Panic; Consumption; kittycats; the old round

No. of months since last blogged: 5 (bad); No. of cat cafes opened in intervening period: 3 (good); No. of lindens spent on flimflam: countless (v.bad)
Had sudden panic today when spotted that was 5 months since had last blogged. As noted previously, decided that this blog is for idle pleasure, so should not feel guilt when neglect it. However, am also aware that Great God Blogger deletes blogs if has been no activity for long time. Think long time is longer than 5 months, but would be v.v.v.v. bad if all of Yoshikawa's adventurous musings fell into the black hole of a blogger clean-up.
So what has happened in Yoshikawaland in past 5 months?
1) Goes without saying that have continued SL shopaholic madness e.g. today was FIFTY LINDEN FRIDAY so bought various treats each a 50 linden bargain, namely:
- texture change deckchairs
- a set comprising a small table, some pen and paper and an ornamented lampshade displaying views of Paris
- a swing for 4 people
- a cute summer dress from Pixicat
- a set of whitewashed wall panels
This is a picture of me on the swing. Only drawback is that poses only include v. gentle swaying, rather than proper swing. Probably as well given that 4 seats are rather close together, could otherwise end in AVATAR COLLISION

2) Have also opened cat cafes in Juicy, Noyo and a completely new place that Dimitrova is renting because it's a really cute location, and how could you not? Will do more pics, but this one will do for now.

3) Continue with journal club although ZOMG have not publicised the one for next week, so perhaps enthusiasm waning a bit.

4) Also still on VWER team and facilitated last night, was a lively discussion as they say.

5) When have time wander round SL going oh ah this is so pretty and doing artistic selfies posing on waterlilies/ rustic benches/ dystopian industrial wastelands/ rococco daybeds (as appropriate) then posting pics on flickr to modest acclaim.

So, same old, same old.

Outdated, disabled

Kittycats disabled: three (v.bad)

Was going to blog something completely different, but when happened to go into common room today, discovered poor Naomi immobile with her face to the wall, with the words "OUTDATED! Disabled!" over her head. Clicking her just resulted in her ID being chatted out. TOOK her and went to common room where, as I feared, both Silky and Qulit were similarly affected.
They all just lay or sat there, and would not communicate, move, play or cuddle. Most distressing.

I googled around and discovered that there had been an update a few weeks ago, which evidently I had missed. However, normally, it just says "update me" above their heads, and you can interact with a menu to get them updated.
After some fruitless scanning of the Kittycats website forum, teleported to the Kittycats sim, where I discovered a customer support person, Straykitten, standing near the door by a display of kittycats scratching posts.

After some conversation, Straykitten lent me a kittycats 1.8 updater, which I took home and rezzed near the kittycats, but it was all to no avail, the updater couldn't detect the kittycats, and the kittycats couldn't detect the updater. I took the updater back to Straykitten and he said that the only option was to file a ticket on the kittycats website. This I duly did.

Only about 10 minutes later, I was delighted to have a new, Updated Naomi dropped on me by Kitten Longmeadow. I rezzed her next to the inert Naomi, so I could take a picture (you see the new Naomi on the right), and then moved Outdated Naomi quietly and with dignity into the Trash folder of my inventory.

Apparently Quilt was no-transfer, so for reasons that I'm sure were very sound, some other avatar was going to have to drop Quilt to me. I took a couple of snaps of me and Naomi reunited (similar to the last pic here) and sent one to Kitten (lol).

The question remains of what to do with Silky, who belongs to Dimitrova. Dimitrova could go through the same process, but, at the moment, feel rather large amount of apathy.

Was quite upset about losing all kittycats, but somehow saving two kittycats almost seems like enough, especially considering the ongoing cost of kittycats food (85 Linden per month per cat). Hmm. In black and white that seems rather callous, and Silky is very cute. On the other hand, Silky could just sit quiet on a plinth for all SL eternity without costing another linden, which does have its up side.

Excitements

Times locked out of office immediately before discussion session: 1 (v. bad); Discussions led despite this stupidity: 1 (good)

After playing about with Bloghud tool (see last 2 posts), went out to refill water bottle from Departmental cooler 15 mins before Infolit iSchool discussion on Blogging. Big mistake. Discovered quickly that had left keys inside office and was locked outside with nothing but a bottle of water, my reading glasses and a mobile phone.
Frittered away 5 mins running round other offices (it was 8pm UK time) seeking colleague (who might have necessary keys), and finding only research students (who don't). Fortunately a researcher with a high spec machine was willing to
a) download SL onto it and
b) go home and let me use his computer. It is good that there are such nice and helpful people in the world, and more specifically it was good that there was such a person in this Department at 8 pm at night.

Thus was able to log in at the dot of 8, grateful that had set everything up beforehand. At first it looked like only Robin was going to be there but in the end there were half a dozen people and we had (I think) a good discussion about blogging, which I will talk about more when I put up the chatlog. After it was over phoned offsite university security people who eventually came along and let me in to my office. Phew. Next time will tie keys on string round neck.