So Long, Fishies

Wow, just in time for the launch of MySeattlePets, I went and gave away my fish. Yesterday, a neighborhood kid and his dad responded to my ad in the local newsletter and came over to take away the guppies, tetras, plants, tank, lights and all.

I kind of miss hearing them bubbling away in the back room. I hope they all like their new home okay. Goodbye fishies!

I love Kaye's smelt

I made some smelty art in honor of Kaye's smelt. Click on the pic to see it in it's shiny full sized glory.

Speaking of fish and RVs, two obsessions I used to write about but haven't in a while, here's where I am on those subjects now.

1. Airstreams are cool, but I can't travel in an RV because I love long hot showers too much. I'm pretty sure that the shower I took tonight used up more water than Kaye's whole monthly water allotment.

2. Fish Land, as Mark calls it, has entered a new phase. All the adult guppies I bought are dead. They all died one after the other of bloat, fin rot, white sores and what have you. A very unhealthy lot. They left behind three generations of babies. There are now seven teenagers, a handful of preteens and a handful of babies. None of them have any of these strange diseases, though one of them is a hunchback. All of the teens and preteens are yellowish, and the babies are all bluish, because their mom was a blueish fish who popped them all out the night before she died.

3. I didn't warn you ahead of time, but I'm ready to announce my decision on the fig tree. I decided Val is right. Fig trees don't develop hope just because you buy them and give them a home for a week. I'm taking that non-sweet Southern Californian sucker back, and I'm getting me a Brown Turkey, or whatever it is.

Blub blub blub blub

That's fishie language, for "what I'm doing today." I snapped this fishie Darwin photo of the big Momma tetra munching down on a baby guppy corpse. Cruel world.

Swim like the wind, little fishie

Doh! Not fast enough!

So I'm back feeding my fish, and I count up the little baby guppies and can only count 14. Hmm, there used to be 18. I count again. Hmm. Fourteen still.

So I take a closer look, looking for corpses, basically. Over on the right side I see that a big leaf on one of the plants has pinned a little blue baby guppy against the glass.

I must mention here, that the little blue baby guppies are my favorites. There are three of them and I'm really cheering for them to make it through all the Darwinian tests ahead for them.

So anyways, I free the little baby blue guppy, and he rises to the surfaces and floats like a stick. Darn, I think. He's dead.

He does a few spirals, much like the bone in 2001, and then I see his tiny little fin -- can it be? -- it flutters just a little. Is it the current? No! He's alive!

He looks a little stunned to be brought back to life after his probably day-long experience of being smushed against the glass. He swims forward a few inches and suddenly -- of cruel guppy Gods! -- a tetra swoops in on him from behind and takes half his little body in his mouth all in one gulp.

As he swam away to the middle of the tank to munch his little prize, I screamed "Oh no you don't!" or something along those lines and tried to scare him into dropping it by chasing him with my hand.

My deus ex machina move seems to have failed. I see now only two little blue guppies. How sad.

Good luck, little blue guppies.

Table Project Done

The coffee table I bought a few weeks ago on Craigslist is done -- I sanded it and stained it with mahogony stain and shaved about 1.5 inches off the legs to make for more comfortable lounging.

Here's the before (I forgot to take a picture of it before sanding it)


And after:



Mark and the girls are playing Sorry. Dylan's on the stereo. Or Ipod, rather.
We just watched Ever After, Drew Barrymore's update on the Cinderella story.

Did I mention we have 18 baby guppies now? Here's two of them:

Fishies

A couple of weeks ago I found an aquarium -- complete with hood, light and filter -- in the trash a few blocks away. Call me a sucker, I couldn't resist all that free stuff. I hauled it home, cleaned it out and filled it up. Until today we had three blue male guppies and four red tetras. Today, the girls and I went and picked up four girl guppies -- two yellow and two red. Their names are Emily, Crane, Priscilla and Bell (short for Isabel.)