s case, when a gentleman casts his eyes upon her she responds with an unmistakable “do not disturb” non-verbal cue. (With wolves, that can be quite unmistakable.) Eventually she might find a way to reconcile a new relationship with the memory of her late beloved husband, but for now her heart is not seeking anyone new.
Gran, on the other hand, just might be in the market. She always had a stormy marriage to Grandpa, and now that she’s divorced she can play the field. In fact, she never had a genuine union of love in her life. She married Grandpa young, and by the time she discovered his true nature as a career criminal she was already pregnant with Dad. She stayed wed for the sake of Dad and the subsequent bunnies that came along.
The question is whether the defensive personality she’s cultivated over the years will scare off potential suitors. Knowing Gran, that can be even more intimidating than a wolf’s.

I heard from Fiona, Corrie and Bruno today. Not from Rudy.
It seems that Rudy had been taking his relationship with Fiona for granted, and Fiona being Fiona, decided to take a proactive approach to the situation. She completely camouflaged herself to become invisible to him and vanish from his life. (Fenton asked why she didn’t simply leave town, but she had classes to attend. The girl is super-conscientious.)
After a few days of missing her, Rudy finally admitted to her that the absence was affecting him. Of course, he didn’t exactly confess that intentionally; her final disguise was quite convincing.
Fiona returned Bruno’s clothes to him, and Rudy and Fiona had a somewhat-delayed Valentine’s Day.

It’s Valentine’s Day on Thursday, and Fenton and I will continue our tradition of taking a long flight through the night day, ending up with us perched at the very top of the clock tower watching the sun rise. Beat that for romance, Brangelina!
It’s our first V-Day as an engaged couple, and that makes it more special...and a little scarier. We’re now planning on a lifetime commitment which comes with a load of emotions that Fenton hasn’t carried before. He’s got some serious wing-strength, though.
Last Tuesday in the primary we split our vote: I voted for Hillary and Fenton voted for Obama, Judging from the current state of the campaign it looks like a lot of couples did that.
Speaking of couples, I visited Rhonda and Quinn over in the Family Housing dorm. I asked them if they were going to contribute to the “Family” part of the name anytime soon, and they said not right now, but it’s in their plans eventually.
Meanwhile, Rachel’s looking forward to another visit from her girlfriend Joan Hoof, She keeps putting her ear to the ground, listening for the clip-clop of her arrival.

The Big Game is today, not that I’m interested. While I follow Beige University’s teams, the professional sports don’t involve me. I suppose that’s because I see pro franchises as mechanisms for blackmailing cities out of tax revenue to build stadiums under the threat of moving to other cities.
I do kept swept up in Beige’s teams, especially when they’re doing well. Even though the athletes are separated in the athletic dorm and are rarely seen in actual contact with other students, they are technically a part of the campus.
(BTW, I acknowledge that by being nocturnal, there are lots of students with which I have no contact!)
Anyway, there are lots of parties planned this evening, and since The Game is played at night Fenton and I will probably go to one of them and watch the commercials. That’s what most people do, anyway. Only in America do we have an unofficial holiday for gathering in large groups to watch TV ads.

Here at Beige University we’re making dorm arrangements for next year. I’m still going to room with Rachel, and Fenton will continue to share his ecosystem with Bob Shrike.
Rachel and Bob were relieved, as they each semi-expected Fenton and I to start living together due to our engagement. The answer is not yet; for all of my family’s uniqueness we’re traditional in that regard.
Also, Fenton and Bob have a perfect set-up since one is nocturnal and the other isn’t. For all practical purposes they each have a private room.
Rachel, meanwhile, has become the little sister I never had. (...Until Coney gets older, of course!) I grew up as an only child, in a rabbit culture that put a premium on the traits of cuddliness and fluffiness...adjectives that would never apply to me. I did wish for siblings and I eventually got them. I don’t regret that wish, even when the answer comes in the form of Rudy.

The strike is history, thanks to Kell. She finally got management (in the person of R.L.) to confess what they really feared from the Internet, and she was able to allay those concerns. I’m quite proud of her; she’s not a geek, but she was able to marshall enough technical information to back up her arguments and win a fair contract for her fellow predators. (I’m sure that being married to the co-owner of an ISP helped on that count.)
The predators have resumed hunting, but are frustrated since most of their prey is hibernating. Instead, they settled for those who’ve been kicked off reality TV shows.
So life goes on. Fenton and I see each other whenever we’re not taking separate classes, and very occasionally the topic of conversation comes around to our future. While engaged, we’re not actively making any wedding plans, and I certainly haven’t picked out any flatware patterns.

I’m getting daily reports on the strike from home, plus what I see on the news. (Here in the Ivory Tower it really hasn’t impacted our lives to the extent that it has in the real world.)
Kell admits to enjoying the extra hours she spends with Coney, although even when she’s working she makes time to focus on her. She’s required to walk the picket line for four hours, and the rest of the day belongs to family life. That includes Dad’s footrubs; there’s something to be said for being married to the son of a Physical Therapist.
My brain just generated the mental image of Gran giving Kell a footrub. Out! Out, I say!
As I mentioned before, the settlement we got from the motel that chased Dad into the Wild has sustained us financially. Other predators aren’t so lucky, of course, and hunger is becoming a factor. This strike can’t possibly last much longer. At this point, there won’t be a winner...It’s who is going to lose the most.

I’ve returned to Beige U. for the spring semester, but the big news is back home where Kell and the rest of Civilization’s predators are on strike. (BTW, it doesn’t affect me or Rudy, since schools and universities are already no-predation zones.)
As you probably know, the issue is how much meat predators are permitted to take home for their families after giving the bulk of the catch to their employers. That has steadily eroded over the years. In the 1950s a single predator could support a mate and a litter, but by the 1980s most families required two predators to make ends meet. Now, even that is an iffy proposition. Hence, the walkout.
Management’s goal is easy to see: they want to break the union and go back to where each employee was a powerless lone wolf. So far, however, the strikers’ pack mentality is holding...even among felines. (!) The question is, what will happen when hunger sets in?
Kell has an advantage over her fellow strikers, since after she married Dad she acquired a taste for his native cuisine. (I’ve heard that frequently happens in mixed marriages, but fortunately Dad hasn’t moved in the other direction!) So, while other predators are going hungry Kell can sustain herself on carrots.

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.

I came home from Beige U. Wednesday night to find that Aby Eyeshine had volunteered her residence for the extended family's Thanksgiving dinner the following day. Everyone prepared their own meals and brought them over, so all Aby had to do was be a good hostess; a role she fulfilled admirably.
A good time was had by all, including the two grandmothers. I suspect that this played a role in Aby's offer, since they now are running her garage, and it's in Aby's interest to keep them cooperative. The offer of her home for one meal defused a potential flash point, all the while doing a good turn for her friends. (I continually find more and more reasons to admire her.)
Of course this Thanksgiving "dinner" was actually breakfast for me. After sundown I went over to Fenton's where I joined his family for their meal. Already full, I just ate a few insect wings.

I spent last weekend acquainting Rachel with the vegetation she had previously seen only as pulp after trampling. She was initially bored and unconcerned with the differences between various plants, as all her life she'd simply seen them as fuel. After a few days, however, she became amazed by all of the variety she'd been missing, and she got into the process. It was an exercise in nostalgia for me, as I was a straight-A Forager up until I discovered my true insectivore identity.
I picked up signals of discomfort from Fenton, which I initially thought was due to my spending time with Rachel. However, I soon realized that it was from my spending time with botany. I had to reassure him that I wasn't returning to a plant-based diet, and after all, he shouldn't worry about it affecting us since our relationship first blossomed when I was eating plants.
He did wince when I said "blossomed."
Speaking of food, there's a dust-up going on back home over where to hold the Thanksgiving dinner. The grandmothers have chosen that decision as their latest battlefield, so who knows what I'm going to walk in on when I return on Wednesday.