October is too long. Okay, so yeah, I should be working, and the house was hit over the weekend by a tornado who wears a wedding ring that looks just like mine, so I wouldn’t have time to do it today anyway, but I want Intrepid to be final release. If stupid October was as short as February, then release would be tomorrow (unless it was a leap year), but noooo, it has to drag on all the way to Friday. I want a shiny new OS. There’s nothing wrong with Hardy, but Intrepid is new and I want it now. Not bad enough to run a beta (icky-poo beta), but want. I had a crap weekend except for Friday night and Sunday evening, and goddammit, I deserve something nice.

I did manti-nap Onlena, though, which is cool, or at least it will be once I get her into a proper enclosure and get her to eat. I know she’s hungry because she grabbed a superworm right away, but she dropped it. Maybe it tried to bite…dunno. Bless her little manti-heart; I found her in exactly the same place–right to the very same yucca leaf–where I saw her two weeks before. Last night was cold, but tonight is supposed to go below freezing, and I’m not sure an insect that size could find sufficient insulating cover to keep her from freezing. She won’t freeze now, though, and although I don’t have a clue how long she will live because her system has already got the “season’s over, girlie” signal, at least she will die well-fed and of plain old age instead of freezing to death. I know it’s the way they’re supposed to die, but Olena is Last Mantis Standing, the last I have seen in weeks, and she came back. It’s as if I was supposed to find her and bring her home. Not much difference between feeding Valerie and feeding Valerie and Olena; it’s not like Miss Vee can consume 25 2″ superworms in the time they’ll survive, but maybe Val and Olena can. This, boys and girls, is known as rationalisation.

Okay, I’m in a better mood now. Still not going to work right away, but I will soak some Eco-Earth and go get a 5g tank from the basement for Olena. She doesn’t seem to be enjoying the 2g holding tank very much; I’m getting a whole bunch of “disapproving mantis” from her. Then again, mantises in general disapprove of pretty much everything except for actual food. How I’m going to feed superworms to Olena in an enclosure with coir bedding, I don’t know yet…she doesn’t quite get how to eat them, and they’re goddamned quick to burrow into substrate. Maybe I could just set it up without the Eco-Earth at first, until she gets the hang of taking food from tweezers and eating it right away? I know she took the katydid I gave her when she was still “wild”, but when I went back an hour later, she still hadn’t eaten it all. Great–like I need more finicky critters who don’t want to eat what’s on the menu.

Putting half-decent external speakers on the laptop made watching 4h of Arrested Development whilst lying in bed a whole lot more fun. So did chocolate ice cream and barbeque chips. Hee! 😀