Mazel tov!

After seven years as a couple (a few of them long-distance) and one near-breakup caused by a certain penguin's less-than-perfect performance as postmaster, Sir Tristan and Lady Faraday are officially engaged!

Unfortunately, I missed the proposal, because I was off playing a socially-challenged bishonen sorcerer in a game of Exalted.  But I'm told that it was incredibly romantic, and that Lady Faraday got down on three knees and everything.  Apparently they'd been talking about marriage for a while, but the proposal itself was a surprise for Sir Tristan.

There may or may not be pictures of this.  It's less than clear, because the engagement party was quite an event.  I got home while it was still going on; Magick was making cocktails and pretty much everyone was totally wasted except for him and, ironically, the happy couple (who do look really, really happy).  Lady Artemisia might have taken pictures, but she's looking like she might be out for a while.

Lady Faraday says that they haven't set a wedding date yet, but they're not intending to have a very long engagement, so probably it will be within the year.  They haven't decided whether to be married here or to go back home briefly so that their families can attend.

Revelations

So I was talking to Henri the other day, and in the course of the conversation -- I don't remember how this came up -- I randomly referred to him as a giraffe, because, you know, I'd always assumed he was a giraffe.  Don't you think he looks like a giraffe?.  Here is a random cute picture of Henri with Winslow the whale.

Henri and Winslow

Well, it turns out I was entirely wrong, and Henri is not a giraffe after all!  He's a girrafe.  That is pronounced [dʒr-ref], with a vocalic [r] in the first syllable followed by another [r] as the consonantal onset in the second syllable, and the whole thing rhymes with treif.  He showed me his official public ID on the tag on his ear (the one you can see in that picture), and it clearly identifies him as a girrafe rather than a giraffe.  I felt really bad.  Henri's been with me for at least four or five years now, and this whole time I've been assuming he was a giraffe! 

This does make the fact that Henri is carnivorous suddenly make sense, though.

CHAOS!!!

Well, I'd meant to keep this up to date on the situation in the Wild Fascist Dictatorship, but the communication Argantry's been receiving has been confusing and contradictory, so I was waiting until things were a bit clearer. 

So!  The deal was this: I mentioned earlier that when Argantry received her initial information about Ebenezer Popcorn's deposal, she wasn't certain which of about five different factions of the army might be responsible for it.  Over the last few days, she received probably two dozen more emails and telegraphs and this continued to be completely uncertain.  The only thing she was clear on was that things were an absolute disaster and lots of animals were just fleeing the capital.

It turns out that a lot of the chaos is due to the fact that three of the army's factions carried out the coup in tandem, and then upon achieving their goal, their alliance immediately fell apart and they started fighting each other.  The current situation, then, is basically close to anarchy.  Argantry is really worried about some of her family and her associates; apparently there are a lot of civilians barracaded into the university, hoping that the fighting won't reach there.  The only bright spot is that the army is so busy beating the shit out of itself that it hasn't been too harsh on the civilians yet.

BREAKING NEWS!!!!

Argantry received an urgent telegraph this morning from one of her secret contacts in the Wild Fascist Dictatorship.  (That is, it's not a secret that she has contacts, but their identities are secrets).  There has been a coup!  The military has turned on Ebenezer Popcorn and forced him out of office and into prison, along with his heinous righthand sadist, Dr Basil!  Not clear yet which of the military factions is responsible for the coup; Argantry says that there are about five.  She is not very optmistic that her exile is over, alas; only one of the parties that could be responsible would actually be favourable to her.  But still, excitement!

The Saddest Octopus

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that there had been Shenanigans up in the Northern Domicile.  This is because the apartment I had been living in got infested with bed bugs and we all had to evacuate and the menagerie was quarantined and it was all really messy and I ended up slightly homeless and spent a few months occupying the couch of the incredibly generous WMPT and EHC.  Magick, Seal, Gilly, Plouie, and Ilari came with me.  I am still amazed that they were willing to look after us for so long.  It's a good thing Hrithik went into quarantine with the others or they might not have been.

Anyway, so while I was there, WMPT went to the Museum of Natural History and rescued an octopus.  He and EHC seem to have a penchant for taking in distressed stray creatures, I guess.  The poor octopus was pretty distressed; it didn't even talk when he first brought it in.  It would just look at you with these huge tragic eyes.  WMPT asked me to take it in, because he knows I have a menagerie and hoped it would feel at home.  He and EHC have a menagerie too, but theirs is full of eldritch creatures (whereas I have only one eldritch creature in mine) and he was concerned that they'd be too much for the poor traumatised octopus to handle.  I concurred.  I don't think I've ever seen anything quite so distressed as this poor octopus.  I started thinking of him as the Saddest Octopus because he wouldn't tell us his name or anything.  He'd just look at us with these huge doleful eyes.

The Saddest Octopus -- not the best picture, but look at those tragic eyes

The Saddest Octopus is at something of a disadvantage in my menagerie because he's the only invertebrate, so I carefully put him with other sea creatures in hopes that he'd be able to find some common ground to talk about.  He doesn't really talk much, though.  Whatever has happened to him shook him up pretty bad.

Fortunately for him, we happen to have a world-class psychotherapist among us.  Ilari is really good with trauma victims, it turns out, so he's been working with the Saddest Octopus, and I am pleased to report that after several months we've managed to get the Saddest Octopus to talk to us a little bit.  Only a little bit, but that much constitutes considerable progress, so we are quite hopeful that he might end up okay.

We don't know much about what happened to him yet, and Ilari, who knows more, isn't telling because of confidentiality and all.  But we've learned the Saddest Octopus's real name, and once you hear the story of his name, you'll have some idea as to why he's so very sad.  I mean, even the poor thing's name is traumatic.

The Saddest Octopus is named Tollemache-Tollemache Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh.... or possibly Tollemache-Tollemache Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh.  That is the tragedy: he really doesn't know which.  His mother was a Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh, and his father was a Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh, and when they went to hyphenate their names, they really could not agree which of them should come first.  Should their son be a Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh or a Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh?

Although he hasn't directly talked about it, it's pretty clear that the Saddest Octopus was very deeply affected by this debate.  His parents fought over his surname fiercely for a couple of years and then went through a very bitter divorce over it; he clearly blames himself, and now he can't even give his name to people because he doesn't want to have to take sides in the matter and therefore the poor guy doesn't even know what his name is!  Can you imagine?

Now, it's pretty clear that the name wasn't really the problem for the Saddest Octopus's parents.  It was symbolic of much larger issues in their relationships.  His mother's family, the Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaughs, is working class, while his father's family, the Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaughs, is very wealthy, so his mother got a lot of slurs from his father's family and she never thought he supported her enough; he, in turn, eventually started trying to make her feel inferior.  She wasn't a Featherstonehaugh-Featherstonehaugh for nothing -- her family is known for being pretty tough -- so she fought back.  Apparently she won a pretty decent chunk of her ex-husband's assets in the divorce proceedings.  But the poor Saddest Octopus still blames himself.  Children are like that: they blame themselves for their parents' issues and demons.  It's really hard to work through all of that.

So that's the very beginning of the story of the Saddest Octopus.  Hopefully, as he gets more comfortable with all us freaky vertebrates, he'll tell us more about himself, and maybe even become a little less sad.

Quixley Prepares for Frankenstorm

There are all sorts of things going on down here in the Northern Domicile, but I haven't got around to writing about them yet for the very same reason that I have things to write about.  How about that.

Right now, of course, what is happening is that we're about to be pounded by Frankenstorm and possibly all die.  It's very exciting.  I'm not really supposed to say that because Alfredo doesn't want anyone to panic, however.  He's decided that we have to keep the curtains totally closed so that no one notices anything unusual about the storm outside.  I'm not sure what he'll do if the power goes out, and I'm not sure how he's circumventing the fact that about half the denizens of the Northern Domicile have smartphones these days either.  Somehow I bet this is going to get out of control.

Wow, listen to that wind howling.

I'm actually posting about the Southern Domicile, because Rochester has concluded that everyone down there is mature enough to handle news of their possible impending demise.  They seem to have decided not to get too fussed about it.  Or at least Quixley, who has been IMing me off and on all morning, isn't too fussed about it.  Although he's pretty laid-back generally, so maybe he's not the best test specimen.  Anyway,  he sent me this picture of himself a bit ago and I had to share it with the world in general:

Quixley tries on KEP's boots

KEP was kind enough to share her boots with Quixley, as you see.  (She's pretty cool that way.)  They look rather fetching on him, don't you think?  Totally his colours.

The other news about Quixley is that he has a new boyfriend.  His name is Quellidore and they met playing WoW.  When he told me this, I was like, 'Didn't you just have a new boyfriend you'd met playing WoW the last time I talked to you?' but Quixley explained that no, no, that was like months ago and it's so over now.  Quellidore is totally different.  I dunno.  Quixley's always assuring me that his newest True Love is totally different from the others, but they always turn out to be really high-maintenance.  I wonder if he'd have better luck if he'd, like, meet them in person first.  But who knows?  Quellidore might actually really be different. 

I personally suspect that part of Quixley's problem is that he's been on the rebound for a long time, sort of.  He had this boyfriend in school -- his name was Quenevire -- and they were together for a few years, and then broke up (I don't know why; Quix won't tell me), and I think Quixley never really got over him and just sort of throws himself into relationships so he doesn't have to think about it.  Or possibly he was really on the rebound for a while and sort of fell into that pattern and got stuck.  It's been like five years, though.  It makes me wonder whether he should just look up Quenevire and see if they have any chance of rekindling things.  But,  you never know; maybe one of these online things will eventually work out.

I should have seen this coming, really

So, after a long period of Shenanigans, I have a new apartment, which I'm just finally getting settled into.  The gang's all here -- everyone from the Northern Domicile, anyway -- and I really ought to get around to explaining what they've been up to for the last while, before long.  I was kind of distracted by all the Shenanigans.

But one thing must be mentioned first.

I decided to buy a new mattress.  I've been sleeping on a perfectly nice twin, but, well, the Northern Domicile has become pretty large.  At the moment, a lot of them are posted on my various bookcases, but a lot of the space they're occupying exists as room for expansion, and it's not going to last forever.  I acquire books at a pace even more rapid than the one I acquire new animals, if you can believe it.  So I'm going to need room for them somewhere else before too long, and the obvious solution was to just get a bigger mattress.  (Also an actual bed, which will enable me to twine faery lights around it: that is a thing I have always wanted to do.)  Thus, I have upgraded to a queen.  It's basically the larger and fluffier version of the twin I had.

The new queen mattress arrived today, tightly rolled into this tube shoved into a canvas cocoon.  They must have used a machine to do it.  It would have taken me hours to extract it had I not had some experience with this phenomenon: the trick is, you cut the canvas and plastic off.  Then I had the pleasure of watching the formerly-compressed mattress spring to life in its actual dimensions.  Turns out I chose well.  I lay down on the thing to test it and had to pry myself off it, because I didn't want to get up. 

Unfortunately, I made a tactical error: I completely forgot that in leaving the room, I'd left Gilly behind in my bedroom with the new mattress unattended.  AJD mentioned this oversight when I posted about the new mattress on LJ -- wondering if it were really me, or if Gilly had finally got hold of my credit cards -- and I dashed back into the bedroom immediately, but lo, I was too late.

Gilly thinks he really does need all that space.  I mean, just look how crowded he is.

Gilly rushes to defend his new territory.

The moment I came back in, he knew I was going to attempt to reclaim it, and he came dashing over.  Look at that determination on his face.  He's not going to let me have it back.  If I try to pull him off, he'll dig his claws in and rip it.

I really liked this mattress, too.  It's really quite comfortable, and look at that lovely leaf pattern on it (which I will shortly have to cover up with an anti-bed bug mattress cover, sadly).  I can't really blame Gilly for grabbing his dreams, but, like, damn.

Tomorrow my boxspring and bed are being delivered.  This might be my chance to reclaim it, but I may have to promise him custody of the twin first.  (Current plan is for the twin to live under the new bed, so that ASD can sleep on it when he visits).  It could very well be that this has been Gilly's clever scheme all along...