Welcome Little Lily

Wow, what a weekend! Probably the best so far this year :)

It started with Squeak's birthday dinner on Friday night at Fino. Sadly Varen had to work late :( Now let me start with the fact that I have only eaten at this restaurant once before, years ago ... with Bean (that's how long ago!). I was not impressed then. Except by the butternut & feta salad accompanying my meal. That was the best I've ever tasted.

So, we arrived at 8pm for dinner. We eventually got to order drinks. I can't even remember when we finally got to order our meals either. We didn't eat till after 21h30. The service was horrendous. I think there were 2 waitresses for the entire place, on a Friday night. Which brings me to another point. I don't have any idea why the place had as many tables as it did. I didn't especially find the menu appealing and the food was, meh. Average. Oh, and did I mentioned quite pricey for what's on offer. Needless to say it wasn't a spectacular dinner experience, and Varen didn't miss much. I won't be going back.

Saturday was Varen's 27th birthday. The night before, while he was at work, I'd cleaned up the house (yes, okay the maid had been, but I removed all the general crap that piles up to more appropriate storage spots) and put out the flowers I'd bought him. I felt a little bad that he didn't get a "gift to open" from me ... but, I'm taking him away for a night next weekend and I was cooking breakfast for his entire family, I figured that'd have to do ;)

The day was fabulous. His family arrived around 9am (there were 8 of us into total) and we had a scrumptious champagne breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, tomato&bean mix, white & brown toast, crumpets, cheese muffins and lots of champers & OJ! What a lovely morning we had :) Coaly was running around in the garden, we had all the garden doors wide open and our 8-seater dining room table was full :)

After breakfast, we hung out for a bit waiting for all the food to settle before the coffee & cake started (Varen's mom had baked & brought a massive chocolate cake for him!). And then we packed Coal into the car and we all headed off to Varen's folks to hang out for the rest of the day. We took Coal along because we were planning on finding him a new little sister - on Friday I'd been round to all the local pet shops and they had no dwarf bunnies available :( I was quite upset that we might not get a baby this weekend! But we found the most darling little girl in the Eastgate pet shop, we've named her Lily.

I'll tell you now that I was super unimpressed with the pet shop people! The woman there told me they weren't dwarf bunnies - when I could clearly see by their size there was no way they were normal bunnies. When I asked the owner how old Lily was, he said "a couple of months". She was tiny, the same size Bell & Henna were when we got them, smaller than Coal was when we got him. There's no way she's more than 4 or 5 weeks. He said he's had her a week & half already so I was a little worried whether she was actually weaned or not. And she was just so lovely, but so in need of a new home & some attention. She's almost bald on her hind quarters, I think probably from being in a tiny cage (smaller than the bottom half of our hutch) with 3 adult dwarf bunnies, another baby and 3 guinea pigs! And one thing the vet told me was you don't mix guinea pigs & bunnies, they fight and attack each other. We figure with our love and attention she'll be back to sleek in a matter of weeks :)

I was more than thrilled to get her away from there! Once we had her back at Varen's folks house in half the hutch with Coal, she was as happy as can be. Eating and drinking like normal (shoo, one worry down ... was having visions of phoning the vet to find out what you can feed an un-weaned baby bunny!). And the super-duper bonus is that she & Coal hit it off immediately. They're quite taken with each other and already cuddle up when sleeping. They are adorable to watch together :) (But no, there'll be no baby bunnies arriving ... Coal is still scheduled to be snipped as soon as he's old enough!)

We didn't do much on Saturday evening other than enjoy watching our buns bond. I just can't get enough of my cute little girl. And she's got the most incredible colouring. As you can see she's got beautiful blue-grey eyes, a thick white stripe down her face and one white ear. But the rest of her fur is a blue-grey colour with light brown tips. It's quite lovely.

On Sunday Varen had to work :( So I went out shopping for our week's meals and stayed home playing with the buns ... annoying that the grass was so sodden with water from Saturday night's giant thunder storm! This week we're having Hot and Sour Steamed Fish with Thai Salad, Grilled Lamb and Risoni with Mustard sauce and Chicken and Broccoli with Oyster Sauce. Finger's crossed ;)

On Sunday afternoon tho, I had a minor freak out. Went outside to check on the buns and Coal was lying the same way I found Henna, stretched out, completely on his side with his eyes open. OMG. My heart stopped for a second. But he was fine, just resting I think. I kept a very close eye on his the rest of the day and he was his usual bouncy self. But we still took them in to the vet at about 6pm to pick up the Panacur (was going to fetch it after work today, but I wasn't taking any chances). So both of them have started their 5-day course of preventative Panacur. Was so hard to leave them this morning, Lily is so cute, but very skittish, don't think I'm having any luck getting her to be friendlier than Henna! As soon as I opened the curtains this morning she ran into the box (their private space) and wouldn't come out again. On the plus side, I'm impressed that she's already getting in and out of the hutch all on her own. But I think she's going to be a handful :) She already discovered the downstairs loo and is running around inside a lot more than Coal ... will have to start closing the door again!

Btw. weighed them both at the vet yesterday, Coal is a whopping 900g and Lily is a teeny 300g.

After they'd had their first dose of Panacur, I felt safe enough to venture out the house so Varen & I went to watch Burn After Reading.

A dark spy-comedy from Academy Award winners Joel and Ethan Coen. The memoir of an ousted CIA official (John Malkovich) accidentally falls into the hands of two gym employees (Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand) intent on exploiting their find.

It was quite brilliant, I completely enjoyed it ... although it was completely mad. Brad Pitt was hysterical and John Malkovich as creepy as ever. Sadly we had some moron sitting behind us who laughed when nothing happened ... seriously, he must've laughed out loud about 40 times in the first ten minutes and I just wanted to turn around and say "Dude, nothing has happened yet". Idiot. But a good movie. Watch it.