CountryMouse's Refuge

is stuck outside the airlock of the spaceship, floating in a little spacesuit. She is also looking a little bored/annoyed. Uh, YEAH?! I keep pushing various buttons, but I can't seem to activate the tractor beam. It has always been automatically working before, when I took a Norn up to the spaceship. ::sigh::

I hope this is not something really weird, relating in some way to my having taken the old battered top hat that I fished out of the swamp and left it near the Pirate Water Game.

::mouse goes back to game, hoping to find some way to activate the beam::

Oh, yeah. I have to do dishes and prepare to defrost the refrig. What I *don't* want to do. Rather play "Creatures Playground". :-P

Okay, poor Alice, my only Norn born from a pair of Norns I raised, died (of old age, as far as I know).

I decided to take Eric up to the spaceship, thinking that this might jar loose whatever is keeping the tractor beam from working. First I fed more coal into the furnace, just in case it was that...although the furnace maybe only powers the elevator up to Night Time Mountain Top. So I led him all the way up, put him in the Norn Transmutation Device, and guess what? I now have two Norns (Rachel and Eric). my only living ones, with no eggs in the Nestery, floating outside the airlock with no working tractor beam. Is this supposed to happen?!

Oh, and they say in the instruction booklet that all Norns die peacefully in their sleep. Uh...I saw one of my boys (well, an old man by the time he died) get a funny look in his eyes, make a funny little "oooOOOooo" sound, then just stop moving. His eyes looked all white. I clicked on his selector bubble, which showed him as "sleeping" and was taken out to his grave. ::sigh::

So now I have the frustrating task of trying to click on everything (for the 20th time or more), to see if I can get the tractor beam to work before one or both of my Norns die out in space.

I guess this is a Sign. A sign that I am supposed to go do dishes, do some cooking that I need to do, then prepare to defrost the refrigerator. Stuck stuck stuck. I need to get "Creatures Adventures" and Start All Over (after I install that, then merge the two games).

Oh, next week "Creatures" for the PlayStation is coming out. I will be getting that. It's only $10 (what I paid for "Playground" too).

(isn't this exciting?) :-P

Food is in the coolers with ice all around; boiling water in a pan in the frost-encrusted freezer; Bunnicula is washing the racks and crisper; I am waiting to do the next batch of boiling water in the freezer.

After I am through with my end of things, I plan on calling customer support about my Creatures Playground dilemma. They are on the West Coast, so I have a couple hours yet.

and the customer support hours have changed since they were listed in the Creatures Playground booklet. I'll phone tomorrow.