Tag: pets

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Jack of All Your Labors

Summer had a quiz bowl tournament today, so I slept in a little before warming up some leftovers for brunch and heading home. Back home I played a little Overwatch to get my weekly loot boxes, then spent quite a while sifting through rocks so I could make a shrimp bowl with only black gravel. I found some plants that were still alive in my 35 gallon tank, so I pulled them out and threw them in along with the two cherry red shrimp and my last little baby molly.

By the time I finished with all of that and had a shower, Summer was done and brought Eaddie over to go have dinner with Mom. She picked up a bunch of giò in Houston and made noodles for it today. Then we spent an hour trying to dissect a jackfruit without getting all of its sticky sap everywhere. I tried following a guide I found on YouTube, but it seemed like ours wasn’t ripe enough to pull apart like that.

When I finished with that, Uncle Mai called and gave me several minutes of advice and let me know that the value of his gift to me didn’t matter as long as I would use it at least once and that I liked it. Everyone was pretty tired by then, so we headed back to my house where Summer crashed, Eaddie loaded up Legends of Tomorrow, and I dug around to see if I had a lamp I could use to light the new shrimp bowl. Spoiler alert: I need to go to Walmart.

Now my fingers smell like sweet, fruity butt.

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MRIs are C❄❄l

Summer got up this morning and took the bookend kids to school while Autumn and I got ready. As soon as she made it back, we took off for Little Rock for Autumn’s MRI. The drive was pretty straightforward until we got into Little Rock and encountered two separate highway wrecks. Once we got to Arkansas Children’s Hospital and fought for a parking spot, the check-in process was really quick, and we didn’t spend more than about five minutes waiting to be called back.

Even the wait in the prep room was short, as Autumn got changed into a hospital gown and picked out a movie to watch. They gave us the option to go in with her, which I jumped on right away. I’d never been in a room with that much money per square foot before. It was pretty impressive, and neat to see how even huge medical equipment gets updated with the times as far as aesthetics and user interfaces go. They pumped audio to her through plastic tubes since having metal in there would have likely killed everyone. Summer nearly froze to death even covered up in half a dozen warm blankets.

After that was done, we went to Tokyo House to eat. Autumn objected to Chinese, which was nice. I didn’t want her to think of the trip in any positive, school-skipping kind of way. If she doesn’t follow basic health guidelines, then we can’t afford to pay to rule out the most expensive things first. I didn’t really feel like I got my money’s worth with those two, but the food was really good. I probably filled up too much on sushi, but I had pretty much everything else too. Some of the fruits were surprisingly and especially good.

The trip home was through pretty heavy traffic for being so early in the day. We stopped by PetCo first and I picked up a couple puny red cherry shrimp and a couple ghost shrimp. I pointed out a tank with only some baby mollies to Autumn, and the girl helping us offered to throw them in for free. I was probably a little too excited and anxious to get them, being fooled by a seemingly extra-healthy tank. The last stop was at Target to pick up a SlickDeal on some Starbucks bottled Frappuccinos I ordered the other day.

When we got home, I dropped the girls off at their house and headed home with my new aquatic buddies. I was super tired, but I had to get them acclimated. I took a break for a little while and installed a new watch face on my TicWatch E. When Summer finished dropping the girls off everywhere they needed to be, she came over and helped me run the gamut of water quality tests. I built out a spreadsheet to keep track of the stats over time, and was shocked at how high my nitrates were. Everything else seemed to be about where I expected it, but I was still worried about throwing shrimp and tiny baby mollies in with my tetras. After a huge water change, I finally dropped the two cheapo ghost shrimp and eventually three out of the four baby fish into the tank. We’ll see how they survive the night.

☃

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Six Months

I had ELPA testing all day at the junior high, so I spent all morning over there just in case something happened. Nothing did. I got a few other things cleaned up while I was there, then met Allen at Ruby Tuesday for $5 salads. I spent the rest of the afternoon at the shop and then visited Oakland for a bit on my way home.

I took off a couple hours early to take Grey to the vet since she’s been a little shyer than usual. It was a quick visit. One look to find three mammary tumors. She said cats don’t survive them 90% of the time, so surgery wouldn’t be a realistic option, and all we can do is watch her quality of life. She guessed it might give her six more months.

With that news, I took her back home and gave them both some wet food. Then we sat on the couch together for a couple hours until I had to pick Eaddie up from karate. She wanted to stay and hang out with her friend, but I had to get her home to shower.

Summer and Autumn showed up shortly thereafter, and Summer warmed up some leftover pasta for us before the girls shuffled off to bed. I played Breath of the Wild the rest of the evening while Summer nursed some gnarly shoulder pain.

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Pet the Kitty

I stayed pretty busy today, and just kept things going. It was a good mix of cleaning up loose ends and taking care of newer things that came in late last week. Zach and I went to Morelos for lunch, and for the first time in a long time I took about half of mine with me in a box. If he hadn’t been feeling sick and not eating much, I’m sure I would have finished my fajitas. They won’t be nearly as good later, but it was a nice change of pace.

The afternoon went by pretty quickly, just as the morning did. I went home for a while before going to my parents’ to pick up the cat carrier, and then to Summer’s for dinner. She improved upon the flavors of the barbecue and potatoes we had left over, and I left with a new catch tray for my oven.

I ended the night watching the weird TV streaming app built into my LG TV while brushing Grey’s hair out. I keep hoping it will prevent her from shedding so much at her appointment tomorrow, but in reality there’s probably no stopping it.

I wish I had more friends, but people are such jerks.
If you can just get most people to leave you alone, you’re doing good.
If you can find even one person you really like, you’re lucky.
And if that person can also stand you, you’re really lucky.

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Endless Roeing

I’ve been forcing myself up earlier, so I had plenty of time to fish another frog out of my aquarium this morning. There’s only one left, and it’s almost completely lost its tail. I went by Oakland first, did a couple things there, then went to the shop for a little while. I took a stack of phones to the junior high with me and stayed busy until lunch.

Zach, Sara, Allen, and I went to Morello’s where I got the lunch special with three enchiladas. It was pretty good, but I kept staring longingly at Zach’s and Sara’s fajita burritos. We made it back in time for another perfect lunch hour for my time clock, but really we wanted to go to Zona K-Tracha but were afraid of the amount of time that would take.

I spent a little more time at the shop before going to Oakland to replace a ridiculously complicated Chromebook keyboard. Rather than have a keyboard as a component, they built it into the chassis and I had to gut the entire Chromebook and move it to a new chassis, all for two missing keys. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon wrapping up work orders at the junior high. Summer had to stay late for quiz bowl, so I took Eaddie to karate before heading home.

I had started to feel a little sour in the stomach in the afternoon, so I stayed in and read up on aquarium lighting for plants. The betta seems to be doing much better after I basically overdosed her with meds. The spot with the “stuffing” coming out seems to be completely gone, and she was quite active in her tank. She was even swimming around eating in front of me, so I gave her some of her old pellets after being on mostly nothing with a few freeze dried bloodworms. This was the first time I’d seen her eat in over a month, so I was super relieved. It looked like she released a few more eggs that floated up in the water as well, and she gobbled those up as well. I’ll give her a little more time in the meds before I do a water change, and then hopefully soon I can get her back into a regular tank.

To wrap the evening up, I finally pulled my old, dinged-up glass screen protector off of my phone and installed the spare I had stored away. The screen was still pristine, but this protector didn’t go on nearly as well, with quite a bit of haze between the glass and the screen. I really envy Summer’s screen since it doesn’t curve quite as much and can keep a screen protector without too much of a halo. I guess there’s always the Pixel 4.

Won’t be long for CO₂ now!

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This time I want to be sure.

We slept in pretty late today. Summer was exhausted from being on the road all day yesterday, and I was just lazy. When we finally did get up, she didn’t waste any time getting out to the gym and to get the girls.

I went to check on the fish and was baffled to find eggs! I don’t even have a male betta, so they were unfertilized. It wasn’t until after I changed her water to get rid of them that I realized it’s Christmas, and that I may have inadvertently discarded the Fishiah, born of the virgin betta to offer salivation to all those who look up to the great fish fry in the sky. She’s still a little bloated and lethargic, but I feel better that something has happened. Next up will be peas and epsom salt.

Loads of research and a shower later, I made it up to Summer’s for dinner. She made tacos with pico and guacamole all from scratch. She even steamed some rice, which I ate with what fell from my tacos. After dinner, Autumn played some Super Mario Party while I played Zelda. Eventually the girls went to bed and I had to run to Walmart for fish supplies.

I made a pretty quick run through Walmart, stopping to check a few clearance shelves I found, but nothing really piqued my interest. I got some canned peas and epsom salt for the fish, and a carton of orange juice for myself. As I was coming up to the self-checkout, I ran into Tasha and talked to her and her boyfriend for a little bit. Evidently they made a baby. It seemed defective because it was emitting some kind of squeaky noise.

Back home, I noticed on my calendar that today was Summer’s anniversary. That meant it was my anniversary, and I hadn’t realized it until nearly bedtime. I felt like a bit of a bum for that because I know Summer expects something more, but overall I’ve been pretty vocal about not celebrating or acknowledging events for the past several years. At the very least, it’s been less stressful being a non-participant. She didn’t much care for my jokes that she had reset our anniversary to May, or that I would deduct five calendar days from our year together. Overall though, it’s been a pretty decent one. Seriously, who saw that coming?

Won’t you tell me if I’m coming on too strong?

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Cold and Slow

I hid out at the junior high all day today. I didn’t have a whole lot going on, and I wasn’t motivated to do too much old stuff either, so I just kept up with what new stuff came in. Dale called for Taco Tuesday, so I met him there along with Gary, Zach, and Brice. I ordered three tacos, but only got and was charged for two, so I made it work. It made me hungry all afternoon though, so I ended up snacking on whatever I could find.

I stopped at Oakland on the way home to do a couple quick things, and then came home to see how the betta was doing. She was just sitting at the bottom of the tank, so I decided to move her out into something of her own just in case it was the other fish bothering her. I got a heater and bubbler going in a hospital tank, but I’m going to leave her in a tiny bowl overnight just to see how she does.

When Summer finally got home, we played some Diablo III on our Switches until bedtime. We made some decent progress and gained access to quite a few more things, so I think we’re gonna have a good time.

1000 corn dogs!

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S’More Scool

I spent some time in the graveyard this morning helping Ben sort through the things we removed from the field house. When I left there, Oakland was having a s’mores cookout, so I managed to mingle around there for the rest of the morning. Surprisingly it didn’t seem to be very popular, and I guess some people were too busy with other things, but I just can’t imagine not taking the time to toast a marshmallow.

My Soylent kept me going through lunch, so I just went straight to the junior high to work through the afternoon. I still didn’t get a whole lot done because what I did do was relatively time consuming. I stayed just a little bit late before heading home to set up the other Switch and clean up after the cats. Wendy’s still had any size fries for a buck, and I still had a coupon code for a $1.99 Dave’s Single, so it was too hard to resist my first solid meal of the day.

When I got home, my betta was still hiding, so I did a bunch of water quality tests between both tanks and ended up doing a water change with the hopes that it would help enough that I won’t have to move her in such a rush. I still have some tadpoles that don’t seem to have any intention of becoming frogs. There is one frog in there now, but he has a retarded leg. I don’t really know what to do with him other than maybe feed him to Autumn’s turtle. There’s no way he’d last very long with that deformity, and to put him in the cold would be near-instant death.

Once the house was in order, I headed to Summer’s house, and we all played a little bit of Super Mario Party. The party mode was going to take too long, so we backed out of that and played some mini games before the girls headed to bed. Then Summer and I played Diablo III until bedtime. I’m not really sure how we both managed to play together since I only redeemed one copy of the game code, but I guess it doesn’t really matter for now.

That almost seemed like genuine excitement!

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Fishing for Help

I spent all morning back and forth between Oakland and the shop, and only had a few answers to show for it. I’ve got so many work orders to close all at once when these long jobs are finished. Ronda was going to go to lunch with us for $5 salads at Ruby Tuesday, but she ended up meeting Steven instead when our lunch hours didn’t quite mesh. I didn’t make it back to the shop in time to drive, so I met Jason and Allen there.

Most of the afternoon was spent waiting for a fix for PaperCut, and then an hour or so was spent on the phone with the VantageLED folks. The first half hour call I made ended up with me in a queue where I went from the first person in line to being the second person in line, and then I heard someone rattle a phone and hang up on me. The second call got me the resolution I needed, but still no answer for why my emails to tech support never garnered a response. They say there are notes that we were referred to an electrician, but that is both false and an incorrect diagnosis for the problem I’m experiencing.

The fix for PaperCut ended up being an update to the embedded printer software, and then I went to my parents’ house for a bit before deciding to go to the junior high to pick up Jessica’s dying betta. It looked dreadful, and Ronda felt like it was going to die overnight, so I decided to take it home to try and nurse it back to health. I hope it works, selfishly as an I-told-you-so moment. I wish I could impart some empathy and a willingness to properly care for fish, but I guess it’s just too small of a creature for her to care about.

When the girls got out of karate, Summer brought them to my parents’ house and we had most of a Christmas dinner. We didn’t stick around too long though, because the kids had work to do, and I had a fish tank to clean. I guess I’ve done all I can for now. We’ll see how he is tomorrow.

Thank you for holding. All our agents are busy helping more important customers right now.

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The Handout

Today started the three-day process of handing out 1:1 laptops at the high school. I’ve secured my place for all three days because I feel like right now I deserve some light work. I’ve spent too long pushing other people this summer, so I don’t care to be selfish enough to do something I want to do now. It won’t get me any closer to getting my own work done, but technology be damned.

We were meeting at 10:00 for the handout, so I got a little bit of time in at Oakland to clean up a few work orders before then. I’m hoping that my absence in the buildings will motivate others to try a little harder at setting up their own things. It’s not hard to plug in a computer, even with all the peripherals they have. Once I got to the high school, it was a relatively easy day to deal with seniors that have all gone through this before. We actually handed out just under 300 laptops, so the next two days will be much crazier. It’s my kind of crazy though, and I doubt anyone back at the shop is breaking much of a sweat doing anything else.

Once that was over, I had to run to the junior high to take care of a couple things before heading home. Summer got there right after I did, and we went to my parents’ house to swim and have dinner. Julie brought a tiny hairless baby critter over, and nobody knew quite what to do with it. Most of us voted to euthanize it because it looked like it wouldn’t survive very long. She left to try and find someone to take care of it, and ultimately did. After she left, I guessed correctly that it was a squirrel, which made me regret not trying to raise it. I probably didn’t really want a pet squirrel, but I’ve always thought I did since I was a child. In any case, it’s got better odds now.

When we got back home, I started a load of laundry while we watched a couple episodes of The Office before bed.

But I’m the one that does that!