The Preciousss Portkey

Oh lucky day. Well. It was supposed to be lucky but we guess that this serpent got out on the wrong side of bed this morning. Felt kind of groggy and thick headed which is hardly surprising when we did not go to bed until after 1am or so.

Finally got our phone reconnected on Monday and today was to be the big day for the first Izzie post from the Lair. But of course, the Izzie wasn't going to be taking any chances so we decided to have a test run last night.
Seen the small print in the evil blue and orange Telstra leaflet that the prepaid home phone service may not be compatible with 0198 ISP numbers. No worries thinks Izzie. Dodo is definitely a 23.... something or other.

Surprise surprise. Goes to perform the Portkey ritual and what does we find but an 0198 number. Bugger. Guess it was just too good to be true. But we soon put a stop to the pity party train of thought and it just never got out of the station. It does not say they are absolutely not compatible only that they might be so the Iz will simply ring the ISP and ask if there is an alternative number we can use. They says that there is no need and should be no problem as many of their dial up customers use the prepaid home phone service.

First try – no luck. Tells us we had not entered a valid phone number – had forgotten to put in the # at the end of the enormous string of numbers. Second time – no dial tone or some other thing. It was then the Iz remembered about tweaking the modem not to wait for the dial tone or some other esoteric procedure. So third time was most lucky indeed. A most strange strange sensation to be slinking about Cyberia in the comfort of our own Lair. Oh what joy. Pottered about online for 40 minutes or so before slinking outside with a drink to celebrate.

So, today, was visiting our usual lurking grounds and would have left the Preciousss at home but for the fact that we would be meeting the Potions Mistress and setting up her stuff. And for that we needed the Preciousss which has the 90 day test drive of MYOB accounting software. Also wanted to snatch the “Spirit of Things” podcast from Sunday just gone which featured some truly amazing choirs. Bloodcurdling and spine tingling stuff.
All the buses seemed to be on a go slow and there was lots more traffic than usual so the Iz arrived rather later than we expected in spite of leaving the Lair the same time every week
Original plan was to arrive around 12 and stay till 1.30 at the latest before pottering off to Angel's Cafe for our podcasts and cheese waffles followed by Half Price Happy Hour at the Juicy Beetroot Cafe at 3pm.
But Liz the Potions Mistress was out for lunch when we arrived at 12.30 so the Iz went to the cafe next door and read the papers before returning just after 1pm. Was there till just before 3pm. Turns out that she did not have all the invoices and stuff in shoe boxes like we had hoped. (Oh by the way – the stuff she sells is the most wickedly wonderful handmade soaps – nearly all designed to look and smell like cakes,chocolates, fruits and sweets. The shop would certainly not look out of place in Diagon Alley.)
Went through the set up procedure and it wants those numbers or nothing is going to happen. Some – like petty cash – you can make up but others such as rent and insurance and bank loans, you need cold hard figures.

She thought the Preciousss was very pretty and her friend helping her is a Mad Mac fan (It's a conspiracy) but Izzie was not impressed with the behaviour of the Preciousss. In spite of the gloomy overcast weather, Preciousss still insisted on tossing beachballs around. Not in the mood for work at all – the little bugger. Poor critter must have been exhausted from last night's adventures.
Even trying to switch on the wireless or trying to switch from Izzie to Dolores provoked a hissy fit of bouncing beachballs. Oh we know the poor thing is probably starving with its measly 256mb of memory but this was getting truly ridiculous.

(and being such a cloudy grey day, would be missing out on our moonwatching adventures. Will be working 3-10pm on Saturday so it will be well and truly risen by the tiem the Izzie gets to peek)

So, tonight was slash and burn. Dumped Open Office into the trash. Not sure if we will bother downloading the latest version or just stick to NeoOffice. (which is disgustingly sluggish) Sent the fiery frumpy Fox off to bed too. Ever since getting version 1.5, has been acting most strangely indeed. Wonders if having five windows of one browser open – one with a flash game, another with the JKR writing desk and another with 8 tabs – wonders if that may have anything to do with today's hissy fits?
Now that the Preciousss no longer has to wait days between adventures online, maybe the Iz can get in the habit of logging out more often and closing stuff down instead of leaving the Preciousss on Snooze.

Unforgiveably Wierd

timatina has placed the Imperius Curse on this poor unsuspecting serpent under the guise of some seemingly innocuous game. The Preciousss also seems to be in on it too, so in a state of utter exhaustion we find ourselves no longer able to resist their evil commands and find our fingers flying over the keyboard - seemingly of their own accord.

Ground Rules: The first player of this "game" starts with the topic "5 of your weird habits," and people who get tagged need to write a LJ entry about their 5 weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next 5 people to be tagged and list their names.



1 Izzie has a pet rat with some very peculiar habits. Wormtail is rather partial to camembert cheese, crackers (especially the thin wafery sorts) and the odd glass or two of cabernet. In fact, he insists on the first sniff and sip of every glass of red that darkens the Izzie's lips. And what the Rat wants, the Rat gets.

2 The Izzie has been known to hiss and snarl when grumpy, especially at consumers of stinking coffin nails and screaming squawking rotten little rugrats. We so so hates the noisy little beasties.
And then other times the Izzie hisses just to announce her presence among those who are aware of her serpentine tendencies. What's really sweet is when certain folks hiss back (Like the lady at work who has a large collection of pink and fluffy cats and an extremely dark sense of humour, who Izzie calls the Lizard Queen)

3 The Izzie does not collect pink and fluffy dolls, cats or similar creatures but is very partial to teddy bears and have even made some ourselves. Fussy Izzie only likes mohair and other such real materials.

4 Izzie does not have a sweet tooth and goes out of her way to avoid sugar and salt of any sort. Sweeteners are even lower on the Izzie list of acceptable food ingredients along with anything GM. This sounds a bit peculiar in light of our addiction to chocolate but it is the dark and bitter stuff that we prefer where the bitterness offsets the sweetness. On the other hand, the Iz is most fond of savory tastes like cheese and peanut butter which we will put on just about anything. There's nothing that cannot be improved with cheese, chickpeas or sesame seeds.

5 Izzie is a bit of a goblin at heart and has kept a little green book since the age of 15 or so where we write down everything that we spend. Used to even go so far as to put stuff into categories such as rent, groceries, booze, books etc and balance the books at the end of every month. Getting a big fat zero at the end of the month was a most rare event indeed but it was not worth the hassle of searching for the missing millions for most months. So in the end we were satisfied with any discrepencies between income, expenditure and savings of less than $$20 for the month and to have the assets column getting bigger every month.
But once we got our paws on the Lair, got a bit slack and in early 2002 stopped bothering with the rituals at the end of the month. But we have still kept up our daily squiggles and a most amazing memory jogger it can be many moons later.

Since Izzie is such a nice nice serpent and has no desire to serve a sentence in Azkaban - instead of whispering incantations to unsuspecting victims, the Izzie asks for volunteers instead.