Tag: aquarium

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Chill Day, Stressful Night

I woke up early this morning after very little sleep so we could get breakfast before we checked out of the hotel. I anticipated a crowd on account of the concert, but after stressing over Summer not wanting to wake up, we found the steakhouse to be relatively empty. Breakfast was good though, and we had our fill before heading back to the room to get ready for the day.

It took us a little bit to leave, since neither of us had a plan for the day. We ultimately decided to head toward home, and then I suggested stopping right inside Conway so I could go to PetCo. We ended up going through several of the stores in that strip mall, including Sam’s, Michael’s, and Ross. We even found a neat tabletop gaming store, and Summer picked up something to do for Christmas.

After shopping around for a few hours, we went to On the Border for lunch, and my chicken fajitas tasted completely unseasoned. The rest of the food was good though, so I made do with some black pepper. Summer finished her tacos pretty quickly, so they must have been a lot better than what I took home for leftovers.

After we ate, we went to PetCo and I picked up some ghost and “bee” shrimp to take home. Autumn didn’t get Eaddie from flute practice, so we had to make it back in time to get her. I had Summer drop me off at home so I could tend to the shrimp, but I guess Autumn gave Summer the wrong time to get Eaddie. Summer ended up coming to get me, and we went up to the house to unpack. I went back home in the Montego, traded some more water for the shrimp, and then took the Model 3 to get Eaddie and Maristella. We took her home, and then went back to my house to finally put the shrimp into my tiny, old shrimp tank. I’m hoping they enjoy cleaning up the algae that I can’t get under control.

Eaddie and I chatted, and headed on home for the evening. Autumn eventually showed up after karate, and predictably wanted to argue about who does the most chores around the house when Summer asked her to walk the trash down to the curb. Summer decided it was time to unveil my chore tracking spreadsheet, and suddenly Autumn didn’t care about seeing how much anyone did around the house. She just knew that she did more chores while we weren’t around than any of us did. I managed to steer that conversation into less hostile territory, and we’ll try to publicly track chores for a while to see if that helps.

Other than that, I spent most of the evening stressing out about my refrigerator delivery. I never got a call to schedule, but eventually Julie got a text with a two hour window. I touched base with Ben to remind him, and everything else was on the up-and-up. He offered to let me take his truck and a furniture dolly, so that mitigated my stressing over needing the Murano to tow a trailer while Summer needed a way to get to Cabot for the day.

The girls all made it to bed reasonably early, but evidently Eaddie was still up when I did a late-night model reset. She came out for a bit for some help getting reconnected, and then I did my best to get to bed before two in the morning.

Too distracting. This is my brain all of the time.

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They’re Just Resting…So Sleepy

I woke up early this morning and my heart was racing for some reason. I went back to sleep while Summer took the girls to the Cyclone Extravaganza, and though I woke up in better form, I felt pretty bad for most of the day.

I met Summer and Eaddie at the theater to see Free Guy in the early afternoon. Autumn didn’t want to go for some reason, but the three of us loved the movie. On the way back home, we were stopped in the street by a funeral and I decided to pop in to see Robert as they were cleaning up. I didn’t stick around more than a couple minutes though, and continued on home.

While I was home, I added some carbonated water to my shrimp tank and inadvertently suffocated all of my shrimp. I had knocked them out before, but this time I think I nuked them all and I felt horrible. I even tried pulling a bunch of the water out and changing some fresh water in, but the damage was done. Even my snail that I thought I had lost months ago appeared to struggle, but it survived. I also took care of some of my little plants that didn’t look so hot.

Eventually I made it up to Summer’s for the evening. I made a burrito to chip away at their leftovers, but there’s still so much to clean up in there. Autumn came home late from the evening portion of the Extravaganza, but by then everyone else was already in bed. I stayed up later than I wanted just trying to complete some Windows Updates. Overall I was just ready for it to end.

Don’t have a good day. Have a great day!

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Off Trail

Summer and I got up late today and went to Walmart for the last few things we needed for lunch. They had a bunch of “everything” bread marked down, so we got all of it to freeze, and I took one loaf to make a sandwich. Since it was already late and a bit warm outside, we decided to eat at home rather than take it all to the bike trail. It was a quick lunch in the back yard, and then we loaded up the bikes and headed to Old Post.

When we got there and unloaded, I climbed onto my bike only to find the front tire was completely flat. I loaded it back up and went home for air, and decided that a portable pump is probably a must-have. While I was gone, Summer and Eaddie checked out the trails but couldn’t leave Autumn behind, so they all rode downhill to the main park area. I made it back and met up with them, and we rode all over the flat park area.

We stopped for snacks on the amphitheater stage, then made a couple more loops around the drive before packing up to head back home. The girls left pretty quickly after we got back to my house, and I spent a few minutes doing a major trim in my shrimp tank. Then I loaded up and headed up to their house for the evening.

Summer made sloppy joes with mashed potatoes and corn for dinner, and then I planted all of my trimmings in Autumn’s aquarium. Summer, Autumn, and I played a game of Sorry, and then they went to bed while Eaddie and I started the second season of Luke Cage. We both got bored with how slow the first episode was, and decided to quit there for the night.

Back to the grind.

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Fish and Dogs

Apparently I sat on my key fob last night and I woke up with my car windows halfway down in the rain. I guess I was just lucky that it didn’t rain any harder than it did.

Ben took the day off, so Greg and I were left with Melinda to man the phones. We both had work orders to take care of, so we kept at least a little bit busy all day. Nobody was having lunch there today, so I ended up just hanging out at the shop with a Soylent. The afternoon went by pretty quickly too.

After work, I spent a little time at home getting some bills together and called to see if I really did owe anything from my colonoscopy in November. I didn’t get in touch with anyone, but I left a message and went on about my day. I got a little Overwatch in, and then headed up to Travis’s to pick up an aquarium.

He had evidently neglected it pretty badly and just wanted to get rid of the whole thing, so he handed a bucket of fish and the tank to me through the window. The bristlenose catfish had its barbs stuck in the net, so it took me a little bit to get it out, but we got everyone loaded up and ready to go. I got the catfish and three tetra GloFish, and headed to Summer’s.

Autumn decided she wanted the tank, so I had her do some furniture swapping to get a 20 gallon tank-worthy stand into her room. I cleaned the new tank out the best I could with the water pressure I had, and we got it moved into her room. In the middle of that, Summer came home and I ran to Sonic with Autumn to get 50 cent corn dogs for dinner.

When we finally finished cleaning up the filter and setting up the tank, I dropped the fish in a little prematurely since we didn’t really have anywhere else for them to go. Summer crashed, and Eaddie and I watched an episode of Jessica Jones before bed. I checked in on the fish and one of them didn’t look so great, so we may already be down one by tomorrow. I’m almost sure of it.

Genetically modified meat on a stick.

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Recovery Room

I had to get out right as I was getting into bed so I could cover the fire pit before a storm blew in. Then I slept for a while, but still woke up several times throughout the night. It felt a little like I was too dependent on the higher constant pressure of my CPAP at Summer’s, but my newer one at home shouldn’t have any trouble adjusting as needed. I guess I could bump up my minimum pressure to see if that helps.

I was still incredibly sore when I woke up, but the worst of it worked itself out throughout the day. The girls got up and went home pretty early, so I had some time to clean up around the house.

The oldest male guppy that Brittany brought me yesterday wasn’t doing very well, so I spent quite a bit of time trying to arrange a place for him to go into quarantine. At first I put him into a little container of his own, but then ended up splitting my external breeding tank into three compartments so he could join my two bettas. I could see he had gotten really stiff and would just float in the corner breathing, but nothing else looked really wrong. A few of his fins were a little thin, so I wondered if he was getting harassed in his overcrowded container while I acclimated them overnight. At the end of the day, he finally stopped breathing and I sent him off for a burial at sea.

While I was messing with the fish, I also noticed a bunch more dead leaves floating in my bathroom aquarium, so I cleaned it up a little and added some soda water for a little carbon dioxide kick. I’m hoping they’re still just dying off because of how neglected the tank was, but there could be something else going on too. Only time will tell.

Summer wanted to get Sumo for dinner, but evidently they closed up at the start of the COVID-19 stuff, so I just ate the girls’ leftover Taco Villa before heading up to their place. When I got there, I tried working on Kayla’s laptop with absolutely zero success. Summer went to bed after some TV, then Eaddie and I watched a couple episodes of Jessica Jones before heading to bed ourselves.

But why is work, anyway?

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Burn Everything…

I didn’t sleep very well last night just because I hadn’t slept in my own bed in so long, but at least I didn’t wake up in pain like I have been. Summer had to work, so the girls and I took our time getting up and around. Eventually I started putting together an everything-loaf sandwich for lunch, and we packed a couple backpacks for a bike ride. We rode to Summer’s shop and had a surprise lunch with her while they were slow.

When we finished eating, we rode over to the city park for just a moment, then took the long way around Detroit back to 4th to get home. The girls did a great job of riding together, and the pandemic has traffic manageable, so it was a great time. It was under an hour total, but my hands and arms were still pretty sore by the time we got home.

I let the girls rest for a little while inside, and then we went outside to start cleaning up the yard. They were both pretty slow to get productive, but eventually we got a little bit of a fire going, at least enough to reduce some of the brush we pulled up. They pressure washed the back patio until they ran out of power cord and hose, so there was a strip of black concrete still on the north side.

Brittany stopped by to give me a few more plants and some guppies she had been breeding. I had too much going on, or I would have thought to send her on with a couple little baby shrimp. I guess they’re a little more sensitive to the alkalinity of the water anyway.

Summer came over when she got off, and brought hot dogs to cook over the fire. We spent a good long while trying to get a decent fire going in the fire pit since the logs weren’t burning well at all. It was enough to get the food warm, but it was a lot of work to maintain. I was pretty upset that some embers blew up and melted a couple holes in a couple of the cushions, but it’s all over now. I would have hoped for something a little more retardant.

As the sun went down and we lost all of our light, the girls filtered back into the house and I trudged back and forth getting everything else put away. I could barely move after being so active all day long, but I had to get a shower before bed.

…the calories too!

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One Lumens, Coming Up!

We didn’t have any projects again today, so I was left to my own 1:1 devices (heh, heh). I did start off by coming up with a solution for imaging devices without network ports, so that was exciting first thing this morning. Afterward, the only work order I had was to deliver a document camera, and then I killed the rest of the morning at the high school just picking at things I’ve been working on all week/month/year.

Five of us went to Ruby Tuesday for salads, though Greg ordered a comically small pasta instead. I was quite happy with my greens, and even Gary had the salad today.

After lunch was more of the same until quitting time. Then I went home and dispersed some of the new plants I got. I planted a couple, and split floaters between a couple of different tanks. I really hope the red root floater does well, but I’m worried some of those things had been left out of the water for too long. At least she seems willing to fill in the gaps if they don’t all make it.

The girls are spending the weekend with their father, so I went to Summer’s to make burritos for dinner, and then we watched Glee until bed.

I spend a large portion of every day vibrating with a palpable sense of wild, irrational rage.

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Plant Fitness

It was another pretty quiet day, though I did get out of my office quite a bit. First thing this morning, I had a trip across campus to the arts center. I spent most of the day messing with 1:1 laptops, and got two re-shipped back for service since they weren’t repaired last time. I thought for a moment that nobody wanted to go to lunch, so I was just going to work straight through, but Allen texted at the last second. He suggested Taco Villa, but then said everybody was going to Popeye’s. I met them there, and saved seats for the seven of us. I ordered online while I sat there, and they never called my name or number, so I ended up getting my food after everyone else. A little later, the lady came around with some free apple pies for those of us that had to wait for spicy chicken. At least the customer service was better.

After work, I had to get Eaddie from Superfast, then Autumn from her afterschool activity at the junior high, and drop them off at karate. I finally met the girl at the theater to trade aquarium plants, and we talked for just a little bit before she had to get to work. Evidently she had ordered some pizzas, because Neal walked in and made the deliver while we were talking. Then she got to work and he and I chatted for a little bit.

When I got back home, I dumped the plants into the sink and then met Summer at La Huerta for dinner. The girls went out with their father, so we had a little time to kill and I was pretty hungry. Then I went back home for the evening and settled in for some Overwatch until bed.

So much green!

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Fish and Burritos

We didn’t do much this morning. The kids ate whatever frozen food they could find, and I picked at some leftovers. Eventually I left for home as Summer went in for work, and the kids were left with a bunch of chores to avoid.

I played some Overwatch for a while before eventually taking a shower. The Reddit email digest I received today had a listing for some Salvinia minima in Arkansas, so I reached out and found out she happens to be in town, so hopefully I’ll have a local aquascaping friend soon.

As Summer got off of work and headed to the gym, I ran by Casey’s to discover they were out of their freebie, then continued on to Walmart to get dinner. Epic burritos are relatively cheap, quick, and easy. I managed to get most of the food ready before Summer made it home, and then I rolled and grilled burritos in a skillet. The kids wanted to watch Return of the Jedi with us, but fell asleep about halfway through. I guess sitting around watching TV and playing video games all day really tired them out.

Burrito in; burrito out.

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Meet the Cosmonaut

Summer made pancakes, eggs, and bacon for breakfast for us this morning. Eaddie wanted to go visit her father, so she started doing her chores after breakfast while Summer and I watched some Glee. A little while after she left, Autumn was returned home by her grandparents and made to do chores as well. Eventually we had to make something of the day, so Summer got up to start cleaning. I milled around a bit until she was ready to take Autumn back to her grandparents’ for the Superbowl. Then I headed home to clean up a bit myself.

I bought some marimo balls at Petco, so my first order of business was to get them out of the package and into some water. I decided not to throw them directly into any of my tanks for fear of them being eaten up, so I finally set up a little jar I had bought years and years ago for this very purpose. I filled it with shrimp water to try and help it cycle a bit, and noticed a tiny little baby shrimplet near the top of the tank. He went straight into the jar as well, and I figure I’ll finally take it to work with me. While I was doing all of this, I noticed one of my plants pearling with oxygen for the very first time, so I guess conditions are still pretty great in that tank. I just wish the algae would get under control, and the worms have become a real nuisance.

I ended the evening with a shower and a load of laundry.

Why is my house playing country music???