the maw of Fafnir

So after almost collapsing in my shower, I decided to spend the day at home yesterday. I hate being sick.

Also, my last fish died. Time to scrap the tank, I think.

At least I'm feeling better this morning and can actually eat non-mush food.

Happy birthday, me.

I've been staring at this blank entry for about fifteen minutes and i still have no idea what to write. I'm back in the bay area, if it matters, and i haven't made any new year's resolutions. I'm going to a wedding tonight in Piedmont. And my fishtank looks a little forlorn.

Other than that, I really desperately truly need to clean my apartment.

Happy November 1! It's the beginning of NaNoWriMo (for more, go to http://www.nanowrimo.org)! It's the beginning of the end of the quarter! As I keep mentioning, for the last two Novembers, I've written things that I am happy about as a way to increase my overall happiness.

Well. Lately, I've been rather unhappy. October was going so well and then it basically all fell apart. My job isn't quite where I want it to be, my love life is confused and angsty (but not good angst -- I'd be okay with good angst), I'm not sleeping well (again, even though I'm not drinking much caffeine), and it's getting colder.

On the flipside, my pilot light has stayed lit for a while, and my fish are good (thanks for asking). You may remember back at the beginning of the month, I said my fish were sick and likely to die (http://prismakaos.livejournal.com/116963.html). Well, I was wrong. Really wrong. Pluto recovered. While Pluto was suffering from what I now believe is body fungus, Earth developed ridiculous mouth fungus, but recovered. Usually, when fish get mouth fungus badly enough that bits of their body start rotting off, they die within a matter of days. But, no, Earth used the heater to try and restrain the infection, and eventually I got my stuff in gear, cleaned the tank, and added salt, which fixed a lot of the issues. So, now everyone seems to be fine. I went over to Michelle's the other day and visited their father and sister, both of whom are much bigger than my guys are. I may need to get a bigger tank.

Thing I am happy about: talking to Ryan again. I determined that deliberately ignoring a problem actually makes it worse and more consuming because you feel guilty when you start thinking about it.
Thing I am less happy about: my smoke detector. It has developed a rather annoying habit of beeping at me at 3 in the morning. I believe that it needs its batteries changed.
Thing that I am working on: finding (appropriate) humor in situations.

I love my fishies. They are cool, and try to eat my hand when I'm picking snails out of the tank, which really freaks me out to the point of me shrieking at them. I honestly believe that the snails think that I'm runing a den of iniquity just for them, since they keep breeding. Today's snail count that i pulled out of my tank was upwards of 50. One tank really doesn't need this many snails.

On the other hand, it's kind of good, since they're a "canary" for knowing when I should change my filter. The worse off my filter is, the more algae there is in the tank. The more algae there is in the tank, the more visible snails there are. As a result, the more snails I see, the more I need to change my filter.

I did a 50% water change today, which went a lot more smoothly than the last time I did it. I didn't actually have any help this time, so I feel all accomplished and everything. I tried scrubbing down the things in my tank, but it didn't seem to make much of a difference, so I just ran them under hot water.

The three males in my tank have very distinctive personalities. First, there's Mars, who's the dominant male. He's biggest, and his tact towards the females is to chase them around the tank, demonstrating how much prettier his dorsal fin is. It reminds me very much of Ares' posturing in the Greek Mythos, especially when he's morphed into his Roman equivalent and has the centurion ruff.

Jupiter is a little smaller, and he has stripes on his tail. Originally, when he was silver and black spotted, he had an enormous black spot on him - something like the Great Red Spot, but black - hence the name. Since then, he's turned black. (Actually, all the males went from being silver to turning completely black. Go figure.) His tact with females is to stalk them and then launch himself on them when they least expect it. Watching him stalk has got to be one of the funniest things to see. He listerally *lurks*. Again, going back to the Greek/Roman roots, where Zeus used to trick females into sleeping with him. Jupiter is a lot more devious than Mars, but seems to get lucky less often.

Pluto's a different case altogether. He's definitely the smallest and until recently, seemed to have no interest in any of the other fish. I joked that he was waiting for his Persephone. Anyway, now he's halfheartedly going after the females, but he seems a lot more concerned about his territory, and will often attach Mars and Jupiter if they get too close to him. Linking it to mythology is a bit of a stretch, but Hades used to be very concerned with his Underworld, and rarely let anything out of his realm. I keep hoping he'll end up with Alpha Centauri, who's the smallest and (I think) prettiest girl in the tank. She's all silver and light and quite small.

I still can't separate out many of the females. For a while, I knew who Alpha Centauri, Venus, Earth, and Saturn were, but I think I've confused them again. It's difficult because their size, stripes, and spots keep changing on me. I have no idea what happened to Saturn, since the distinctive tail stripe has disappeared. I can recognize Alpha Centauri, because she's so different, and Venus half the time. I've christened one Earth, who has a continent shaped splotch on her side, but I don't know how long that's going to stick around. I also kind of think she used to be named Saturn.

Anyway, I have pictures on my camera of my tank, so eventually, I'll post them. When I get around to it. I'm really bad with this whole posting pictures thing.

My plan this weekend was to clean my apartment and Get Organized. I even had a thought of taking a "before" picture and then an "after" picture and posting them here. Unsurprisingly, this didn't really happen much. I did spend about 4 hours on Saturday going through old mail and separating out Important Things from Bills and then putting them into a file box. So, now I have an empty box (because I'd been stashing my mail there) and a paper bag full of old envelopes. Dear god, so much paper everywhere. I have Thoughts on how to reorganize my entire apartment, especially given the lack of media storage solutions I have right now.

I also really want a pycnopodia. Hand Cthulu (or Deep One spawn) for the win.

Motto for the Snail Den of Iniquity: We do it slowly.

FISH ARE OKAY!!!!!!

And now I'm going away for the weekend.

And I'm NOT leaving them with that stupid dissolving food. I found someone to come in and feed them on Sunday.

Today, I was glad to discover a couple of things:

1) No matter how much time you spend talking to people or trying to understand them, inevitably you will be surprised by them. In some cases, more than once.

2) There are still people in the world who believe very strongly in the success and brilliance of love, and who are not necessarily jaded by whatever situations they might have been in before you knew them or after you lost them.

Both of these things makes me quite happy, even though I'm not sure that I fall into either category. It's just good to know that things like Truth, Love & Beauty still exist as ideals and that people are very different on an individual basis.

In completely unrelated news, I had an awesome dinner at Kaygetsu, which consisted of 6 courses of unidentifiable foods and fantastic tastes and much green tea. I had spent a good few hours stressing about what I was going to wear, how/whether to do my hair, how/whether to put on makeup, and other things, before watching a couple episodes of season four of Buffy (yes, I have seen all of it more than once but I'm rewatching it) and forgetting to be stressed until about 10 minutes before I had to leave. Thank goodness for skillz which allow me to get ready and look good within 10-15 minutes.

I also realized, after some conversation, that I'm vaguely addicted to my Livejournal and that I tend to write in it more than is good for me. Of course, this isn't actually reflected in my entries, given that I spend a lot of time thinking about what I'm going to write, deciding how much information I want to divulge, and then writing whatever part of it I feel like I can write, sometimes expounding further in a friends-locked post. (Though, as you may have noticed, I don't like friends-locked posts much.) Usually, I get the urge to post something 2 or 3 times a day, but generally restrain myself to posting once every 2 or 3 days.

Henry is safe in Texas -- I know this because I called him and he picked up. I thought, for whatever reason, that he was two hours behind (so calling him at midnight my time wouldn't be so late for him), but, as it turns out, he's two hours ahead. And now much less well-rested. Sorry, Henry.

I have also added large amounts of things to my Amazon wishlist. And I kind of wonder when I think I'll be able to afford the complete Star Trek seasons of the original series, the Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine, as well as the whole set of movies. In the meanwhile, I kind of also need to get Buffy 5-7 and Angel 3-5. It's a pity that my birthday is so close to Christmas. Although I don't get any fewer presents, I only get them once a year...

I also kind of want to go and buy an entire new wardrobe, with shoes and everything. I've recently had an increasing urge to become more girly. I don't think this will actually happen, although I should probably go buy another pair of flat shoes (maybe puma SpeedCats or more ballet flats) and maybe a pair of peeptoe pumps.

I have at least two snails in my tank. One of them is named Sparky. I think the other is Trouble, both in name and in actuality. Apparently, snails are hermaphroditic, so can produce without a mate. And apparently, they do this often enough to take over the tank. I have experience with this, actually, since I found one snail in the morning, and twelve hours later, there were two of them. Coincidence? I think not. I have to figure out what to do about them, although the internet tells me that most snails are generally beneficial to the tank.

Finally, I realized that it was the last week in July, which means that Summer is nearly 2/3 over. This is both sad (end of summer) and good (beginning of pumpkin pie and a return of Christmas music). Also, at the end of September, my parents will have been married for exactly 40 years. My dad wants to go watch a large quantity of P-51 Mustangs take to the air in Ohio, but I'm not sure we'll be able to all make it out there for that. And it's no fun without all of us.

As part of summer going away, Formula 1 season is also drawing to a close, with Louis Hamilton, the rookie, in the lead for the Championship. Will Kimi, Alonso, or Massa be able to steal his early lead? Only time (and the remaining races) will tell.

If this were the normal size of my LJ braindumps, would you really want to read two or three of them every day? Yeah, I wouldn't, either.

OMG, Harry Potter 7 - I has it!

OMG, fishies - I has them!

OMG, map for D&D - I has it!

By the way, if anyone wants free fish, my friend is still trying to find good homes for a good 60 molly dalmatians. Let me know if you're interested. :)

additional happy thought for the day, since the last was posted while i was still in MA and may therefore not count: my hotel room has "high-speed" internet... praise the gods for being in silicon valley..

i saw a giant fishtank full of giant fish. it was sort of odd...but nifty nonetheless...