This entry is rated PG for language.

The past few days have been… content, I suppose. Busy, but somehow I have some inner peace while working hard at the store every day and zonking out when I get home. My dear Zukitchi on Squeak Tama has been my sole vpet companion these past few days, and it has been really nice. Really nice. I've never had just a little P2 at work with me. He's very chill and tolerant, and so tiny!

Today, he got sick, and from reading Dennis's logs I had the impression that this meant he would start getting needy. I was a little sad about this. His age read eighteen years old, but of course pausing factors in a lot.

Shortly after his illness, I dropped Squeak Tama on the hard floor. I gasped and picked him up, and he seemed fine. I was particularly nervous because Squeak Tama had had such traumatic surgery when I tried to change its batteries and found the left screw was so tight that it stripped. I had to pry off the backing. Since then, Squeak Tama has been squeaky.

The next time I checked on him, my Zukitchi was gone. Not dead, just... his shell was empty. The screen was blank. He was gone.

I cursed mightily. It was pretty craptacular.

Home now, I unscrewed the back to see if there was anything obviously wrong with any visible components. I pressed the batteries into their niches and heard the familiar beep. A spotted egg was bouncing on the screen. The Tamagotchi seems to work…

I'm not sure how to interpret what happened to my Zukitchi. Does this mean that Squeak Tama is unstable? Do I run the risk of having my characters disappear with no warning?

For now, I have put the tab back in to Squeak Tama and I have decided to turn my attention to my Morino. My Tentotchi is still there and it's time to show him some love.

Also, I turned 24 today. I didn't plan anything special with my friends. I didn't really feel like it; 24 is kind of an intimidating birthday to me. A lot of my friends are out of town for the summer, and also I find that most of my friends don't know each other. I don't really have a "group" of friends, I have a lot of different friends that I see one-on-one pretty often. The social clique I was in from high school, well... I deliberately faded from that group when we went to university (it was getting a little incestuous). They're all still friends with each other, and I hang out with them from time to time, but I really can't stand the whole "if you invite one, you have to invite them all" kind of situation… thankfully (?!) there has been a lot of drama in the past year or so, and the group has fragmented. I prefer it that way, although many would see that as a terribly insensitive and nihilistic attitude.

Anyway, the thought of all my friends at the same party is pretty much laughable, since most of them wouldn't know anyone else at the party but me… Or at least, they would have never met before most of the other guests.

I'm always surprised by the number of birthday wishes I ultimately get on my birthday, since I never mention it to anyone. I got three or four the night before, from people who are traveling in places that are in time zones ahead of me. My friend Melissa wished me a happy birthday when it turned midnight in England, and my friend Danya messaged me when she woke up in Korea, where she is teaching English to kids. Rachel wished me a happy birthday forty minutes in advance because she's a busy girl. ^_^ And today, really, the only person I talked to that I knew personally who didn't mention my birthday, was my boss… because I'm sure he just didn't know.

When I woke up, I found a bunch of birthday Tweets from my friends on Twitter, and a bunch of Facebook wall posts from a bunch of people. Some of them were really random, like an exboyfriend from when I was seventeen…! His birthday wish was a really funny inside joke though, and thinking of it after all these years made me laugh and laugh and laugh.



Of course Dennis and Rachelle were on top of my birthday. ^_^ Thanks guys, you made it that much more special by remembering and being sweet to me.

A couple of my friends called me today too, which was nice. I'll be making plans to see them in the next bunch of days.

But my actual birthday, today, I spent at work and with my parents. My parents were super nice to me. They took me out for sushi after work, and then we watched my favourite movie of all time, Tonari no Totoro (in English, "My Neighbour Totoro"). I've been trying to get my dad to watch this movie for months, ever since we went to the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Japan.

My mom also got me a teeny tiny cake with a big "4"-shaped candle because two digits for "24" wouldn't fit on it. ^_^

The only gift I would want for my birthday this year is a bicycle. Since I'll be spending so much time in the suburbs for the next little while, while I'm managing the comic book shop, I will definitely need to be able to get around. I'm used to living in the city, where there are always plenty of streetcars and subways to get wherever you want, and in a worst-case scenario, you can always find a taxi within five minutes. But up here, the buses only run on major streets, and sometimes only once an hour! Frankly, it's bullshit. So, I need a bicycle. Because I hate cars and I have no interest in driving them. They're dangerous, they foster incredible laziness, and they are STUPIDLY expensive. Not just buying the car, but insuring it, and fueling it, god! Cars make pretty much no sense to me, I don't know why people are so dependent on them. It's making a deeply disturbed society. Automobiles fly in the face of Kant's Categorical Imperative.

Well that had nothing to do with Tamagotchis. I guess I should say that I don't really have any Tamagotchis on my birthday wishlist, just the bicycle. I ordered a Royal FamiTama from YesAsia last week, so I pretty much have everything I could ever want…! Now I should try to be cool like Dennis and collect the colours… but that's expensive. Having all the colours is definitely on my wishlist eventually, but there are a lot of other things I'd like to buy before I start collecting Tamagotchis in the hundreds.

I hope that long, rambly log post made up for how infrequently I've been writing. I'm sorry I haven't had much to report, since I was only running one P2. I have a lot of paused Tamas in my bedside drawer right now. All in good time, my babies… all in good time…