Some happier things

* I met the person who moved in next door (Well, one of them: husband and wife, met the husband, and he also said they had two grown children who were sometimes around, but were looking for their own homes). He's the son of someone I knew years ago in AAUW (she has since passed away). He is perhaps 10 years older than I am and I am guessing his wife is about the same. He's a surgical nurse in the OB section of the local hospital, she is a special-ed teacher.

They moved to this house (it's a rental, and I'm guessing if things go well, they won't be there forever) because he is having back surgery in a few weeks and they needed a place with minimal stairs. (So hopefully, if the recovery goes well....well, I don't want to lose them because they should be good neighbors but I expect they maybe have a larger place elsewhere). Also that probably explains why one of their cars has a handicapped tag on it. He did seem a little uncomfortably bent over...

The good news is they should be good neighbors - he told me to come over and knock on the door if they are ever loud enough to bother me (there was some hammering the other night, but with people moving in, you have to expect that, and anyway, I can't hear it from my bedroom). I laughed and said unless they had regular jam sessions, or played first-person shooter games with the sound all the way up, things were probably pretty good.

He assured me the dogs (mostly rescue dogs, he said) that spend some time out in the backyard (I hear them occasionally) are all friendly. I did mention that I had "bad experiences" with dogs as a kid, so I was always apprehensive about unfamiliar ones.

They also have a lovely tabby cat named Mayhem. She came out into the living room when we were talking and walked right up to me. I am never apprehensive about cats (some are mean so maybe I should be) so I reached down to pet her and she started purring and rubbing on my legs, and by the end of my visit over there, when I stopped petting her, she'd rise up on her hind legs and try to grab my hand....he said that I had apparently "hit all her sweet spots" and she liked me.

And yeah, I totally did the shy/awkward person thing of paying attention to the cat while the person was talking to me.

He's also going to pass phone numbers to me once they get the lines established (I guess they are having a landline) and he said that since he was a former EMT, if I ever had anything like a medical emergency, to call. So that's reassuring to know. (He also warned me that if I ever saw him peeling out at an odd hour, he was being called in to help deliver a baby).

* I got all the green squares made for the Color-Bar Blanket. That leaves yellow, and a smaller number of grey and navy, and then a larger number of black and white. (There are more white squares than any). Then I have to figure out the most unobtrusive way of sewing them together.

* A new friendo. I had been looking at the Lunarshine site a while back, Equestria Daily had linked it, and I thought "some of the plushies there are cute" (They use, as it turns out, one of the same companies that made "bootleg" MLP stuffies - but here they were making fan-made characters, so I assume it's a grey area of copyright; the fan-made stuff, after all, points at the "corporate" stuff and maybe increases the market for it, even? I don't know).

But anyway. I thought of getting one....I kind of want a Brownie Bun, but I wound up buying Night Stitch (a batpony, and yeah, I admit I'm not as on-board with the whole batpony thing as some fans are) because she was cute and the stuffed toy of her was not many monies.

(I'm wondering if the others - which are more expensive - are smaller runs or are made by individuals rather than by companies. Night Stitch's friend Flitter Batter, for example, retails at a higher price).

Anyway, she came on Thursday. I wasn't feeling so great that day for various reasons so I just unwrapped her out of the shipping bag and popped her tag off and tossed her on the pile of Ponies already on my bed. But here she is:

Her "vampire bat" teeth want to go the wrong way; she needs little braces. (I've been trying to fold them down into the right orientation when I think about it)

there's also an Ask Night Stitch tumblr (this is a thing, "ask such-and-such OC pony" tumblr). I saw the link on her tag yesterday and sighed a little, and thought, "Okay, if this is a Lewd Tumblr (some Pony tumblrs are), I'll just headcanon my own backstory for her." But the posts I've seen have just been kind of funny and nice: she is a seamstress batpony in Batlinburg. She likes fruit and bugs to eat. (Well, sure: BATpony). She likes to read. She has parents and siblings, and a friend called Flitter Batter...actually, it just seems sort of cute and nice, so I am happy there.

I might still buy myself a Flitter Batter so she has her friend....

(Updated to add: yes I am both a giant sucker and a crouton-petter of the first water. My inner seven-year-old kept piping up "but you don't want Night Stitch to be lonely because she's the only Batpony you have!" and now Flitter Batter has been ordered. Oh well. I will regard the batponies as my early Valentine's Day gift to myself. 'Cos I don't have anyone to buy gifts for or who will buy gifts for me, so....I have to self-gift. (Erk. That doesn't sound....nice)

* the yellow you see piled up to my right (left of the photo) in those pictures are the "Pound of Love" yarns I got last week - I bought a book a while back called "Crochet to Calm" and it has an interesting blanket - mostly double-crocheted, but with a tiny bit of filet to it so it has sort of a honeycomb pattern. I'm thinking if I'm up for doing another crocheted blanket after I finish the Color-Bar Blanket, this one will be the one.

* I got my first exam (for next week) written and then dragged home a bunch of papers (it was lunchtime by then) but I don't think I'm going to get around to reading them this weekend. I should probably do a little cleanup here in the house instead.