March 2004 Archives

Sorry for the lack of an update yesterday (to the whole 3 people who read this site), but I was busy all day yesterday studying for my Pharmacology test. Which I think went okay, which in turn usually means I did badly, because that's how it always goes. That's probably one of Murphy's Laws or something. Anyways, last night I ended up having a dream about the test. I dreamt that I had 1 minute left, and I realized (after having sat there for 5 minutes twiddling my thumbs) that I had missed 4 pages on the test. Which turned out to be these HUGE crossword puzzles. Why crossword puzzles, I don't know, but boy was I relieved when I woke up.

Monday was Bandit's second agility class, where he did so-so. He kind of ho-hum walked over the jumps instead of really jumping over them, and I ended up having to keep him on his leash the whole time, because the one time I tried him off leash he ran off into the bushes and wouldn't come back. Recall is clearly something we have to work on more. When we were doing the tunnel exercise, instead of coming through the tunnel, he just turned around and went to go mingle with the other dogs. The instructor said, "He just blew you off. Since he did that, give him a time out and go back to the end of the line." We spent a LOT of time at the end of the line.

Oh yeah, about nerds. I found this video of these people who are doing real life role playing. Just like in a video game, but acted out in real life. And you all thought I was a geek, these people are hardcore. It's funny and scary at the same time. Check it out! (Word of warning, don't go the the website shown on the video, unless you're of the porn persuasion. In other words, if you're at work, make sure you wait until you go home to check it out. ;) )

I also played my X-Files game last night. I didn't know it was a zombie game! I hate zombie games, they scare me too much. I tried playing Resident Evil one time, and I was able to take about 5 minutes of it before my heart wouldn't take it anymore. I'm playing Scully, and it didn't help that right at the beginning I get separated from Mulder. So I'm alone, and there's zombies everywhere! I had to stop after like 10 minutes. Maybe I'll try again in the daytime. It kind of reminded me of when we used to play Doom in the dark in our dormroom in college - my roommate Leslie and I would be sitting there, playing and screaming, "AHHHHHH! MOTHERFUCKER!" while shooting all the scary monsters that would jump out. Ah, good times.

Baa Ram Ewe...

This weekend ended up being fairly unproductive. It definitely wasn't long enough. We slept in Saturday morning (as I do every Saturday), woke up, ate lunch, and headed off for Bandit's sheep herding lesson. He did really well this time, kept wanting to work for Jan (who is like one of his favorite people now, since she takes him in to play with sheep), and was more enthusiastic than I've ever seen him. At one point while they were in the pen with the sheep, Jan told Bandit to lie down while they took a short break. He lay down and kept his eye on the sheep for a while, with Jan standing by the fence. A couple minutes later, he gets up, walks over to the sheep, and starts moving them in a circle all by himself. It was pretty funny. I brought my Olympus this time, so I got some more video, bigger this time.

After that, we went to Best Buy, where Marc bought a new memory card for his Madden 2004 game on the Gamecube, and I picked up the new X-Files Playstation 2 game. It was a pretty good deal - the game cost $30, and to our surprise, by purchasing it, we got a free $10 gift card to Best Buy. We also went to Safeway, where, to our chagrin, we discovered that the Girl Scouts were sold out of Samoas, and that it was the last weekend they were selling cookies. Sadness!

We also went to Petsmart, where we spend entirely too much time and money, and picked up a bunch of things for the cats and Hammy. Bandit got to see one of his other favorite people, Melanie the dog trainer. He actually let strangers in the store pet him, which was pretty surprising, especially since one of them was a guy. I think the sheep herding might be really helping his confidence, which is a good sign.

That night we went to see Dawn of the Dead with Kenny and Leslie. It was only so-so, and more funny than it was scary. I totally expected to be scared shitless, but I ended up being more disturbed than anything else. I kept thinking, "What would I do if this happened?" I also made the mistake of voicing my concerns outloud, which promptly made me the object of laughter and ridicule. It could happen, people! You can never be too prepared!

Aside from Harvey's class, on Sunday I was even less productive. About the only thing that I did was stain the first coat on the aquarium canopy. I slept for like three hours in the afternoon. It's amazing that I still have the same sleep cycle as I did in high school/college. I mean, you'd think that at 25 that would start changing, but I'm still wide awake at midnight, and I still need 10 hours of sleep a night just to feel rested. Worse still is the fact that Marc is completely different, in that he's a morning person, and needs far less sleep than I do. I hate morning people!

I also tried to cut Bandit's nails last night, which didn't go well at all. Marc tried to hold him down while I tried to cut, but he bolted and proceeded to crawl under our bed. He ended up staying down there for probably 10 minutes, refusing to come out. I even put a treat on the floor by the bed and let Stubby nibble on it, to try to draw him out, but he just turned and looked the other way.

Looks like we'll be spending another $8 at Petsmart for nail clipping.

The other night we bought Bandit a new toy, since we happened to stop in a pet store, and he hadn't had a new toy in a while. It was a cute little sock monkey.

Poor monkey. Five minutes later, and...

He probably never knew what hit him.

Teeth

I finally went to the dentist this morning, for the first time in like, 3 years. I'm not kidding, it's been that long. I think once my parents stopped making appointments for me, I stopped going. I know, I'm hopeless. So anyways, they have this on-site dental thingy, which is this big van that comes onto the Roche campus and provides dental service. Now, the idea of having my teeth worked on in some big bus was a little worrisome for me, but it was really the only way I was ever going to get myself to a dentist.

I have a couple things I need to have done (small cavity - waaah!), but overall I guess my time without a dentist didn't do much harm. The dentist even commented to me that I have "very good oral hygiene" and asked me if I flossed daily. Which was funny, because I never floss (I know, I know), and I was sure that she was going to say something about it.

Anyways, short update today, I'm sleepy right now, and I think I've got a headache coming on. And it's time to go hooooooommmmmme!

Not much to talk about today, since last night I was pretty much stuck in class. After that I got home and played around with customizing the gallery for a bit, and then I went to bed. Well, I went to bed, and then I remembered that I was supposed to change out the water for the fish. I was going to just leave it and do it today, but then I started to worry about the fish. So I dragged myself out of bed and spent the next half hour siphoning out old water and siphoning in new water. Fun!

Anyways, I came across this today, which I thought was hilarious. There's actually a lot of funny newspaper clippings on that site - the wedding announcement for Kuntz and Dick made me almost laugh out loud.

Work

Yesterday I went to this presentation at work about our new goals program and our new bonus structure. Which was basically the same HR BS they do every year by changing all the stupid forms you have to fill out and assigning new acronyms to different things. So this year they're moving our bonuses so that instead of getting them in December, we won't get them until March, which will really suck for Christmas shopping. They're also making it so that it'll be a lot harder to get our full bonus - seriously, sitting through these kinds of meetings easily makes you cynical. And you could tell by some of the remarks from people during the Q & A session. (One woman asked, "So, why are you moving the bonuses back again? Other than so Roche can keep my money interest-free for an extra 2-and-a-half months?")

I really need to open up my own business, or something. If you have any ideas for me, please do send them my way. Oh, and some money wouldn't hurt either.

Last night was the first night of Bandit's "Agility for Fun" class. If you're not familiar with agility, it's basically a dog "sport" where they run this obstacle course, full of jumps, tunnels, teeters, weave poles, and other things. Border Collies are pretty predominant in agility, since they're usually very athletic.

The class was pretty fun - we got to try jumps (small ones), a tunnel, a tire jump, and some weave poles. Bandit surprisingly did everything, even the tunnel, which I was sure he wasn't going to go through. But he almost went through even before I got to the other end to call him. On one of the jumps, he went over easily, and the instructor joked, "he's a border collie, right? See, that's almost like cheating." Yeah, well she doesn't know about our particular little klutz.

After we got home, I let Bandit in the house and he started to race up the stairs. He got to the first landing and stumbled on his feet and went face-first into the stairs. That's our little athlete! He has to be the clumsiest border collie ever.

This morning, as I was getting ready for work, Bandit was chasing his tail. He'd grab it, then start walking around sideways all over the room while holding his tail in his mouth. He even managed to pull out a bunch of tail fur, which he promptly ate, of course. I'm really about to ask the vet if there's anything we can do about this, because he eats EVERYTHING.

Book

Last night I finished the book Deepali gave me for my birthday, The DaVinci Code. It was a pretty good book, I think I finished it in 3 days. It's probably the first book I've actually finished in years. I think I have to go and reread the last couple of chapters though, because I was kind of racing through them to find out what was going to happen at the end.

Anyways, I was going to write more, but I'm going to meet Marc for dinner now before my class, so I have to run. Maybe next time! Well, never mind, Marc just cancelled on me, because something came up at work (again). However, now I'm feeling too lazy to write anymore, so I'm just going to run out now and grab some food before class.

Friday

Roche gives us a "Spring Fling" day every year, which is basically a Friday in March that we get time off. It didn't happen to be Marc's Friday off (he gets every other Friday off - I know, talk about a charmed existence), but he took the day off anyways. We decided to go to Half Moon Bay, since I've been wanting to take the dog to the beach for some time. I also thought it might be fun to bring a picnic lunch and eat on the beach.

So we picked up a picnic basket from Pier 1, and I made up a couple of rotisserie chickens, and we bought some potato and macaroni salad to go with it. I also cooked up a few polish dogs, just in case we didn't have enough food. Kenny and Leslie came along, since Kenny was still on spring break. The four of us drove up in the Rav4, with the dog sitting between my brothers in the back seat.

We stopped by this one beach first, where we had to pay a $4 entrance fee. Just as we were about to pull past the booth, Bandit gets up and pops his head up to the front by Marc. The lady was like, "Oh, dogs aren't allowed on the beach." Oops. So she pointed us to a different beach down the road where dogs and horses were permitted. Yeah, horses, which meant, of course, horse poop. We tried to pick a place as clear of poop as we could. Lunch was good, and it turned out we had more than enough food. I tied Bandit to a big rock while we ate, and he was surprisingly well-behaved.

Making the catch

After lunch, we let the dog loose and Marc threw a frisbee for him, while Kenny, Leslie and I went to relive our childhood (we used to camp at Half Moon Bay when we were kids) by building what we used to call, "Uncle Feathers." It's basically a big hole up near the tideline on the beach with a sand wall and a moat. The idea is to try to fortify it enough so that the water doesn't get over into the hole. Anyways, yeah, we're all in our 20's now, but what the heck, we did it anyways. Unfortunately, the water never came far up enough to even touch it. Sad!

Building Uncle Feathers

Bandit had a great time, with everyone just tossing the frisbee around for him to catch. I tried to get him into the water (which was freezing), but he wasn't too keen on the idea. He got his feet wet a few times, but it was mostly by accident. He did have fun trying to "bite" the foamy water coming up. By the time we got home, he was downright pooped.

The weather was perfect too. Awesome day at the beach!

Keeping an eye on the prize

After we got home and got cleaned up (I took a short nap too), we drove down to Union City to meet Cynthia, Vicki, Deepali, and Marian and her brother for a joint birthday dinner for me, Cynthia and Vicki at Texas Roadhouse. A few of us went over to Cynthia's house afterwards to watch a movie.

Saturday

Saturday morning Marc and I totally slept in. I woke up at like 7:30 am to let the dog out, then went back to bed. I think we ended up waking up at 12:30. Bandit must have been pretty tired too, because he didn't make a peep after going outside to pee that morning. We got ready, quickly grabbed some lunch, and then headed to Jan's for Bandit's herding lesson.

It was hot! Jan forgot that Bandit doesn't like the flag, so she brought it in with her his first go-round, and he spent most of the time worrying about the flag. The next couple times she left the flag out, and he did much better. He's really learning to go both ways now ("away to me" and "come bye"), and he's starting to learn to control his speeds. It still amazes me that he'll be in mid-"chase" and Jan will say "lie down" and he'll just stop and lie down. No video this week, unfortunately, because our camera ran out of batteries.

That night, Kenny and Leslie came over, and we rented Runaway Jury. Pretty decent movie, good for a rental. Blockbuster had a "Buy 2, Get 1 Free" deal for their pre-viewed DVD's, so I picked up Underworld and Dark Blue (both have Scott Speedman in them, yummy!), and Tomb Raider 2. It was a good chance to buy movies I'd never pay full price for. :)

Sunday

Sunday was a pretty low-key day, especially since Melanie (dog trainer) called to cancel class for the day because she was sick. So instead, Marc and I went shopping, to use some of the gift cards I'd gotten for my birthday. We went to Macy's, and I bought a couple of shirts, including a funny one that had a monkey on it with its fingers in its ears and the text, "Not Listening." Marc couldn't stop laughing about it. I ended up only finding two shirts, so I still have tons of gift-card shopping left to do.

Marc's brother, Steve, came up to meet us for dinner with his two kids, Jacob and Allison. We went to Amici's, where Jacob declared that he wanted a pepperoni pizza for dinner. When the pizza finally came, however, he asked his dad to take off the pepperonis. It was pretty cute.

We worked on the video we were doing for my uncle that night, which took forever to do. We had to do the whole thing over since the original tape we'd done got eaten up by the 8mm tape player. Finally, a little after midnight, we were done.

I was totally not ready for my weekend to be over! But alas, here I am at work, typing this up. And I just realized I left my lunch in the car. It definitely has to be Monday.

At some point last night (and we have no clue when), Bandit decided that the end table in our living room would be a tasty thing to chew on. Apparently, the walls and baseboards, the millions of toys, and the monstrous Galileo Nylabone were not enough to satisfy his chewing needs. So I found the end table last night with a few nice chunks chewed out of one corner and slivers of wood on the carpet. I can just picture him at the table, sniffing it, then giving it a few test licks, and then a cursory nibble, and finally going at it like a woodchuck.

We're probably going to swap the damaged one with the one up in the loft. I don't know how he found the time to do that damage and how we didn't notice it, but I guess we're gonna have to start tethering him to one of us when we're home, or something.

Bad Fish!

So the fish won the trap battle. We came home last night and still no fish in the bottle. So Marc and I ended up taking out half the rocks in the tank and then spending what was probably close to an hour catching them in the net. Marc would try to corral them, while I tried to nab them with the net. We caught the angel first, but getting him into the plastic bag proved to be a bit more difficult when the little bugger actually clamped onto the net with his mouth and wouldn't let go! Next was the yellow tang, who we actually caught fairly quickly. Unfortunately, when I tried to transfer him to the plastic bag, I plopped him not into the bag, but rather back into the tank. After a few rounds of cursing, we went after him again. This time, he was onto our little game, so catching him was much harder the second time. More cursing ensued.

Finally, wet and tired, and an hour later, we had all 4 fish in the quarantine tank. The angel and tang took to the little PVC pipe hideouts I put in there right away.

Our protein skimmer also finally arrived, so I set that up as well. It's HUGE. When I first plugged it in, it started leaking everywhere, all over the floor. Turned out I hadn't tightened something as well as I thought I had. I finally got it up and running properly, and realized that I'd spent almost my entire evening on the aquarium. Oy!

Donut

I drove myself to work this morning, so I picked up some donuts on the way in. It was just as good as I imagined it.

Well, the trap so didn't work. We managed to get a few hermit crabs, but no fish. Damn fish! I left the trap in there today to see if maybe we'll have a fish when we get home, but I doubt it. Grr. I really really don't want to have to pull out all those rocks.

So yesterday I had gone to the pet store to try to locate the medicine I needed for the fish. One of the workers there asked me if I needed help, and I told him what I was looking for. He asked, "what's this for?" and I replied, "my fish have ich." So he starts asking me all these questions, and really, all I wanted was to know if they had the medicine or not. I'd heard him giving questionable advice to a customer already, I wasn't planning on getting any advice from him. So I told him what I was planning on doing, taking all the fish out and treating them separately, and letting the parasites live out their life cycle and die in the main tank.

He insisted that it wouldn't work. He told me to just dip the puffer and angel in freshwater and put them back in. I told him I'd already done that, it didn't work. I said, "I've been reading a lot about this, if I leave the main tank fallow (fishless) for 4 weeks, I can get rid of all the ich, and my fish won't get reinfected." He said I should remove the puffer, because he was getting picked on, and that no matter what I did, he was going to get reinfected. I told him that I've never seen the puffer get picked on, and I tried to explain that if all the parasites were dead/gone, my fish couldn't get reinfected. He insisted that the puffer was going to get reinfected. I'm standing there thinking, "Okay, whatever guy, I don't care. I've tried other treatments, none worked, I want to try this one because it's been proven to work, please just answer my original question!"

So anyways, they didn't have what I needed.

Donut

Right now I really want a donut. Like a nice raised donut, that doesn't taste all greasy and fried, with a big slather of gooey chocolate icing on it. Maybe even custard filled. Mmm, donut.

I am famous!

Boy, and you thought I was famous after my little cameo in "Boys and Girls". The other day I was looking around the website created by some former eCircles people (if you don't know the story of eCircles, it's the dot com that I worked at for a few months after college before they went belly-up. Lots of great people there though), called PeopleGlue.com. Anyways, check it out, my picture's on the front page! That's me sitting in the door of the van with just my head and legs showing, wearing sunglasses. I remember taking that picture at eCircles. See? Famous!

I totally forgot to include Bandit's sick story below. While I was fiddling with the fish last night, Marc let the dog out and then back in, and as the dog passed me in the living room, I got a whiff of something AWFUL. He proceeded to sit down next to me, at which point I was holding my nose and gesturing wildly at Marc and pointing at the dog going, "ohmigod, ohmigod, THE DOG!"

I looked at Bandit's feet, and saw what looked like crap smeared on them. Groaning, I grabbed him and pulled him into the kitchen to get him off the carpet. I started wiping down his paws with some wet paper towels, but the smell was not getting any better. Marc walked over and saw a small spot of diarrhea on the carpet from where the dog had sat down. Gross. Then I looked at his tail. He shit on his tail. It was just all mushed there in the fur. I started to try to get it off, but all I could do was gag (and I'm usually pretty resilient when it comes to this stuff). Marc was like, no help at all. I was begging him to try. He stepped back and said, "no way." So I was like, "well this isn't going to work, I'm gonna hurl, we're just gonna have to bathe him."

One wet dog and a poopy smear on the kitchen floor cleaned up later, and all was back to normal again. No idea what he ate, but whatever it was obviously didn't agree with him.

I also forgot to mention that we took Stubby with us to Target. Why, I don't know, I think it was Marc's idea. We just plopped him in the back seat and started driving. He jumped into the trunk and proceeded to meow the most painful sounding meow the whole trip. You'd think we'd put him into a car full of water or something, the way he was going on. So on the way back, I sat in the back seat, and he did a lot better in the comfort of my lap. Scaredy cat!

Ugh, ich

Last night we got home from work to find that the ich had gotten worse. The puffer was completely covered in spots, both on his body and his fins. The angel had a number of spots as well. Sigh. Since the in-tank medication I had used clearly didn't work, I was going to have to go all out and quarantine the fish. ALL the fish. To totally get rid of the ich, it requires removing all the fish from the tank for 4 weeks and leaving the main tank fishless. The parasites in the main tank will die off without a fish host. In the meantime, I can treat the quarantine tank without harming the snails and other invertebrates (which are sensitive to the stronger medications).

Since our 10-gallon quarantine tank is too small to house all 4 fish, Marc and I went to Target to pick up a 23-gallon Rubbermaid container. We filled it with water, hooked up the filter, heater, and powerhead. Getting the puffer out was easy, since he comes up to me whenever I go near the tank. The angel proved impossible to catch. To catch it was going to require the use of a fish trap. Behold my homemade fish trap!

All it is is a 1-liter water bottle with the top cut off and placed into the bottom backwards. The idea is to put food in there, and the fish will swim in to get the food, but won't be able to find its way out. The fish were already settled in for the night by the time we got back from Target, so it will have to wait until Marc gets home tonight to try it out (I'll be stuck in class). I hope it works!

So we put the puffer into our makeshift quarantine "tank" first, and I realized I'd forgotten to put the filter screen on the powerhead. I went into the bathroom (where we're keeping it), and saw a mass of yellow stuck to the bottom of the powerhead intake. Yikes! I quickly grabbed the powerhead and freed the puffer from it, who, in the meantime, had puffed up into a big ball. He seems not too much worse for wear, although he looks a little red from the powerhead suction, and his spines are a bit wacky looking. I snagged some pics.

Hopefully the puffer will pull through okay, he's been through a lot of stress. He's a tough little guy, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

On Friday Marc and I received our wedding album. I know, finally! We're such slackers. It turned out really nice, and we're pretty pleased. Randy did a terrific job. We still have some reprints to order, but at least we got the album at last. One of these days I'll have to get our wedding pictures up here.

Saturday morning Marc and I went to the fish store in Hayward and picked up a bunch of snails and this cool looking shrimp. We're still looking for more fish, but we didn't see any there that particularly caught our eye.

After that, I took Bandit sheep herding. Marc had a headache, so I went alone. There was this other lady who was there for lessons, and it was only her second time. Her border collie was only 7 months old, and she said that they were taking classes for obedience, freestyle dance (yeah, they have dancing for dogs, believe it or not), agility, flyball, and now herding. Yikes! She even told me, "Yeah, I don't take him for walks very much. It seems like we're always in some class!"

Anyways, Bandit did much better this time. He was really into it the whole time, and after one round in the small pen we decided to move him up to the bigger pen to see how he would do. He actually did better, and it was great to watch! I took some video, but I'm still trying to figure out my new camera, and unfortunately the setting I chose to record in made it so that the video is really, really small. You can watch it here (the upside is that it's a much smaller file) - the little black spec is Bandit. ;)

Sunday was another class for Harvey, and after that Marc and I went to Bill and Brenda's house for Brenda's birthday. They had tons of food, and I happily pigged out. Marc and I also went to look at these new condos they were building across the street, and I "acquired" myself one of the hardhats they were letting people keep when they walked through the construction. We just went to see the models and didn't actually see the construction, but I wanted a hardhat anyways.

I found this cool speech emulator on the net. You just type in whatever you want to say (punctuation counts!), pick a voice, and hit speak, and it says it for you! Pretty neat.

It reminds me of that automated message I used to get all the time from Blockbuster whenever I had an overdue video. I'd get this voice on the answering machine, some deep male voice that would say, "Hel-lo, this message is for...BON-NIE LAW (yes it would pronounce my last name that way)...you have TWO videos that are overdue. Blah blah blah." Sounded like a broken robot. Anyways, the voices on that website are much better.

Geeky!

So people were asking about the computer game I play (Dark Age of Camelot), and asking exactly what kind of game it is or what it's about. Which is kind of hard to explain, and I don't think I did a really good job. It basically takes place in a medieval setting (hence the name), and it's a role-playing game in a persistant world. Meaning, the gamescape is always there, whether you're online playing or not. There are usually hundreds of real people playing at once, in real time, and you pick one of three sides to play on. You create a character, who grows with experience, and is permanent. So day in and day out I can play the same character, and my character changes over time (you can also play many different characters). It's really addicting, especially because you can talk to people and play with the same people all the time, so you form a lot of friendships.

The fun part comes with fighting alongside the people on your side against the other people on the other two sides. One of the people from the group of people I play with made this video of people playing the game. Super geeky, I know! But I think it's kind of cool to watch. Then again, I'm a big geek. I'm not personally in the video.

And that's the geek lesson for today!

I had class again last night, and I had an hour or so after work before class started, so I stopped by the Petco in Mountain View (I know, I spend too much time in pet stores). They had a few things on sale, one of which was this bottle of this fish food vitamin supplement. I already had a bottle that was like half the size that I'd bought earlier for like $7, but this one was on sale for like $10 bucks for twice the amount, so I figured what the hey, and grabbed it. I also picked up a magazine on Border Collies, which I have yet to read, but looked interesting.

So anyways, the girl at the counter rings me up, and the total seemed a bit lower than what I'd expected, but I didn't give it much thought (the fact that I even paid attention to the amount that I was paying for was amazing in and of itself). I got in the car, drove to my class, and decided to look at the receipt on a whim. It turns out that the supplement had scanned for $4.19, from a regular $16.99 price! Now, I may have misread the tag in the store, but I'm pretty sure it was at least $10. There must be an error in their computer system or something. I'm pretty glad I got that Petco P.A.L.S card now, heh!

After I got home from class, Marc and I stopped by Safeway to pick up a couple of things. It was supposed to be just some bottled water and frozen clams for the puffer (which I didn't find), but ended up being a whole cartload of groceries, which seems to happen whenever we go to the store. Our final total was $75, with a savings of $20 (most of which was thanks to some paper towels that were like half off). Not too shabby.

Hungry

I only had half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before class, so I was starving by the time I got home. I grabbed this mini-platter of shrimp cocktail at the store (I don't know why, it seemed like a good idea at the time) to eat. It was frozen, and the instructions said to run it under cool water to thaw it. I figured that didn't seem too hard.

It wouldn't thaw. I stood there at the sink for forever, waiting impatiently for the shrimp and sauce to thaw out, but it wasn't cooperating. I realized then that the instructions made no mention of how LONG it would take to thaw. Bastards. So there I was, starving, holding this stupid plate of shrimp under the water, and whining because I was going to just DIE if I didn't eat something.

Finally, the shrimp seemed to be reasonably thawed. I grabbed a plate and sat down, all ready to eat. Opened up the lid to the cocktail sauce, and found a layer of ice covering the middle. I almost cried. I wasn't going to go through that whole water ordeal again, so I just dipped my shrimp around the outside edges of the sauce, which were thawed. Incidentally, there was tons of water in the shrimp still from the thawing. I'd have to say it wasn't the most satisfying meal I've ever had.

And today I have shrimp salad for lunch!

I totally forgot about Bandit's birthday! He was born on March 3rd, last year. So he's now a year old! He's a year old butthead. I also forgot about Harvey's birthday! It's the same day as mine, which was arbitrarily chosen by the vet and my brothers, since they could only guess at his birthdate since he was adopted. Harvey's also a year old now!

For Bandit's belated birthday celebration, I had bought this frozen treat I'd found in the supermarket called Frosty Paws. We gave him one last night to celebrate. It looked like those little ice cream cups that you buy at the store, you know, the ones that come with those small wooden spoons. He licked it for a while, but then I think he got bored of it. Or maybe he was just humoring us, all the while thinking, "Mom and Dad, you're so silly."

Marc and I also commented last night on how we talk in our pets' "voices" way too much.

Sick Fish

It looks like the puffer has managed to come down with ich again, and this time it looks like the angel also has it. The tang seems to have something as well, but I'm not sure what. After unsuccessfully trying to catch the angel and the tang (the puffer is easy since he swims right up to me), I decided to hell with it, and to just treat the entire tank.

So yesterday I went and picked up some medication that's supposed to be safe for live rocks and invertebrates, and dosed it to the main tank. It turned the water an interesting blue color. I also started soaking the fish food in garlic and vitamins.

Today there seems to be slightly fewer spots on the fish (the puffer had the most), and hopefully the medication will kill the free-floating parasites so that there won't be a reoccurrance. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Scary Movie

Last night I watched the director's cut of Alien. I realized as I was watching it that I'd never seen the original version before. I've seen all the sequels like umpteen times, and I thought I'd seen this one before, but no, it was a totally new movie to me! It was pretty good, and pretty freaky. While I was watching, Marc was reading Ellen Degeneres' new book, which I'd picked up for myself the other day. Somehow, it seems we should've been doing the other person's activity. ;) The book is pretty funny so far.

I also ate a big ice cream sandwich last night. I really hope this metabolism thing doesn't start to become a problem.

Last Monday I had picked up 3 green chromis fish for our aquarium. We'd decided on those because they usually school, and we thought it would be nice to have a little school swimming around the tank. It was the last of the crop that Aquatic Variations (in Mountain View) had, so I was only able to get 1 medium sized fish, and 2 tiny ones. I put them in the quarantine tank before moving them to the display tank Thursday night.

They were doing okay until the lights in the tank went out. When I looked in an hour or so later, I only managed to see one of the chromis, the larger one. Thinking that the other two were maybe hiding somewhere, I didn't think much of it. The next day, still just the one chromis swimming around. I looked all around the tank, and didn't see anything. Finally, I reached into the tank and moved some of the rocks around, and still nothing, not even any little bodies.

My conclusion was that the puffer had gotten to them. It made sense, since he hunts at night, and they disappeared after the lights went out. I'd considered this possibility before we got the chromis, since they were small, but I had hoped that they'd be fast enough to elude the slower puffer. I guess I was wrong. The next day, the third and final chromis went missing. Sigh. Stupid puffer.

"Almost Mid-twenties!"

I took Friday off, but didn't accomplish much of anything, except for sleeping a lot. Which wasn't the plan, but that's how things turned out. I did take Bandit to the dog park, and Leslie brought Harvey there to meet us. Harvey was pretty cute, basically following Bandit around the park. It's funny, when Bandit's in a 1-on-1 situation with another dog, he loves to play, but when he's at a dog park, he's not very interested. I think when there's a lot of dogs, he goes into herding mode, because he likes to run along side the other dogs and bump them like he's trying to turn them.

Saturday we had a little get-together for my 25th birthday. Marc surprised me by getting two dozen balloons and a Happy Birthday banner, which was pretty sweet. A lot of my friends were out of town this weekend, so it ended up just being a handful of us, but I had a really good time. We played Trivial Pursuit, which ended up taking 3 hours to finish, because we all sucked.

Sunday was my actual birthday, although I didn't really feel any different (I mean, I never do, but somehow I always expect to). I did sleep a lot this weekend, so maybe that was a sign. Although, I've always slept a lot, so maybe not. My mom and Kenny came up for Harvey's class (he's doing lots better now), and in the afternoon Marc and I went down to my uncle's company to record an instructional video for them. I did the demo, while Marc did the voice over.

One nice thing about turning 25 is, I get to rent a car now, without having to pay some ridiculous surcharge! It's so stupid that rental companies charge you extra if you're under 25. I mean, by 21 I've been driving for 5 years, what could I possibly not have learned about driving by then? I'm able to work and vote and freaking drink, but if I want to rent a car it's going to cost me an arm and a leg? Some rental companies don't even rent to you if you're under 25, period. It's stupid.

I wonder if my metabolism is going to change now that I'm older. I hope I didn't make a mistake eating 4 samoas yesterday.

Last night Marc and I went to go pick up some macro algae from this guy in Fremont who had posted an ad on craigslist.org. The macro algae was awesome, there were a ton of sand stars in there, some worms, and teeny little snails. He lived in north Fremont, so to get home we drove to Mission and then headed north to try to get to 580, not really knowing where exactly we were headed. As we were driving, we saw a fish store on the side of the road. Of course, we had to stop by!

This place was massive. I've never seen a fish store so huge. We walked in, and walked underneath this arch made of acrylic, and filled with water and saltwater fish. They had every piece of equipment imaginable, my brain was getting overloaded. The best part was this display tank they had in the middle of the store. It went all the way to the ceiling, and must have been 1500 or 2000 gallons. TONS of saltwater fish in there, including a few large Dory fish (hippo/blue tangs).

They had a huge wall of tanks with every sort of saltwater fish imaginable. I even found a small Valentini puffer, which was the puffer I originally wanted to get, since they only grow to about 5" long, but had never seen at any store. They had some very cool looking fish there, and a few tanks just full of corals. We stopped in just before closing, so we didn't have too much time to look around. We'll definitely have to go back!

Time Off

So tomorrow I'm taking the day off for my birthday. I know, it's silly, but I need a day off anyways, so this is as good an excuse as any. Don't know what I'm going to do yet, but I do know I'm going to have fun doing it. :)

This morning as I was leaving for work I checked on the fish as I usually do. I saw Nemo 2 swimming around, but couldn't find Nemo 1. I looked all over the tank, but there was no sign of him. Finally, between two rocks, I saw a little orange tail. Nemo 1 died. :( Poor little guy - I'm guessing the ammonia/nitrite spike from the live rocks was just more than he could handle. Now Nemo 2 is alone. I'm pretty bummed about it.

I was so distraught about Nemo 1 that I completely forgot that I hadn't let Bandit out yet. I was at the garage door, getting my purse and other stuff together, all ready to walk out the door, when he walks up next to me and looks up at me, as if to say, "hello, you forgot about me." Good thing he did, because I don't even want to think about the mess that would've happened if he'd been left inside all day.

Speaking of forgotten pets, I locked Stubby inside the closet again yesterday. Poor guy, I guess he peed on the carpet too. Marc came home and heard a bunch of meowing coming from inside the closet. Of course, this morning, he still followed me into the closet. I made sure I counted 2 cats before I left this time.

Glad

This was supposed to be a happier update until the Nemo 1 tragedy. We got our tests back in class last night, and I got an A! I was the only person to get a score in the 90s (94) in the class. Doug, the instructor, announced to the class, "Bonnie got the highest score in the class." Which was pretty embarrassing, especially since he said it right in front of my boss, who got an 85. Which is good, since Marc and I were talking about this earlier, about how it would be bad if I scored lower than my boss, but it would also be bad if I scored a lot higher. Ron, my boss, said that he was pretty pleased with his score, considering it was the first test he'd taken in 25 years.

I was feeling lucky last night, so while I was at 7-eleven getting the Slurpee that Marc had asked me to get, I picked up a lotto scratcher. I didn't win though.

Stupid Pet Stores

The other day, Marc and I came across the worst pet store. We went to Wet Pets in Pleasanton, to look at fish. After seeing a few fish with ich, and how dirty some of the tanks were, we decided to get out as fast as we can. I noticed a pet store right next door, so out of curiousity we went to check it out.

The first thing I noticed was that they were selling puppies. BAD BAD BAD. Pet store puppies are invariably from puppy mills, because no responsible breeder who cares about their pups would ever send them off to a pet store to god knows what fate. I wanted to scream when I saw it. I didn't think I'd ever find a store that still sold puppies. The store smelled like shit, and they had animals wall to wall. They had all sorts of birds, guinea pigs, rabbits, and a wall of rodents in dirty tanks and cages. Everything looked dirty. We left there fast, and I wanted to yell at all the people who were walking in there to tell them to stop supporting stores like this. It really makes you sick.

Cozying up in front of the fire

The live rocks turned out to be pretty cool, although we didn't get quite as many critters (at least not that we found) that I had hoped. Marc found a single crab, which he dumped in the tank, which we haven't seen since. I found a snail crawling on the rocks later in the evening (which the puffer scooped up, then spit out - the snail was still alive). There's a lot of stuff on the rocks, although we don't really know what any of it is. I think we have a few aiptasia anemone, which are going to probably be a nuisance down the road. There's some other really interesting stuff on there.

Aspirin, please

On Saturday we drove up to Tahoe to snowboard at Sierra with Cynthia and Leslie (my brother). They're running a special this week where their lesson package is only $35. I did much better this time than the last time I went, although I still fell plenty of times. I managed to catch my heel edge once, and slammed the back of my head on the ground pretty good. My neck still hurts. My whole body hurts for that matter. On Sunday morning, I couldn't get out of bed my neck hurt so much. I feebly called to Marc for help, but it was still too painful to have him pull me up. So I had to roll over on my stomach and push myself up and out of bed. Still, we had a lot of fun, so I suppose it was worth it. I think next time I'll wear a helmet though!

Harvey

Harvey did much better in his class on Sunday, as we actually got him to do some sits, downs, stays, and leave-its. Aside from the hyperactivity, he's turning out to be a pretty good dog. I tried to get a picture of him before class, but he kept trying to jump all over the place, so this was the best shot I could get.

LOTR!

Sunday night Marc and I watched Lord of the Rings win every single Oscar it was nominated for, 11 in total. After a while I started to feel bad for the other nominees, but in the end I can't complain. The geek in me rejoiced.

A Very Merry Unbirthday

Marc went out Sunday to go buy my birthday present. After dinner, I was bugging him about how I wanted to know what my present was. Marc and I are NEVER able to resist giving each other presents early, and Marc is especially bad at it, so I knew I could persuade him to give me my gift early. ;) We bargained for a while, and he held out for a while, but he eventually caved. I hemmed and hawed for a bit, because I wasn't sure if I actually wanted to get it early. At this point, Marc WANTED to give me my present. So I caved too. He got me a new digital camera! Which was really too much, and more than I had wanted, and made me feel spoiled! It's really nice, and it was even nicer of him to get it for me. :)

Now I'm going to have to think of how I'm going to top that for HIS birthday. ;)