rinnia | *falls over*

Oh. My god. It has been too long, my friends. Allow me to explain:

- My great uncle died. He was the closest thing my mom had to a father, and though we knew it was coming, it still hurt. What made it even worse is that a bunch of "family" (i.e. bio-related and/or marriage-related, but jackasses I am not fond of) crawled out of the woodwork to steal, literally steal, his belongings. And I'm 99% sure one of them had a hand in his actual death. And some of them are ex-cons with past violent convictions. It's a big fucking mess. At least it's settling down now.

- The Japan trip is off. We'd kind of gotten to the point where we didn't think it was feasible for us both to go, but Jaime at least was going to bring me back a souvenir. Then the nuclear thing happened. What with Jaime being a cancer survivor and all, we got nervous about him going, especially since he gets a bunch of radiation from his check-up scans every few months. Long story short, he e-mailed, his advisor understood, and said advisor will present Jaime's paper for the conference so Jaime doesn't have to go. Whee!

- Being a TA sucks. The time. Yargh.

- Minor mental meltdown as a result of lab stresses. My advisor is the type to motivate with stress and doesn't seem to believe in positive reinforcement. Add that onto anxiety, depression, and a touch of Imposter Syndrome, and sometimes I just hit critical.

+ Second pup! We adopted Opal, a 1 year old hound mix, and she is soooo sweet and cute. Check it:

This is our Benny. Handsome, isn't he?

And this is Opal. She was very shy at first, but she's taken to all of us quite well.

See?

Of course, Benny's not one to sit by idly.

Believe it or not, as far as we know, they're completely unrelated. Crazy, no?

Check out Opal's little ear wisps. She has the softest fur ever, I swear. Benny's all sleek and shiny, while she's a plush little doll.

One slight problem, though...