January 2005 Archives

I was sick all weekend, but at the very least, I wasn't bedridden. Just a gross, annoying cold.

At lunchtime on Friday I went to Aquatic Variations to look at their fish. I didn't find any fish, but they had a pistol shrimp, which was something I'd been looking for. They sometimes form symbiotic relationships with watchman gobies, where the goby will watch the shrimp's tunnels, and in return, the shrimp brings the goby food. Anyways, I asked them to hold it for me so I could pick it up after work.

It's a good thing I did, because when I went back to pick it up, the guy told me that someone had come in 20 minutes after me and had wanted to buy it.

So I brought the shrimp home, and coaxed it out of the shell it was hiding in (okay, coax is a bad word, more like I scared it and it came out). It only had one claw! It had one huge claw. I thought they gave me a defective shrimp. I was going to call them, but fortunately I checked online first, and it turns out they really only do have one claw. Which is pretty funny looking.

The shrimp went and dug himself a hole under the rocks and I haven't seen him peek out since.

We rented The Forgotten that night. Wow, that was horrible. It might have worked as an X-Files story, but in a situation where there's no pretense for how these characters would act, it just seems silly. Save yourself the agony and don't rent this movie. You'll never get those two hours of your life back.

Kenny and Leslie stopped by too, but they only watched the last half of the movie, lucky for them.

Saturday morning I drove down to Aquatic Gallery with my predatory snails (the ones that came out and attacked my other snails). They're called whelks. I only found six of them, although I thought there were more. The guy who owns the place, Dr. Le, had told me to bring them in. I wasn't sure why he wanted them, since they were baddies, but he said he'd give me store credit for them.

I think it was really just for his own personal curiousity, because when I brought them in, he said, "you know, this is going to sound bad, but I'm going to have to sacrifice a snail so I can see this for myself." He seemed pretty excited about it.

But he gave me $10 of store credit, which I used to buy some good snails, which was pretty cool.

The weather was clear on Saturday, so I was able to take Bandit herding. We made some real progress - he was stopping and walking when I asked him to, and doing a much better job. Jan says we might be able to think about entering some trials in the spring. I think I'd be a nervous wreck at a trial.

I'm also supposed to buy a herding whistle, which I just found out costs $25! For a whistle!

We had dinner with Steve and Erin and the kids that night. Jacob and Allison were as cute as ever. I don't know if I'm ready for kids of my own, though! Marc and I squabble enough about the dog, I don't know how we'd do with kids. I think I'm still too much of a kid myself anyways.

Sunday Marc and Steve went up to Elk Grove to start cleaning up their parents' house before they put it on the market. I took Bandit to class at Petsmart (he got real stressed out by some kids running with a rake), and then stopped by a few fish stores to look for fish.

I finally found another six-line wrasse, but it was still not very big. This one made it through the night, but was dead by the time I got out of the shower this morning. Sigh. I just don't get what's going on, but I may just need to have them try to order me a bigger one.

We did get a 4" crocea clam last Thursday, which seems to be doing okay.

Clams are neat.

I put up my Olympus digital camera and guitar up on eBay this weekend. Anyone know someone who's looking for a camera or guitar? :)

Lastly, a funny Stubby story. I have the fish quarantine tank upstairs, on the built-in desk that's adjacent to the staircase. On Sunday I had the six-line wrasse in there, and the cats always love to watch the new fish.

So Marc and I were downstairs, and all of a sudden we hear this "THUMP." Marc says he saw something fall down onto the stairs from upstairs. The next thing we see is Stubby walking into the living room, shaking his head. We're guessing he was sitting on the ledge, watching the fish, and somehow slipped and fell all the way downstairs. Aside from shaking his head a few times, he seemed perfectly fine. Crazy cat.

Well, it looks like I've managed to catch a cold again. It's not so bad that I can't work, but I hate coming to work sick, especially when I have to work side by side with people like I do this week. I feel gross, and I feel bad about being gross by them.

I spent an hour last night rearranging the rock work in our tank. I just can't seem to get it the way I like it, in a way that's stable. I'm really worried about a rockslide, but I don't want to glue the pieces together. Dory seemed to enjoy having new places to squeeze herself into (she'll squeeze herself into a crack and sleep that way, which scares me because she always looks dead). That fish is an absolute eating and pooping machine.

The night before I made up some homemade fish food. It consisted of scallops, oysters, shrimp, brine shrimp, mysis shrimp, spirulina, nori seaweed, and some flake and pellet fish food. Separately this stuff doesn't smell bad. But man, blended together this stuff absolutely reeks. The smell just sticks to the inside of your nostrils. I put the mush in sandwich bags and flattened them out and froze them. The fish seemed to enjoy it when I fed them yesterday. I wonder if fish can smell.

Yesterday I put up an ad on Craigslist to try to sell my Olympus digital camera. I love the camera, but I really want to get a digital SLR, so I need to sell it. Amazingly, after 4 or 5 years, this camera has retained a lot of worth. When we bought it, it cost $600...people are selling it now for $200 or more. It's become a bit of a cult classic, I guess, because it's a terrific camera that there just hasn't been a good replacement for.

Anyways, I put an ad up to try to sell it for $225, and I've gotten two e-mails about it already. One guy was a certified masseuse, and asked if I'd be interested in a trade for a massage. While that was tempting, I told him I really wanted to just sell the camera. So we'll see.

Then I'm gonna try to sell my guitar, which, as much as I'd like to keep telling myself otherwise, I'm never going to have time to learn how to play.

Alright, time to go to the lab and get people sick.

Well, as of this morning, both new fish are still alive, whew! I haven't seen the goby much, he's basically been hiding under a rock. The cleaner shrimp is a bully - he's chased the peppermint shrimp out of his usual spot, and it's been hard to find the poor guy.

Not that this is totally exciting, but I've got pictures of the light installation that I did. I started out with basically a bare reflector and used a drill to make holes in the aluminum to mount the brackets on. You can see in this picture the metal halide socket (the big white socket) and the mounting clips for the compact fluorescent bulbs:

Close-up of the socket:

Instead of rivets, I decided to use small nuts and bolts to secure the socket and clamps in place. I have a pop riveter (from when I replaced my Mustang bumper), but after having to dremel off the other rivets, I decided it would be too much trouble if I ever wanted to disassemble this in the future. I don't know why they use rivets in the first place - maybe it's cheaper?

After all that was done, I installed the reflector into the canopy. I ended up bolting it in, since the canopy top is only 1/4" thick, and I really didn't trust having screws less than 1/4" deep holding $350 worth of lights in place. So I drilled all the way through the wood and used bolts to hold the reflector in place. It's not the prettiest solution, but you can't see them anyways, so I don't think it's a big deal.

Here's the reflector sitting in place:

Here I added some clamps to keep all the cords in place, so that they wouldn't accidentally touch another bulb or the water:

And here's the canopy back on the tank with the lights in place - bright!

I actually had a lot of fun doing this, and it didn't take very long to do. The next project will be to install a pair of fans in there, because the metal halide bulb puts out a lot of heat.

And just for fun, here's a picture of all the pets hanging out by the fire:

Friday after work I took our dead six-line wrasse back to the fish store. Water tested out okay, so they gave me store credit (I didn't find any other fish I wanted). Then we drove over to Connie's Tropical Fish, and we found a small Yellow Watchman Goby. Brought it home, and put it in the quarantine tank.

Fedex delivered the metal halide light for the tank that day too, so that night I started preparing the install. I'd picked up a new reflector from a company in Redwood City that day, so I started marking the holes and stuff. The light came riveted to its own reflector, which wasn't going to fit, so I had to use a dremel to cut them off. I learned that I need to buy a set of safety goggles, because the cutting wheel actually broke in pieces and hit me in the face (didn't cut me or anything).

Saturday morning we got up, and found the goby dead. Sigh. I went to Home Depot to pick up all the screws and bolts I needed for the light install. I took a bunch of pictures of the install, which I haven't uploaded yet, but will tonight. I worked on that most of the day, and I think it turned out pretty nice. I was pretty pleased with my handiwork!

The new light is bright. It's amazing. They'd sent us the wrong bulb, unfortunately, so it's a bit bluer than I'd like, but I contacted the vendor and he's sending me the correct one. But the leather coral seems to really be loving the new light.

I took Bandit herding in the afternoon, and he was pretty wild since he hasn't herded in about a month. He finally did settle down, and we had a pretty good lesson.

Afterwards, Marc and I went to Mermaid Aquarium in Fremont and found out that the fish I had on hold had died (dead fish seems to be a trend). So then we went to Aquatic Gallery in Milpitas. Didn't find any fish, but we did pick up a rock with some mushrooms on it.

We rented We Don't Live Here Anymore that night, and it was pretty disappointing. Just too depressing, I think.

Melanie had cancelled classes for Sunday, so instead that morning I drove up to Pleasant Hill and Concord to visit some fish stores (yes, more!). Marc had had enough of fish stores for one weekend, so I went alone. I went to All About Fish and The Aquarium. Both were really impressive, and I wish they were closer. I found a yellow watchman goby at All About Fish, as well as a cleaner shrimp. At The Aquarium, I picked up a royal gramma. Both are about 2" long, so not babies.

The watchman went straight into the display tank. They like sand, and we didn't have any in our quarantine tank, so I didn't want to take any chances. All About Fish quarantines their fish, so hopefully it'll be less risky. The royal gramma went into the quarantine tank (of death). It was still alive this morning, so I'm hoping we just had bad luck with the other two.

The goby is really cool. It has a perpetual frown on its face. I tried taking a picture, but couldn't get a good one. I'll have to try with another camera.

Hopefully both will live, I'm tired of losing fish.

I also found out that we have predatory snails, called whelks, in our tank. These guys have been in there for forever, and they reproduce like mad. I thought I'd gotten all of them out of there, but on Saturday I went to put some new snails in the tank. Three of the bad snails just came out of the woodwork, and made a beeline for the new snails. One of them flipped the snail over and crawled all over it. It was FAST. I think I've caught them all now, the nasty little buggers.

Still haven't finished the new site design, I've kind of let that slide the past couple weeks. I'm hoping to do some more work on it this week, I'm getting tired of looking at this one.

Yesterday after work I went to the fish store to get another fish. They only had little ones left (I was looking for a six-line wrasse). So I bought one for $13.99.

Got it home, and it seemed a bit listless. Didn't seem much better when I put it in the quarantine tank (Dory was moved to the display tank). This morning, it was dead.

I think the store has a 24 hour return policy, so I'm gonna see if I can get my money back. Sucks.

Nemo 3 is funny. When I put my arm in the tank to do stuff, he'll swim up and nibble at my arm. Brave little sucker.

We watched "The Apprentice" last night. Man this group is ugly. Marc and I talked about how these guys have a combined net worth three times those of the college grads. Nothing against the high school grads, but they also have about 4-8 years of a head start on the college guys. It's not that surprising that they'd be making more money in their 20's and 30's than the college guys. I think it's when they're in their 40's and 50's that the college people will be ahead. I'm making a heck of a lot more money than someone my age going to grad school, and will be for a few years, but eventually they're going to pass me. But then again, business is a bit different, so maybe the glass ceiling of not having a degree isn't there.

Yesterday, on my way home from work (to bring Bandit to agility class, which he hasn't been to in a month), I got a call from Marc. One of our neighbors called us to tell us that they had found Snoopy. Apparently, he'd gotten out of the yard.

We got home, and there was a big hole in front of the gate, and part of the bottom of the gate was worn away. We picked up Snoopy from the neighbors (just down the street), and his feet were bleeding. Marc thought we should take him to the vet, so we went. Luckily, our vet is open late. Unfortunately, they charge extra for walk-ins.

It turned out that his feet were fine, but that with all the digging he'd worn his nails down to the quick (the blood vessel that feeds the nail), and that was what was causing the bleeding. $95 later, we walked out with a dog with two blue-bandaged feet, none the worse for wear. The dog, at least. Not our pocketbooks.

So no agility class last night, although I suppose that gives me an extra week to practice all the stuff I was supposed to have been practicing, but didn't.

I did finally clean up some of the boxes I had on my computer desk. I have all these boxes because everytime I buy a piece of equipment, there's always some adapter or something that I don't need but that I don't want to throw away, and for lack of any place to put them, I end up keeping the whole box just for that piece. So I finally got a little tray to keep all that stuff in, and threw away all my boxes.

We also watched "American Idol" last night. I love watching all the bad singers. I just don't get these people. I'm sure some are just there to be on TV, but some of these people geniunely seem to think they can sing. And they have all these family members and friends who are supporting them. Which, I suppose, is a good thing, but so is honesty.

Just read this article on CNN: Cow Power. Vermont is using cow manure to generate electricity. Brilliant!

Didn't do much last night, my mom gave me some wontons she made, so that ended up being dinner (and lunch for today). Marc and I went to Target and bought some miscellaneous things.

Last night I was fiddling around in the fish tank and moving the leather coral around. This is kind of what it's supposed to look like: Finger Leather. So ours looks kind of deflated and it's all slumped over. Which supposedly is normal when they're first put in a new tank, but who knows with our tank.

Anyways, yesterday it looked like parts of it were perking up. Some stalks though, looked like they were about to fall off. So I picked it up, and sure enough, one of the stalks completely fell off. Oops. Not really knowing what to do, I just leaned the stalk up against another rock to support it, in hopes that it might reattach itself to where it was.

This morning I came downstairs, and it was kind of dark, but I swear that the base of the stalk had moved, and it looked like it was attaching itself to the other rock! I'll have to take another look at it when I get home when the lights are on. I'll be really happy if it lives.

Most of my weekend was spent working on the fish tank, or at least it felt that way. This thing is a lot of work, I tell ya.

Friday night we went with Kenny to see Million Dollar Baby. REALLY good movie. It totally wasn't what I expected it to be, but wow it was good. Don't read any reviews for the movie beforehand, just go see it. Hilary Swank did a great job - remember Boys Don't Cry? That's the one movie I can never watch again. Not because I thought it was bad (I thought it was really good), but just because of how much it disturbed me. That was the hardest movie to watch, I just couldn't do it again.

Saturday morning Marc and I went to Costco and somehow inexplicably bought $240 worth of stuff. I don't think it's possible to leave that place without spending less than $200. I don't even really remember what we got. I know we got meat, but I know it wasn't $240 worth of meat.

After that, Marc took him mom out to run some errands, and I went to Aquatic Gallery in Milpitas to buy some stuff for the tank. I got a few rocks, some macroalgae, and a few snails and hermit crabs. Then I went to Mermaid Aquarium in Fremont and got some peppermint shrimp (one of them didn't even live to leave the bag).

Our blue tang seems to be doing pretty well. She's still kind of shy, but I've had her swim up to the glass to look at me a couple times. She eats like a total pig now.

Our leather coral is still not doing so well. :( It's still all slumped over, and one of the arms is almost broken off. It's kind of sad. On the other hand, our mushroom coral expands more and more every day.

That night we rented Dodgeball. I fell asleep halfway through the movie, and never finished it. It might have been all the popcorn and raisinettes that made me sleepy.

Sunday we didn't do too much. I took Bandit to Petsmart for class, then pretty much watched football for the rest of the day while fiddling around with the fish tanks. The Colts-Patriots game sucked. I'm tired of seeing the Patriots in the playoffs too. I think I'd like to see an Eagles-Steelers Super Bowl.

I also finished converting our wet-dry filter under the tank to a refugium. I put some live rock rubble in there, along with some macroalgae, and installed a light in the cabinet for it.

Despite all the work and the problems, I'm really enjoying this hobby. There's so much to learn. I just wish it weren't so damn expensive. I told Marc we need to win the lottery so we can get a nice big house with a big 'ol tank in the wall. Like this guy. He's got a dedicated fish room and everything, it's amazing.

We watched some of the Golden Globes in the evening, and then went to bed (late).

So, I said I was going to tell the Snoopy story and why we got the crate. I didn't get a chance to go home and resize the pictures, so just to warn you, these pics will take a while to load until tomorrow.

Anyways, so Snoopy used to be Marc's dog. He got him back in 1998 or 1999, I don't remember. When Marc moved out of his parents house to an apartment, he couldn't take Snoopy with him, so he stayed behind with his parents. When Marc's parents moved to Elk Grove, they took Snoopy with them and he kind of became their dog.

Over the years, his weight blossomed, mostly due to eating lots of people food. When we dog-sat him one time, Marc weighed him, and by my recollection he was about 80 pounds. Snoopy is a beagle-cocker spaniel mix.

Some photos I took when he was here:

When Marc's dad passed away, Snoopy came to our house. We put him on weight maintenance food, a cup a day. And like Bandit, no people food.

In two months he's slimmed down quite a bit. He has a waist now! His breathing is easier, and he can get up the stairs now without trouble. He still has weight to lose, but we're definitely making progress.

Him today:

You can click on that last picture for a larger version to see what's exactly in the background.

Last weekend, we left the dogs inside because it was raining like crazy. We keep Snoopy in our guest bedroom with a baby gate across the door because we don't trust him yet in the rest of the house when we're not home.

So that night we went out. When we came home, the carpet in the guest bedroom was completely torn up in a few places, and the door frame was chewed, and the guest bedroom was a mess.

And that's why we got the crate.

Last Night

We watched "Lost" last night - great episode. If you haven't been watching this show, come to our house and catch up on our TiVo. ;)

The only other noteworthy thing happened when we got home from work. Marc called down from upstairs, "Bonnie...where's Hammy?"

Apparently I had left her cage open the night before when I went to feed her, and she was not in her cage.

My thoughts immediately went to the cats, and if I'd noticed any blood or hamster bits on their mouths.

We started looking around the guest room, and luckily enough, I found Hammy snoozing away in the corner of the room, behind a bunch of junk we had stored there. Whew!

What's amazing is that her cage is up fairly high, so it must have been a long jump for her to get down on the floor like that. Poor Hammy.

I got to start reading some of the Jon Katz book I bought. I want to get two more border collies and a farm now.

Yesterday on my way home from work I stopped by Mermaid Aquarium in Fremont to look at some corals. I started talking to one of the workers there, and was asking him for some suggestions. He pointed out a few fairly good-sized corals to me.

I asked, "How much are they?"

He replied, "$40."

I stood there mulling it over a bit, and then asked if they had any smaller, cheaper ones. They did, but I didn't like them that much. So we went back to the bigger ones and I looked at them for a little bit more.

I said, "So those are $40?"

He said, "Yep."

A beat later he continues, "But we're having a 25% off sale today! Didn't I tell you that? Did you know that already?"

So I walked out of there with this big $30 coral, quite pleased.

I went home and took a picture of the hairy green mushroom we'd bought this weekend. It seems to get a little bigger each day, although I don't think it's fully spread out yet.

I also tried to take a picture of the clown, but he was too fast. The Sony digicam I have isn't the best for these types of pictures, so I may have to charge up the batteries for my old Olympus.

Marc was visiting his mom for her birthday, so I actually did some chores last night. I was emptying the dishwasher and I had all the cabinet doors open. I went to go put away some glasses, and this is what I saw:

When Marc got home, we went to Petsmart to buy Snoopy a crate (tomorrow I'll post the story behind this). We had Bandit with us, who, I swear, is so spoiled by that store. The workers there all know his name, and he knows that counter-surfing at the checkstand will get him a treat and attention.

The rest of my evening was spent doing stuff for the tank, and then it was bedtime. I didn't have any time to read any of the new books I got over the weekend, which are "How to Run a Business on eBay for Dummies" and "The Dogs of Bedlam Farm" by Jon Katz. Marc had gotten two books for himself - the 2005 World Almanac (yes, he's strange, and yes, he really reads through it) and "Gigs," which is some book about people and their jobs.

This weekend felt like a real blur. Friday night Marc and I just hung out at home and rented "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle." So wierd, but so funny (over vacation we'd also rented "Garden State," which was also a bit off-kilter but hilarious - I'd recommend both movies).

Saturday morning I went to a volunteer orientation at the SPCA. I'm hoping to volunteer at their vet clinic, so hopefully I'll be able to get a shift there. No herding that day, because of the rain.

In the evening we went to Roy's for dinner, and then rented "Napoleon Dynamite," which was another wierd but funny movie.

Sunday I took Bandit to class - we had this one boy walk right into the training ring and slowly right up to Bandit, who was sitting there looking at him. I got up and pulled Bandit away with me, but I didn't really have anywhere to go, and this kid was determined to pet him. Luckily Melanie stepped in and literally body-blocked the kid and asked him to leave. Of course, the kid then came up behind me and I kept trying to get my head between the kid and Bandit's line of sight. Bandit kept looking around my head to see the kid. The kid's mom finally dragged him away, and I could hear him saying, "but I wanna pet it" the whole time.

In the afternoon, Marc and I drove down to Fremont and discovered that the fish store had a whole bunch of blue tangs, which if you remember, was the fish that I had been looking all over for last spring. The quarantine period for Nemo 3 was just about up, so we figured we'd grab one while we could. We also picked up our first coral, an easy starter one called a Green Hairy Mushroom.

We'll probably name the blue tang Dory, since we're unimaginative like that. She's in our quarantine tank, so the background in this picture isn't the prettiest.

They're not the easiest fish to keep, and we were told she might act like she's dead due to stress, but there were times when she was out and about swimming. I took a video of her swimming around.

In the evening we had dinner with Steve and Erin and the kids and Marc's mom to celebrate her birthday. We went back to our house afterwards for some yummy ice cream cake. Allison is learning a lot of new words! I showed her Stubby's nose, so she kept going up to him and touching his nose, saying, "nose."

I went to bed at 10 last night (didn't fall asleep for a while though), but was still super-tired this morning, and woke up late to boot. I must have a major sleep debt to pay off.

Anyone see the Orange Bowl on Tuesday? Specifically the halftime show? I'm sure most people have heard about it - Ashlee Simpson performed (horribly) and at the end of her performance was promptly booed by about 70,000 people. It was fantastic.

Anyways, here's a link to the clip of the debacle, which I just can't watch enough times. I love it.

Another funny internet bit. Someone apparently took one of Nickelback's songs, "You Remind Me," and realized that it sounds exactly like another of their songs, "Someday." Same beat, bass line, everything. If you go to this site, it plays one song on one speaker, and the other on the other speaker, and you can see just exactly how much they sound alike. It's uncanny.

That's it for an update, we didn't do much yesterday. :)

I spent most of last night working on the new site design - I'm trying to do it all in CSS (which is much better in Dreamweaver MX than 4.0), so I'm kind of learning as I go.

We dropped off the Rav4 at the dealer last night, because our check engine light came on (again) on the drive home from San Diego. We brought the dogs with us and walked home from the dealership, which is pretty close to our house.

The guy from the dealership called today to tell me that the problem is with one of the catalytic converters (those little bulbous things between the headers and the cat-back portion of the exhaust). Luckily, it's covered under Toyota's extended warranty, so we don't have to pay anything. Originally the guy said it was going to be $110 to find out what the check engine light was on for, which seemed pretty ridiculous given that all they have to do is hook up their computer and have it spit out a code to tell them what's wrong. But I guess they must charge the full hour of labor for that.

I didn't get to bed really early thanks to having to drop off the car, so I still haven't fulfilled that resolution. I did remember another resolution I meant to make, which was to lose 10 pounds this year. I think my list is getting too long. I need lots of fixing, I guess. ;)

Okay, I said I was going to list my New Year's resolutions. I haven't done these in years, and I don't think I've ever put them down on paper. I'm kinda making these up on the fly, so that tells you just how solid they are. ;)

1. Stop slouching. I've told Marc that if he catches me slouching, he can take a picture of me, and then I have to post it on the site. Which means that rather than stop slouching, I'll likely just stop posting.

2. Get to bed every night by 10:30. I made it to bed by 11 last night, so I'm working on it. I really ought to be in bed by 10, given the amount of sleep I need each night, but that seems SO early.

3. Walk the dog twice a day. This is going to be a hard one. Once at night is easy, but I am soooo not a morning person. But Cesar Milan says this is what a dog with behavioral issues needs, and I'm not about to argue with the Dog Whisperer.

4. Try not to blame Marc for everything. After two years of being married, I have found that I have an uncanny ability to find the most remote of relationships that Marc has to a bad event and turn that into a way to blame him for it. I think this must be genetic.

5. Donate more to charity. I've always donated to World Wildlife Fund and Sierra Club, and this year we did the Giving Tree thing at my work, and donated $55 to the Red Cross for the tsunami fund, but I really think we can do much better.

6. Decide what I want to do. Whether it's go to vet school or start my own business or change careers, I gotta figure it out. I'm coming up on 5 years here at Roche, and that's 4 years longer than I'd planned.

7. Be neater around the house. I don't really intend to do this, but it seems like something I should put down.

Hmm, that's a pretty ambitious list. I should print it out and laminate it or something. Maybe make little check boxes, cause I like those. #6 is a biggie for me.

Last night Marc and I bought one of those magnetic cleaners for our tank. It's a thing where you put one side (with the scrubber) on the inside of the glass, and then hold onto the other side on the outside of the glass. You then move the scrubber around from the outside because they're two pieces that stick to each other via a strong magnet. And it floats, so you just pull apart the magnet, let the inside piece float up, and take it out. It works great, and it's so simple, I wish I thought of something like that. Because you know that person is probably rich off of this little magnet thing.

Happy New Year everyone! I'd planned to blog over vacation, but as you can see, that didn't exactly happen. I always mean to blog from home, but I always get lazy.

It was a busy two weeks, so I won't do my usual recap. Our first week of vacation was spent mostly at the mall, shopping for all our Christmas presents. The rest of my free time was spent working on Allison's present. Despite staying up until 7 am on Christmas day, I didn't manage to finish it in time.

We did take some time off from shopping to take Bandit to Lake Del Valle. Melanie and her boyfriend drove up with Lucas and the 6 of us spent the morning at the lake watching the dogs have a blast. Bandit was a bit neurotic, chasing the water as it moved along the shore. We ended up with two very wet, very dirty dogs.

We did manage to get our tree up. I rearranged the living room and managed to clear out the corner to get the tree in. We bought the pets these little photo ornaments, but never got around to taking actual photos for them, hehe. We also made new stockings for me, Marc, Bandit, Stubby and Snuggles. We had a stocking holder set that spelled out S-A-N-T-A, so there wasn't room for Hammy.

Steve, Erin, Jacob, Allison, and Marc's mom were over at our house on Christmas day for presents and lunch. We bought a Honey Baked ham, and had picked up some rolls from Texas Roadhouse (we bought 5 dozen for the day, which turned out to be way too many).

Marc and I had gotten the kids some clothes (we found a really cute winter coat for Allison), and some books and a Leapster game for Jacob. Marc, Steve and Erin pitched in to get me a gift certificate for horseback riding lessons! I've been wanting to do that for a long time, so I'm super excited.

I got Marc a new watch for Christmas, which I was able to afford thanks to a furtuitous 25% + 15% off sale at Macy's.

In the evening we went over to my parents' house to celebrate Christmas with my family. My brothers and us got my parents a digital camera, and Kenny and us got Leslie and X-Box, which was a total pain in the neck to get. Apparently, they were selling out all over the Bay Area, and we couldn't find one in any of the stores nearby. We finally called up a Target in Pleasant Hill (30 miles away), which had 10 left at 10 am, despite starting out with 40 units that morning. So Marc and I booked it to Target, and managed to snag one before they sold out.

Among my haul from Christmas: money, Donkey Konga, "The Bush Survival Bible" (from Kenny, of course), a new blanket for sleeping in the car when Mom and I carpool, and a Cal sweatshirt. I also bought lots of presents for myself while we shopped for everyone. :) Marc got Seinfeld and Simpsons DVD sets, a new 49ers polo shirt, new slippers, a modem adapter for the PS2 so he can play golf online, and money too.

We were supposed to go skiing after Christmas, but Leslie ended up having to work, and Henry got the flu, so we cancelled our trip. We didn't ski at all this vacation, which was a real bummer. On Thursday, we drove down to San Diego for the Holiday Bowl. Cal really stunk it up, it was very disappointing. Leslie bought me a foam finger and Marc bought me a mini-football, so I guess that's an upside. We met up with Mark and Chris for dinner afterwards, and then hung out at their condo for a little while. We drove back home Friday morning in some crazy rain.

Marc and I also painted our bedroom on Wednesday. We painted it Windsurf Blue, which turned out pretty nice, although it took us all day to paint. We also started working on the fish tank again, doing lots of water changes, and getting a new clownfish (Nemo 3), who is in our quarantine tank for two weeks. The main tank was pretty rank, but hopefully it'll clean up soon. We also got some shelves for the garage, which now looks much neater and more organized. We were busy!

Henry and Vicki and my brothers hung out at our house for New Year's. We had some margaritas and sparkling wine, and Marc had fun with TiVo, replaying the countdown so we could do the confetti poppers, the toast, and kissing your significant other each time it turned the New Year. He's such a dork.

Okay, I think I've written enough now! Tomorrow I'll list my New Year's resolutions, which I'm actually making this year. Whether I'll actually stick to them is another question.

Oh yeah, the site got spammed with comments over vacation, so new comments won't show up until I approve them until I can find a way to block the spam. I'm also working on a new site design, so stay tuned. :)