Christmas is almost here, and the scaley types are excited

I think my house is turning into a reptile rescue...

Seriously. Every time I turn around, there seems to be another person offering to give me a lizard, or a snake.

I reached my personal capacity with the second ball python. Kevin named her Morgan, for Morgan le Fey. I picked her up last night, and am still doing the shuffle to find her a spot.

Morgan, formerly known as Pants the snake.

Today, I recieved a redtail boa from my neighbors.  They saw me with Lilly and thought I would make a good home for their snake.

I told them I don't have any room for another snake, especially not that size. BUT, I know someone who does.

With her new momma

I succesfully placed that beautiful snake into a loving home. I was sad to see her go, even though she was only here a few hours,  but I know she is in a good home. That's what matters.

...and so it begins.

Christmas in Reptile-town

It's Christmas time, and that means... CHAOS!

All the lights are up outside, I think... Unless I decide to put up more.

I have kinda had that problem the last week or so. I keep changing my mind with the decorations.

I started out doing the tree all in silver,

 and I was satisfied... for about 2 days.

Then I added some ribbon:

Then I added blue:

then some little metal icicles:

I think it MIGHT be done now. No promises though.


A few of my friends posted this on my wall over the last few weeks:

and it gave me an awesome idea.

TINY SANTA HATS!!!

Lilly got hers already.


Smaug and Tia will have theirs soon, though I think Kaida may still be a little too small.

There will be pictures going out in my Christmas cards this year, because win.

Reptiles Anonymous

I did it again.

I said I wasn't going to get any more, but I did.

My cousin had a ball python that needed a new home. He was moving into a smaller place, and didn't have room for her cage.

I was on my way home from the Escondido Renaissance Faire, at Felicita park in Escondido, when I got the text from my cousin, asking if I could take in his snake.

He asked me to take her because he knew I would take good care of her, and because he could come and visit her too.

I named her Lillith, but I usually just call her Lilly.

Now she is one of the guardians of the living room.

Three dragons and a snake out there. I think it's pretty well guarded.

Out with the old, in with the new SNOW TOYS!!!

Went to the Salvation Army the other day to try to drop off Kevin's grandma's old mattress. When we got there, we found out they no longer accept mattresses.

Unwilling to waste the trip, we decided to go in and see if they had anything worth looking at.

When we got inside, we saw a massive crowd. We marveled at this, until we saw the sandwich board by the counter: "50% off ENTIRE store!"

We wandered, and I forgot about the sandwich board.

After awhile, Kevin found a pair of skis, with bindings, in almost new condition. Kevin dragged me over, and told me I should buy them. I tried to object, saying there was no way I could afford skis. He said "the tag says $20.00". I said it was a good price, but I shouldn't spend that... Then he reminded me about the sign.

Needless to say, I ended up going home with a pair of skis.
Nice skis.
For $10.00.

I went on Craigslist when I got home to try to find a pair of ski boots in my size. I found a BRAND NEW pair for $20.00.

When I went to pick them up, the guy selling them threw in a pair of skis without bindings, also brand new (still had the price tag on) also. He said he had bought them all for his wife, but she didn't like them, and he had waited too long to return them.

The best part? They're NOT pink!!

After all of this, Kevin decided to send me on a Craigslist mission for him. He wanted a snowboard, with bindings. He already had boots.

I found him a nice, nearly new board for $50.00. We picked that up today.

I can't wait for snow season.

Treasure Lake

Went on a backpacking trip up into the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains over the weekend. Kevin invited me along with him and his friends from the base.

We headed up towards Bishop on Thursday morning. We left the house around 8, but had a VERY slow start and didn't actually get on the road till noon-ish.

The drive was beautiful, but with all of the stops we made along the way, it was also very long.

We got into town at Bishop around 5:30, and still had to go driving around looking for a place to get a fishing license.

We made it to South Lake around 7.

The sun was already setting behind whe mountains by the time we were ready to head up, but we went anyway. It got dark pretty fast.

It was only a 3 mile hike, but it was BRUTAL.
In that 3 miles, we climbed over 4000 feet. Two thirds of the hike was stairs carved out of stone, which after the first hour or so, I started calling "The Stairs of 'NOPE'". They were carved un-evenly, and ALL of them were cut higher than normal stairs. Many of them were as high as my knees, and a few were even higher.

By the time we got near the end of the hike, I was stopping to rest every 5 minutes. Kevin was taking his pack up a ways, then coming back for mine because I couldn't carry it anymore. I felt terrible for letting him, but if he didn't, we would have had to stop and spend the night right there on the trail.

After around Kevin's 3rd trip back for me, he had good news. He had found the lake. VERY good news, as we were starting to get worried that we had missed it in the dark. It was around midnight. We got to the lake, set up our camping area, and passed out.

Friday morning, I got to meet Kevins friends, Percy, Angel, and Percy's son, Clint. We all had breakfast together. Percy brought mint from his garden at home for tea, it was delicious.

After breakfast, we went fishing. Kevin and I didn't catch anything, but the other guys caught seven fish. Therewere five of us up there, so that was plenty.

We had fried fish, rice, ramen, and corned beef from a can for dinner. It was pretty good.

The wind kicked up during the day, and by dinner it was REALLY cold, so we all turned in early to try to stay warm. Once I was in my tent, I stayed up late reading. I brought my Kindle just for that - I was reading book 4 of Song of Ice and Fire (the Game of Thrones books)

Saturday morning, the wind continued to blow, and it stayed really cold. There were wisps of clouds in the sky, where Friday it had been brilliantly clear and blue.

We tried to fish for a little while. I really wanted Kevin to catch something, because it was his first time fishing.

The wisps became more frequent, and more dense. Angel made a crack about rain and suggested heading down early. I commented that, as cold as it was, it would be snow, not rain. The clouds didn't look dark enough for rain, but we started packing up anyway.

We headed down the trail, and the clouds got denser and darker. Sure enough, about halfway down it started to snow. Not a lot, but enough that we noticed.

I still needed breaks on the way down. The stairs were murder on my knees just as much as they had been on the way up. We lagged behind the other guys a bit, so most of the way down it was just Kevin and me.

Around 4:30, we were nearly in sight of the parking lot when Percy came back looking for us. He thought we had gotten lost or something. Angel had headed home already, but Percy invited us out for dinner on him, saying we had earned it.

He told us that he had picked the trail, thinking that it was a nice, short, beginner trail that we could use to get used to hiking. Apparently Angel had been new to this too.

We went to a little place right next to the ranger station in Bishop called Holy Smoke Texas Style BBQ for dinner. SOOO delicious.

Got home around 10pm Saturday night. Had an awesome time.

Big Bear Faire, Highland War, and a pool table

Did the Big Bear Renaissance Faire again this year. It was the best year yet. I took the dragons. It was Kaida's first REAL faire. She went to Market Night in Redlands a couple times for practice, but this was her first full-on faire/camping event.

We weren't there the first weekend.

SECOND weekend went really well, except that I tried a new kind of heat supply for the dragons, and it ran out during the night. They were fine, no ill after effects, but they were VERY happy to be left out in the sun for a bit in the morning. I put them on the little folding stool I re-furbished using the scraps from Kevin's vest.

While they were out on the little stool in the guild yard, Tia thought it would be a good idea to go on a little adventure. She attempted to walk off the edge of the stool, but Smaug stopped her. He put one of his big dragon-hands on the base of her tail, then flopped his head down on the middle of her back as if to say "No, you stay HERE!". It worked, she stayed. Smaug keeps his girls in line.

Gallows Humor's CreEPy CD: Gypsy tested, DRAGON approved!

THIRD weekend was much better. I brought backups and more backups of the heating stuff, and they had lasting heat through the night. Tiamat popped out of the travel carrier like a little Jack-in-the-box in the morning, followed by Kaida. Smaug is a lazy bum and didn't want to come out right away. He isn't a big fan of mornings. They also had wings for third weekend. During second weekend, I had a little girl tell me that they couldn't be REAL dragons, because they didn't have wings... well, I solved that.


Smaug wanted nothing to do with the wings, but Tiamat wore hers for a good 45 minutes before she stepped on one, and decided they weren't so great.

Kaida is still too little for hers. Once I had them finished, I realized they probably weighed as much as she did. Maybe next time when she is a little bigger.

That CreEPy CD was the last one we had for the weekend, and was auctioned off. It went for $40. I should have had Smaug do an ink-print of his foot on it... Everyone ELSE signed it, and he's kind of become the official un-official mascot for Gallows Humor.


-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-


Went to Highland War (an SCA event) in Victorville over the weekend.

Yes, I took the dragons. Of COURSE I took the dragons. They would never have forgiven me if I left them home.

They got a LOT of attention. So many people came over to love on them, and snuggle them, and carry them around camp. It was great.

And Smaug got to pretend to be the Pirate King.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I finally got a pool table. Highland War didn't have a lot of booths for shopping, so when I got home, I still had pretty much all of the money I had set aside for shopping over the weekend. I hit up Craigslist and found a nice pool table for cheap.

Craigslist rocks!

A day late...

Around 8am this morning, I was stuck in traffic for about half an hour or so. When I finally made it to the... obstruction... I saw a small, red, rather fast looking car (couldn't tell what kind anymore) wrapped around a signal post. There were something like 4 ambulances, 2 fire trucks, and maybe 5 or 6 police cars/motorcycles.





I desperately wished my cell phone camera still worked (stupid phone)...




...because that signal post...



...was right in front of the big Kaiser Hospital sign.

...I guess if you HAVE to wrap your car around a pole, the pole in front of the hospital is probably the best one to use.

Cabinets and steam sale antics...

The dragons have their new cabinet. I set it up... ish... today. Have been waiting on replacement doors for the bottom half for awhile, and I finally got them today. Cost $94 and 3 days of "Hey, you said pick them up today, what happened?"

And when I got them home, I found out they had been cut 1/8 of an inch too long.

Rather than take them back, have the guy fix it, and spend half of next week chasing him around to get them back, I 'modified' the cabinet to make them fit. I had to carve down parts of the track guard enough to let the glass pane in, but not so much that it couldn't still keep the glass in the frame.

It worked.

Smaug has the top cabinet to himself, and the girls get to share the bottom. I still need to put in the wood bits and some better decorations, but for now, it looks pretty good.

On another note, this totally happened tonight:

Yea. Steam does that. I still don't remember buying Fallout III or New Vegas.

...Not that I am complaining  :)

Reptiles are an addiction

Hi, my name is Katie, and I am a reptile addict...


Seriously, I just got 2 more. Not beardies this time though. This time, I ended up with a pair of leopard geckos.

It was their eyes. Their eyes burned into my soul and haunted me. A few weeks ago, I was at a PetCo, it was night time, and the geckos were awake. I looked into the tank, and a little gecko looked back at me.

I wanted to take it home, but I already had the 3 beardies

Yesterday, I was at PetSmart. I was entertaining the dragons by taking them out into public to meet people - they love that. I asked the girl who works in the reptile and fish department what the geckos feel like, and she opened up the tank and told me to feel for myself. One of the bigger ones in the tank climbed right into my hand. She was almost velvety... I was done. She climbed up onto my shoulder and I put my hand into the tank again. A second one climbed up onto my hand as well, but I put it back.

I took the first one home.

within an hour, I had decided I didn't want her to be lonely, so I went back for the other one too. The girl was still there, and when I put my hand back in, the same little gecko hopped up. She said "Look, it remembers you!" 

I took that little one home too.

Now I have to come up with some names...

Pirates and sabers and... dragons? Oh my!

My church had a murder mystery dinner a few weeks ago. Pirate themed.

I took the dragons. Smaug is no stranger to the people at my church, he has been there several times - but it was Tiamat's first time.






She handled it quite well








She had a great time meeting all the new people, and had to explore EVERYTHING. At the end of the night, though, she was completely worn out.


She really did like my hat  :)







On another, not entirely related note, the dragons ALL seem to be fans of World of Warcraft...

Smaug wants to play

The girls like to watch

Here there be DRAGONS!

New dragon. We named her Kaida.

...well, actually, KEVIN named her Kaida. I just approved the name. He said it is Japanese for "Little Dragon". Good enough reason for me.









She gets along with the others QUITE well.

Dragon Harem

Picked up two more dragons. Both female, both Italian Leatherbacks.

Kaida. Female Citrus Tiger Italian Leatherback, Approximately 1 month old.

One is barely a month old,

Tiamat. Female red Italian Leatherback. Approximately 3 months old.

while the other is probably about 3 months.

Tiamat has developed a taste for piggyback rides from Smaug, and for SOME odd reason, he tolerates it.