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You can teach a new fish young tricks.

I brought one of my smaller tadpoles in to work today so I could compare size with the two monsters I brought in a couple weeks ago. The size difference is astounding. It’s crazy to me how stunted their growth was due to overcrowding.

Semester tests started at the junior high, but I didn’t really hear from anyone. It’s just one day closer to being a ghost town. I went to lunch with Ronda and met Steven at Ruby Tuesday for $5 salads. They didn’t have any of their delicious croutons out when we started, but I managed to fill up in spite of it.

After work, I came home and spent a little time with the betta. I thought I might try to teach her some tricks, so I’ve been handling and petting her when I feed her. I’ll need to make a hoop for her to swim through. It makes me want to put a fish in the water buckets outside to help eat the mosquito larvae. I could bring them in to a sorority tank during the winter.

I ended the evening with some pretty decent games of PUBG with Aaron. We haven’t had a chicken dinner in a while, but we got really close a couple times.

If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn’t.

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I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

I slept in by about an hour this morning. I don’t remember my alarm going off or anything. Somehow I still managed to get to work in a reasonable amount of time. It’s the last week of school. I feel like last year I had more going on at work and less noise in my head.

I came home after work and had to steam clean the carpet where one of the cats threw up a couple times. It made me so mad. Then I did a water change for the tadpoles to try and get rid of some of the ammonia.

Right around the time I finished with that, the guys started to show up, and we played PUBG until bedtime.

I’m dancing with my demons.

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Not Saturday

I woke up this morning when Mom called to say she locked herself out of the house. She was going to Tunica with Bác Vân and Doug, and forgot to take her keys and a promo mailer she got for some free money. When we got back, Summer went to pick up some charity spaghetti dinners and then spent most of the day watching The Office with me.

I took some time to add the new filter media to my 55-gallon, and eventually started the acclimation process to introduce my new female betta to the 10-gallon tank. She’s so pretty in the right light, and it makes me want to start a sorority tank. Luckily she took to the smaller tank without any trouble, and seemed to get along with the tetras and corydoras just fine. Hopefully the water quality in the 55 will sort itself out pretty quickly.

RUN

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Pet Shop Boys

I woke up pretty refreshed today after some good sleep. I spent all day cleaning the house, fish tanks, vacuuming, and even some steam cleaning. All the pets seem a bit happier now, and the place definitely looks better.

Summer took the girls to Nick’s and then came over in the evening. We went to Taco Villa for dinner, then Davis Discount Pet Store where I chatted with Mrs. Davis for a little while. I picked up some mealworms for the box turtles, and we left there to go to PetSmart for some supplies she didn’t have. There, I picked up the filter media bags I needed along with a female betta. Jessica’s male in the library keeps making bubble nests, so I’m hoping I can try to breed them.

When we left there, we went to Walmart for something to help with Summer’s poison ivy itch. I also needed some poly fill to stuff in my aquarium filters, so I picked up a 10lb box that should last forever. We stopped and got a couple Blizzards on the way home, then settled in to watch Upside Down.

Up-top, they always win, And down-below, we always fail.

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Field Day

We didn’t have any group work today, or really much work to speak of at all. I decided I was going to walk around Oakland during their field day to see all the different activities. Even before lunch, the halls smelled of sweaty children. It was super gross, but kind of fun to reminisce.

By some miracle, a group of six of us agreed on Cracker Barrel for lunch. Service was really slow, and our waiter was a little spacey from lack of sleep. Overall, I’ve had worse. At least the food was good.

I was between Oakland and the junior high in the afternoon until they cut us out early. Then I went home to an evening of laundry and cleaning house. At the end of the evening, I got to take a break and play a couple rounds of PUBG with Aaron. I’m excited to sleep in tomorrow, but there’s still work to be done.

I could watch these tadpoles all day.

Reviews, Uncategorised

End of the Year Review: Year 2

It was field day at the junior high today, so on top of being slow this time of year, I didn’t have anything new coming in. I decided to walk around some of the activities there, and had lunch from Subway that was brought in. School let out two hours early for our awards assembly at the performing arts center.

The guys left the shop earlier than I expected, so I was the last one to make it to the PAC. I mingled a little in the lobby, then found a seat with Summer and Miranda. Ryan got tech of the year, which was well deserved after all the work he’s been doing on just about everything that makes the rest of our jobs easier.

I stuck around and chatted with Becky for a little while until traffic settled down, and then headed home. On the way toward Hickey Park, I saw a fox run across the road from the school into the little meadow between the campus and the park. It had a squirrel in its mouth, which I kind of assume was dinner for some tiny fox babies.

When I got home, I moved the rest of the tadpoles to the 55-gallon tank. I counted around 250 alive, and only really found one corpse. There were some others that didn’t seem too active, but there’s a ton of movement now that they all have way more space to swim around. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with over 200 frogs, but it should be entertaining. The pair I took to Oakland have gotten way bigger than any of the ones I have at home, which I guess is due to less crowding and better water quality. Hopefully the larger tank will fix both of those issues, though I still need to go buy some more filter media.

I drove through Wendy’s for a couple burgers on the way to Summer’s house. She baked some fries, and we watched The Office for a while. There was some leftover caramel apple pie from the bake sale that was super good too.

On the way home, I decided to stop at Walmart for some new batteries to put in my Nest Protect and a replacement lava lamp bulb for the one I broke in the library. Then I ran into Steven while I was looking at water hose nozzles. I see his dad around the neighborhood, but I haven’t seen him in years. Crazy how time works.

Price check on prune juice, Bob. Price check on prune juice.

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Shopahol

I spent all morning at Oakland. I’m not sure where all my time went, because I didn’t feel like I was just wasting my time, but I didn’t complete a lot of tasks. I did manage to remote into my office computer from my phone so I could log into a switch to change a port configuration, and I didn’t break the entire internet in the process. I guess that’s gotta count for something.

I went to lunch with a surly Zach and Sara. Nobody seems particularly fond of the organization right now. I’ve seen similar things happen with other employers, but I guess just not on this scale.

I spent the afternoon at the junior high, mostly walking across the campus a lot. I did manage to spend some time after work trying to decide on a $150 toothbrush. I even revisited later in the evening, but I never bit the bullet. I’ve gotta stop shopping.

Hi. I’m Michael, and I’m a high-functioning, self-medicated shopaholic.

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Well, shit.

More of the same at work today. The real fun started when I got home. My CatGenie decided not to scoop any more, so the litter didn’t get dried properly last night. I took the whole thing apart, expecting it to be some sort of mechanical problem or failure, but it ended up being something in the processing unit. The bowl doesn’t always spin the correct direction, and now the scooping motor doesn’t seem to work at all.

I’m so over cats.

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I like turtles.

This morning was super slow. I didn’t do much of anything until lunch with Heather at Smackin’ Wings & Things. I got 20 modest sized wings for $16.88. Only a quarter of those were drumettes, which wasn’t a big problem for me, but it was an interesting observation. I don’t think I’ll get wings there again, but their Fry-day menu looks interesting.

The afternoon was mostly more of the same nothingness aside from investigating a smashed computer monitor. When I got home, I got to work right away setting up the turtle terrarium. I started with a base of charcoal from the fire, then covered that with leaves to make it a bit more even before topping it with a thin layer of dirt with moss and clover that I scraped up from the back yard. I hope it grows, but I’m not super hopeful. I’ll probably end up releasing the turtles eventually, but this will be fun for at least a little bit.

I also got the canister filter running on the 55-gallon tank and added some duckweed. A lot of it is churning through the water and passing through the filter, but hopefully it finds a place to settle on the surface and actually start growing. Once I feel better about the water quality, I’ll start dropping tadpoles in.

 

Traditions

What are Traditions: Mother’s Day 2018

I’m absolutely exhausted after today. We got up this morning and checked out the yard to get an idea of how to tackle it in the afternoon. Summer helped me get my 55-gallon tank outside for cleaning, and then went home to receive the girls. Once they got cleaned up, they came over with some Taco Bell before we started on the back yard.

It was pretty tough getting the girls to do anything. Autumn was particularly whiney about the whole ordeal. Eaddie was a little more willing to receive direction. Summer did the lion’s share of the work with the power tools while the girls did a bit of raking and picking up after Summer clipped the larger plants with the cutters. I managed the fire and did a little bit of trimming, and spent a bit of time cleaning fish tanks when we found some baby box turtles.

The yard looks better than it ever has, and I’ve got the wood piles mostly down to what I can manage to burn in a few bonfire events. I think I have some better ideas on how to tackle projects for the kids now too, but time will tell.

When we finished, the girls went home to clean up while I picked up outside. I filled the fish tank that will be used for the tadpoles, but didn’t have a chance to mess with the canister filter. The box turtles are in a box with some damp leaves and a tray of water until I have a suitable terrarium for them. I’m still not sure where to put them, though.

I went to their house as soon as I got out of the shower, and we met my parents at La Huerta for a mother’s day dinner. It went pretty well, probably in part to how tired the girls were. They wanted to pay for their mother and I was going to pay for my parents, but Mom ended up making Dad pay for everyone. I guess I’ll have to work on that, too.

Yard work sucks, but so does life, and then you die.