(no subject)

So, okay. I have a Thing about bugs and things crawling on me. My hair (hip-length) is starting to be a problem, in that respect, because whenever it's down and unrestrained, I get the ack!-something's-on-me sensation on my arms.

So around 4:45 this morning, I startle awake as I make a weird thrashing-flipping motion in my bed, and there is the lingering sensation of rodent feet - slightly scratchy little claws - on the back of my right arm. My heart is racing, and right about the point where I'm telling myself that didn't actually happen, I hear a little scrabbling sound by the wall. Okay. So there is maybe a mouse or something in my room, and that break in the window screen - which after all opens onto the driveway at ground level - is maybe a bigger problem than I thought. Still trying to calm down, I sit up and turn on the light by my bed. Maybe that didn't happen. I probably imagined the noise and the little paws on my arm and all of it.

And then I see a hamster making a beeline from my bed to my bedroom door.

"Maisie?" I say. Maisie is my best friend's hamster; she's incredibly stupid, and she lives in a cage in the next room with the door taped shut, because she's figured out before how to open it up, and jumped down from the cage to the floor, a distance of about three feet.

It looks like Maisie. I'm pretty sure it's Maisie, but one hamster looks pretty much like another at 4:47 with no contacts. She's skittery as hell, which is no surprise if I just, y'know, threw her, but she is very fixated on the door, which is kind of impressive - means she knows which way home is, which is intelligence I wouldn't have given her credit for. But I'm still half-awake and kind of freaked and not sure whether I know this hamster or whether she's going to bite me or pee on me or something, so I empty out my miniature G.I. Joe lunch box and corral her into it and carry her next door, where, sure enough, the cage is empty, and the tape on the door is loose enough for it to open about an inch. Dump her back in, and come back into my room, where I immediately start up my computer, since I have to a) post this to my livejournal and b) email my best friend, who's in Ohio, to tell her what her hamster just did. In mid-email-composition, my internet connection dies, and it occurs to me to wonder if Maisie happened to chew on that nice shiny green ethernet cable that runs across the floor...

She hadn't, though, so if not for the contents of my lunch box still being scattered across my bookshelf, it might all have been a dream...

(no subject)

I found it! A few days ago I got a line of description about Turnbull stuck in my head - something about Turnbull being a dungeon master. I was reasonably certain it wasn't actually from the show, but beyond that I had nothing. And today, goofing off at work and randomly rereading stories I read in the first frantic rush three months ago, I found it!

It's in basingstoke's story, "Pointy Chin": I have this theory. I think Turnbull's playing a game. A really complicated one with the whole world as players and him as the Dungeon Master. That's the only way I can make sense of the guy.

Now, I'm off to still not do any work and try to avoid actually laughing out loud at things I'd rather not explain to my boss.

Let me just say: fuck.

The hamster is missing again. Have checked every room in the apartment, twice, calling her name and shaking the treat jar, to no avail.

ETA: Found her. In the closet, behind the laundry basket. She's now sealed in her cage with packing tape. Stupid rat.