Michelangelo's 'Dying Slave'. You've got to ask yourself - dying from what, precisely?

So, after months (years!) of procrastination and - let's be honest - outright avoidance, Cathouse Ellis is finally finished. <shakes head> 3 years and 4 months since the first part was posted in Joule's Darkside. My first foray into yaoi, as well - up until then I'd only written yuri or het.
Heh, smut is no easier to write now than it was then. <g>
Anyway, Joules (thanks!) is coding part 2 as I blather. I imagine it'll be posted sometime later today, UK time.
[Edit: posted now, before I finished my update! Thanks again, Joules!]

That's torn it! Literally. My favourite pair of (pink stripey) trousers have ripped and all I've got left to wear is a couple of pairs of tatty trackys. The real crisis, however, is that the trackys don't have pockets! <hyperventilating> Nowhere to put my 'phone! No help for it now, I have to make myself some more trousers. With pockets.

Because we had the use of Soulsis' car on Tuesday the cubs and I trekked off to Scienceworks. Lots of fun. :) The special exhibition this time was 'License to Spy' - with a mystery to solve and clues to be discovered using various technologies. <g> Not a terribly hard challenge for an espionage/crime fiction buff like myself, but very interesting nonetheless. I got a particular satisfaction from opening the safe. Working the tumbler mechanism took some concentration, and some muffled swearing. But I did it! Cubs enjoyed the exhibit as well - we were in there for an hour and a half without really noticing.
I also treated us to the Planetarium for the first time in ages. There was only one program showing that day, 'The Problem with Pluto' and while I'm sure it was really good and informative I'm afraid that I was so comfortable lying back in the reclining seat that I dozed for a bit. Probably just as well, it was a long drive home and I'd started the day tired.
I took some photos (surprise surprise); some of them are up at Flickr...

Got my hands on a couple of interesting books. The first is Terry Jones' Barbarians in which he demonstrates exactly what it was the Romans did for us - and it's not as much we've been led us to believe. <g> I was pleased to discover it's the book that accompanies a series - and then the cubs' father told me that we've been seeing the ads for the series for the past few weeks. Okay, so I'm not all that perceptive some of the time...
The second book is Kafka's Soup, a 'complete history of world literature in 14 recipes'. Have I mentioned that I'm a sucker for quirky recipe books? In essence this is 14 recipes written in the style of particular authors. For example:

Lamb with Dill sauce a la Raymond Chandler.
[snip. list of ingredients]
"I sipped on my whisky sour, ground out my cigarette on the chopping board and watched a bug trying to crawl out of the basin. I needed a table at Maxim's, a hundred bucks and a gorgeous blonde; what I had was a leg of lamb and no clues. I took hold of the joint. It felt cold and damp, like a coroner's handshake. I took out a knife and cut the lamb into pieces. Feeling the blade in my hand I sliced an onion, and before I knew what I was doing a carrot lay in pieces on the slab...'

It's very funny. The Jane Austen recipe takes four and a half pages to describe something that takes 2 minutes to cook. <g> Beautifully done. There's even a recipe a la Marquis de Sade (Boned Stuffed Pouissons) but I haven't attempted to read that one yet, it's even more verbose than the Austen! (Though having just glanced at it, it appears to be in a modern setting - talking about delivery vans being clamped... Intrigued, now.)
Anyway, yes, interesting books. No doubt I'll get around to trying out some of the recipes eventually as well.

Looks like the hard rubbish collection is finally over. We've done well from it this time, however. The cubs' father found a recliner armchair in good nick, the only thing wrong with it is one of the struts has snapped so it wobbles a bit, but otherwise it's very comfy. He also found a tall, thin, chest of drawers that holds all our DVDs with room to spare. I found a pair of wooden kitchen chairs. Given how heavy they are I'm guessing they're from a time when furniture was made of things other than pine. Good, solid construction, too.
I also found this piece of cat-furniture:



As you can see, KittenKong is quite pleased.