February 2005 Archives

I think I'm starting to come down with MTS - Multiple Tank Syndrome. I have this urge to fill every room in our house with some sort of fish/reef tank. I want little ones, and I want big ones.

I never seem to be able to do anything in moderation, huh?

I'm still bit by the camera bug too. I'm leaning towards waiting for the Rebel XT to come out. It's 8 megapixels, although that's not the big deal for me. It just has a lot of nice new features that the current Rebel doesn't have, so I'm thinking it might be worth the extra $200. Just have to wait until March 20, when it comes out. Oh yeah, and raise more money, haha.

Marc and I watched Ray last night. Pretty good movie, Jamie Foxx is really good in it. It took me awhile to get used to the style of the movie though, although perhaps that was due to being sleepy.

"LOST" was soooo good too. If you're not watching this show, try to catch it in reruns. It's awesome.

Some people are really just too annoying.

Marc and I had dinner at Outback this past Friday night. We sat in the patio area, which isn't the bar area, but still has first-come, first-serve seating. Normally it's pretty quiet though.

We're starting out our meal, when these two girls walk in, and take the table next to us. One of the girls walks in, starts taking off her jacket, and declares, "OH, I'M TOO HOT." She's wearing a halter top underneath. Yeah, we're at Outback Steakhouse. Whatever.

Her friend was plain and unassuming and quiet. This was basically your stereotypical "pretty" girl and "ugly" girl friendship. I put those in quotes because the one girl wasn't really pretty, and the other wasn't totally ugly. But you know, it's where you have a pretty girl who has esteem issues, who hangs out with an ugly girl who worships her. It makes the pretty girl feel better, and the ugly girl gets to feel cool.

Anyways, so the obnoxious, "pretty" girl, starts telling her friend exactly what they're going to order. Coincidentally, she's loud enough that everyone in the room knows what they're going to order too.

Marc says, "SHUT UP" at one point.

This girl proceeds to talk LOUDLY, for the entire duration of their dinner. She's pretty clearly trying to get attention. She drops the F-bomb every two words, and REPEATEDLY reminds her friend (and all of us) about how she came from the Bronx and how she had it so tough and blah blah blah.

More topics of conversation included: how she was trying to juggle two men at once, and how risque she was being; declaring as she saw a December-May couple walk by that she would NEVER date an old fart like that, and that someone should shoot her if she ever did (someone should shoot her regardless); "I TOLD HIM HIS PENIS WAS TOO SMALL!"

You really had to be there to see how annoying and pathetic it was. I've never seen someone try so hard to be cool. She was a quintessential attention whore. It was really sad and humorous at the same time. I saw another couple at a table next to us laughing about her too.

Another annoying person (though not nearly as much as that girl) was this guy at Home Depot last night. So I'm there in line at the self-checkout, and there's one guy in line in front of me. There's also a couple of people in line behind me, and the line is growing.

Meanwhile, there's a guy at one of the checkstands with his 3-year-old daughter. He's got like multiple small items he's buying - I'm talking like 10 or 20 of each of these things. And he's handing them one by one to his daughter to let her scan them and drop them in the bag. She's 3, so she's doing this very slowly. But daddy is patient.

Now, this would be cute otherwise, but hello, there is a growing line of people waiting to check out their stuff and go home. And this dickhead is just slooooowly handing his daughter little packets of nuts and bolts one at a time.

Mister, it was cute the first time, but at some point a little consideration for others would be nice. I got in line while this guy was already checking out, and I was second in line. After I finished checking my stuff and was leaving, this guy was STILL handing his daughter stuff. I mean, c'mon. You freaking idiot.

I should've said something. I'm just too nice.

Traffic to work was a breeze, thanks to the holiday. Much hate to all those of you who get this day off, while I rot here at work.

Anyways, Friday after work, Marc and I went to this fish/pet store in Campbell, where I had called and found out that they had the black and white ocellaris clownfish I was looking for. Went there, and they had one, and he was the perfect size. Poor little guy was a little beat up though, as the other fish were picking on him.

When I put him in the tank, he made a beeline for Nemo 3 and wouldn't leave his/her side. I suppose Nemo 3 should be referred to as Coral now. Nemo 4 is really cute though, and neat looking.

On Saturday, Marc and Steve went up to Elk Grove to clean the house some more. I made a trip to the Hayward fish store and picked up a cool looking coral, called a branching hammer. It's got a bunch of hammer-shaped polyps, and they're fluorescent green.

It was also raining a little, but Jan said we were still herding. Unfortunately, but the time Bandit and I got there, it was pouring, and we decided it would probably be too slick out in the field to do anything. Poor Bandit was probably like, "Okay, how come I'm not getting out of the car already? And how come now we're leaving? Wait, my sheep!"

Jan is hosting a herding clinic in April, and I signed up for it. The trainer who's coming into the run the clinic is supposed to be really good, and we started Bandit using many of his techniques, so Jan was interested in seeing what he would do with him. It should be fun!

Saturday night I was over at my parents' house having a family meeting. I got there at about 10 pm, didn't get back home until 3 am. Oy.

Sunday morning I took Bandit to a Petsmart class while Marc and Steve went to go see their mom. She had been having trouble swallowing food, so they ended up taking her to the ER. We're not sure what the cause is, but it looks like some inflammation in her throat is making her unable to swallow any food or drink. So they had to admit her and she's going to be there for a few days.

Marc told me when they got there that he and Steve grabbed some Carl's Jr. for lunch, and went to the waiting room to eat. He said they were there for a while before they noticed this sign about five feet in front of them. He took a picture: big sign.

That night, Marc and I watched Saw, which we had rented on Friday. So-so movie, I'm glad we didn't go see it in the theater. Was pretty creepy though.

A few weeks ago we got Bandit a dog bed for his crate. I don't think he likes it much (we used to have towels in there, but he always pushed them aside, preferring to sleep on the plastic). It seems like he's been sleeping on our bed a lot more ever since. Most mornings I can't even move, because I've got two cats on my side, and a dog sleeping between my feet.

Glad it's Friday, I'm pooped.

I finally got the check for the guitar I sold. Thank goodness! So I'll be shipping that off today, and depositing the check into my little camera fund. Incidentally, Canon just announced their new digital Rebel, the XT, which seems pretty nice. 8.0 megapixels (compared to 6.3 for the current Rebel), and it's smaller, lighter, and with a bunch of features.

So I don't know what I'll do. The new Rebel will likely be $999, which is much more than I was looking to spend. Plus, I'm not sure when it's coming out. I think I'll see how much the prices drop on the current Rebel. If I can get one for like $500, then I might just go with that. If it's going to cost me $800 still, then I might be better off just getting the new one. We'll see.

We got a ricordea yuma mushroom yesterday. Was normally $60, but the guy at Aquatic Gallery sold it to us for $45. It's tiny. The color is awesome though, like this bright orange with a purple rim. I'll have to try to take a picture of it when it opens up a bit.

Marc and I watched the Westminster Dog Show the other night. The Border Collie won the herding group! I'd actually seen the same dog at the Eukanuba show, and in that one it had come in second place. It didn't win Best In Show though, that went to a German Shorthaired Pointer. I'm not a big fan of GSP's, but that dog was gorgeous, particularly in movement. Personally though, I was rooting for the BC and the Bloodhound.

I had coincidentally bought the Best In Show DVD that day too. I love that movie.

For Valentine's Day, Marc took me out to my favorite sushi restaurant. I ordered a big bowl of vegetable udon, and I think I ate like 5 rolls. I'd hoped to be able to eat more, but I was totally stuffed. I should've gotten some sashimi too, but I forgot. Man, I could eat sushi every day.

He also sent roses to my work, which was really sweet. They're still alive, too. Although the instructions said to remove the outer rugged petals. Which turned out to be the small green ones, but which I mistook to mean the outer rose petals. So my rose bulbs are a little skinnier than normal.

I finally caught the blue tang. I waited until the lights went out, and she went into her usual sleeping space, which is wedged between two rocks, where she lays on her side. I quietly stuck my hands in the tank, and gently pinned her tail against one rock, which I used my other hand to grab her body. Once I got a finger on each side of her body, she calmed down a lot, and I was able to pull her from the rocks and out of the water.

I gave her a freshwater dip, and a bunch of the ich spots fell off. Not all of them though, unfortunately. I didn't want to dip her too long and stress her out too much though. She seemed to recover just fine once I got her back in the tank.

Who would've thought I'd have better luck catching a fish with my hands than with a net?

Okay, time for lunch.

This weekend was, as usual, pretty uneventful. And mostly filled with doing fish stuff.

Marc and I rented Eulogy and Alien vs. Predator (the latter for myself) Friday night. Eulogy was quirky, but pretty funny. Not bad for a rental.

Saturday morning Marc and I visited a couple fish stores. I'm still looking for a black ocellaris clownfish to pair up with Nemo 3. I think we're going to have to rename Nemo 3 when we do find a mate, since Nemo 3 will be the female in the pair (maybe we'll name it Coral).

Then I took Bandit herding. Jan showed me how to use my new herding whistle, and I figured it out! Now I just need to practice getting all the different whistles down and consistent. I forgot to mention last week that I got totally knocked down on my ass while herding. Bandit was moving this massive flock of sheep to me, and he came in way too hard, and I ended up getting squeezed between two sheep. They actually lifted me of my feet, and I tried to hold onto them, but I ended up just getting dragged down. I was lucky there weren't any sheep behind me, cause I think I would've gotten trampled. Marc wasn't looking, and he was bummed that he missed the whole thing.

Anyways, this week I didn't fall, and Bandit did pretty nicely. It's so much fun to do this with him, because he just loves working the sheep. It's such a difference from when we first started.

That afternoon I went to another fish store and picked up a cleaner wrasse fish. It's really a no-no in the reef hobby to buy these fish because they usually don't live long, but I'm getting desperate with the ich problem our tang is having. I bought the biggest one they had (for $7.99), and it turned out to be huge. It's bigger than even our tang.

The good thing is, it seems to be eating the food I'm feeding the other fish, so hopefully it'll survive. It also spends a fair amount of time picking stuff off the tang. So now our tang makes pit stops at the cleaner shrimp and the cleaner wrasse for cleanings. I think she's a bit confused though, because it looked like she was making pit stops in front of the clown and his anemone, expecting a cleaning. Finding Nemo wasn't too far off with their depiction of Dory.

In the evening we had a Chinese New Year's dinner with my family (my dad gave Marc and I red envelopes with $100 each, which was really cool). Afterwards, we hung out with Henry and my brothers and watched Cellular, which was really, really bad. And inadvertently very funny. But terrible.

On Sunday Marc and I slept in really late, and also picked up some coral frags from a guy who was selling them through craigslist. Coral frags are small pieces that people cut off their corals to sell. It's cheaper to buy them this way (a large piece can cost nearly $100 otherwise). Then you just let them grow in your tank. It's also more ecologically sound, since people are getting corals from other people, and not from the wild.

I watched Alien vs. Predator that afternoon, which wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. Although the parts where the girl is running alongside the Predator were kinda cheesy. Actually, a lot of it was cheesy.

Marc and I are going out for sushi tonight for Valentine's Day. I'm very excited!

Came across this short film today, which I thought was really cute and funny - Dog Years.

I'm starting to wonder if I'm becoming lactose intolerant. I know it's pretty common in Asians, but I've never had a problem before. But lately, when I drink a glass of milk, I get gassy. Marc's not convinced though, because he says I'm always gassy.

You are really regretting reading my blog now, I'm sure.

Well yesterday I finally called up the person who won my guitar, and ended up talking to his wife. She said he'd been trying to reach me and was glad I called. I told her that I think their e-mail box is full, because I've been trying to reach them and my messages keep getting bounced. So I told her to please tell her husband to either call me or use the checkout/payment. As of last night, he hasn't called or paid yet. If I see nothing this afternoon, I'm calling again when it's evening for them.

Anyways, after work Marc and I went to Longs to get some bubble wrap for the amp I sold with the guitar. While we were there, we decided to pick out Valentine's Day cards. I was taking forever, so Marc went and bought a Lotto scratcher. It was called "Some Like It Hot" and you had two "hot" numbers and if you matched either of them, you won a prize. His hot numbers are 34 and 25. So Marc's scratching, and he gets a 34! Which was a $10 prize. He keeps scratching. Another 34. Marc goes, "WHAT?!" (quite loudly and a bit of a squeal) Scratches some more. Another 34. "WHAT!?!?" Another $10. He gets two more 34's and two 25's! Which totalled $60!

What was funny was that Marc, being as cheap as he is, was originally going to buy some other $1 scratcher, not the one he did buy, which was $2. But he saw the "Some Like It Hot" name, and thought of his dad, who would have bought that one because he really liked hot food.

So with his newfound wealth, Marc treated me to Baskin Robbins ice cream ("Anything you want, baby, it's on me!" I think were his exact words).

Then last night, I was looking in our tank, and noticed that our anemone had shrunk up. I was starting to wonder what might be bothering it, when I saw Nemo 3 diving into it! If you've seen Finding Nemo, you know that clownfish host in anemones. Our anemone isn't the natural host of the species of clownfish we have, so it was going to be hit or miss, and often it takes months, but in just two days our clownfish is hosting!

I also took a couple videos of him diving in and out of the anemone, it's so cool to watch.

Video 1
Video 2

As of this morning he was still snuggling in his anemone, I don't think he left it all night, haha.

The past few days I've been trying to catch our blue tang, unsuccessfully. She broke out with ich a few days ago (sigh), and despite treating with medicine and soaking her food in garlic, the spots seem to be getting worse. So I need to catch her to dip her in freshwater to try to get the ich off.

She is a tough bugger to catch. At one point she had wedged herself under a rock, and I was actually able to touch her with my fingers. I managed to get two fingers around her, but not enough to really grab her, and I was afraid of hurting her. Fish feel weird underwater. They're slimy when you grab them out of water, but the tang was very rough and scaly.

So I was literally up to my shoulders in tank water yesterday, grumbling and fussing with nets and bowls and all sorts of contraptions trying to catch this fish. There's just no way to do it, not without taking out all the rockwork.

The upside is that she's nice and fat, and she hasn't yet seemed to be irritated by it, even though she looks horrible. We may just have to ride it out and hope for the best.

I've started looking at some digital SLRs. I'm still waiting for the guy who bought my guitar to pay me though (it's a long story, but basically this person is an idiot). I'm torn between getting the Canon Rebel and the 10D. The 10D is nicer and has more features, but it's also discontinued and I can basically only buy it new now. That and it costs about $100 more than the Rebel.

Anyways, I know I shouldn't count my chickens before they're hatched. I still need another $100-200 before I have enough, and I think I've run out of things to eBay (by the way, PayPal takes ridiculous cuts from your payments). I was thinking about selling my Magic: The Gathering cards (no geek jokes!), only to find out that they weren't worth much back then, and they're not worth much today. My Star Trek: The Next Generation trading card game cards aren't worth anything either.

Man, I'm a loser.

So, I'm pretty bummed that New England won. Not that I have any animosity towards the Pats, but they're just so damn boring. There's something about the way they play that irks me too, but I can't explain it.

And yeah, Tom Brady's cute and he's from the Bay Area, but I still don't like him.

Anyways, Kenny came over to watch the game with us on Sunday, but before the game I was watching the "Puppy Bowl" on Animal Planet. It was literally three hours of watching a bunch of puppies playing in a play pen that was set up like a miniature football stadium. They had a "Ball Cam" which was a camera disguised as a football that moved around the pen. It was pretty funny, counter-programming at its finest, I suppose. It was kind of dorky too, but I didn't care.

We bought a small green bubble-tip anemone this weekend. Hopefully Nemo 3 will host in it, but he seems much more enamored with Dory. I fed the anemone a small frozen fish, but I think it was too big. It ate it up until just the end was visible, and stopped. A couple hours later I found that it had spit out the fish on a rock.

And yes, anemone's sting! Not so bad for a person though, but it tingled when I had to grab it to put it in the tank.

I sold my guitar on eBay this weekend! It ended up selling for $228, which is way more than I had expected. So I may have enough for my camera soon. :)

We also rented Wicker Park this weekend. Worst. Movie. Ever. That might be an exaggeration, but it was pretty horrible. The premise itself wasn't too bad, but it's bad when the entire premise is based on people acting in a way that is completely stupid and makes no sense.

I mean, these people are dating, and they end up losing each other for 2 years because she was supposed to meet him at this park (why they can't just meet at one of their apartments is beyond me), but she has to travel to London at the last minute, so instead of simply calling him, she asks her crazy friend to deliver him a note, and of course her crazy friend never does.

Anyways, it goes on and on, but basically these people for some reason never call each other on their cell phones, and never bother to look each other up later. It's not that hard to find someone, people. And they keep insisting on not leaving contact info and wanting to meet at this stupid fucking park. Idiots!

Got swamped today at work, so didn't have any time to write this morning.

Not much to write though, except to share a story from last night.

I decided to leave the window downstairs open a crack during the day - it was probably open less than a foot wide (or tall, however you describe it, the window pushes upwards). This was for the fish tank, since I'm having pH issues - it's a long story.

Marc and I get home from work yesterday, and I open the door to the house, and am promptly greeted by two dogs in the kitchen. Two dogs who are supposed to be in the backyard. At first I thought we forgot to let them out in the morning, but that was extremely unlikely. Then I thought about the window.

Sure enough, the screen on the window was gone. The window was still open less than a foot, but there was no screen. I looked outside, and there was the screen in the backyard, totally scratched up and mangled. Marc also found Stubby in the backyard.

I'm not too happy about the window screen, but it is kind of humorous to picture two dogs climbing into a window and essentially breaking into the house.

I don't have a whole lot of time to write, but I figure I gotta write something, since I haven't blogged since Monday. Although that entry was long enough to make up for it, heh.

We had a little scare on Tuesday when Marc's mom had to go to the hospital. Her blood pressure had gotten very low, and we're not exactly sure what caused it yet. But they got her on some fluids and kept her overnight at the hospital, and she's doing much better, thank goodness.

Yesterday, I sold my camera! Someone used the Buy It Now option on eBay, and bought it for $250. They really make it easy to ship stuff now, I was able to print the shipping label and pay for shipping all at home. And it automatically sends an invoice and tracking slip to the person who bought it, and all I have to do now is drop off the package at a UPS store. Anyways, $250 is more than I was hoping for, so I'm pretty happy.

As for the fish tank, Dory looks like she has ich. Yeah, I think I'm cursed to have to deal with that stupid parasite forever. I don't think I can catch all three fish without tearing everything apart, so I'm trying to feed them all garlic-soaked food to see if that'll work. It won't be the best solution, but if it works it'll be good enough.

I took Bandit to agility last night, finally! He did awesome, especially considering we haven't been in over a month. I was really proud of the little guy.

Lastly, I think Snoopy's weight loss program has been a raging success. We found out yesterday that he's lost so much weight that he's actually now able to jump up onto our barbeque grill. I'm not even kidding. We found muddy paw marks on the top of one of our downstairs windows, and found Snoopy sitting on top of the grill yesterday.

All right, time to boogie to this meeting. Yuck.