Mortaine’s Blog

I had a migraine yesterday. It was definitely Not Fun. As a result: I got no work done. Boo, hiss.

Today, I must get much work completed.

I had a very full day yesterday.

and I went to Davis for the California Betta Society club meeting. The CBS is a Northern CA group, and sometimes we meet pretty far away from the Bay Area. This was my first time in Davis, in fact.

I picked her up at about 9 and we drove off to Davis, arriving at just about 11 AM. This was good– it meant we had about 2 hours to have a leisurely lunch with , who was fun and charming and really, really sweet about the fact that and I both talked her ears off!

On our way back to the car, we spotted a police cruiser parked kind of oddly on the street, and looked ahead to see a cop, crouched behind a tree, with an M-16. Um. Oooookaaaay. I paused, because I am one of those people who does not walk into gunfire. sped up. *sigh*

I should note that a week ago, when John and I were on the way home from the Jeep trip, we witnessed some police action next door to the gas station where we were filling up.

Anyway. We waited. I pulled out the videocamera. Hey, if there was going to be something interesting happening, I wanted it on film! The cop was focused intently on the credit union across the street, so we pretty much figured something had happened or was happening or was about to happen there.

We kept a nice, long distance from the cop– about half a block, I’d say.

Eventually, another cruiser pulled up and the world’s shortest police officer got out and approached the tree, hand on his holster. A few minutes later, the bank manager came out, spoke to the 2 cops (we could not hear them) and they turned and walked away. The rest of us concluded it was a false alarm.

As and I proceeded to the car, a passer-by complained loudly about the cop with the M-16. “Why is he walking around with that out? He shouldn’t have that out!”

“Um. He’s a peace officer.” Like, this was the stupidest woman in the world or something.

“Still, I don’t think they should be allowed to just walk around with those.”

“He’s a police officer responding to a bank alarm….?”

“Still– he shouldn’t be allowed to be out on the street with that.”

Now, I want to be clear on this: I am in favor of gun control, and I really, really hate guns. But even I had trouble with this one. WHAT KIND OF IDIOT DOESN’T WANT COPS TO CARRY GUNS TO A FIREFIGHT?!?!?!? The stupid was just… amazing.

So, we were late to the CBS meeting. No biggie– the meeting started over an hour and a half late. I videoed it for the betta club’s videoblog (no videos yet). bought a lovely mustard gas male at the auction, and I got my “starter trio” (new members get a trio to start their breeding program, if they want them). I asked the person donating the trio to me, and she said the male was a definite bubble nest builder, and they were all about 4 months old.

I also bought a pair in addition, and gave one of the females to . I basically now have one more male than I have space for, and one more female than I have space for. Whoops! I also bought some almond leaf (from a guy who has an almond tree– I think he’s going to bring more leaf in the future!) and some water sprite, which is a floating plant that the bettas like cause they can hide in it and it makes things a little darker. also gave me some Java Moss, but I have only put it in one tank for the moment, since her tank was just getting over ich and, while I need to “quarantine” it, I’m not sure how to do that and still make sure the ich is gone.

and I also got a pretty yellow male for . won a “betta starter kit” in the raffle, so we brought the fish, a really basic tank (similar to the one Zoot lived in for over a year), and the basic care kit over to ’s and set it up for her. That was way cool, because I like sharing the betta love, and Isa’s a totally awesome person. Also, and I got to play interior decorator to a fish that we didn’t have to keep for ourselves. Aside from some not-as-wonderful plants, we did OK.

Anyway, it was then long-since time to go, and I sped as fast as the unmoving traffic would let me to drop off at home, before heading off to my game. I was about 2 hours late for the game, and hadn’t had dinner yet. My gamers were really sweet about not ragging on me for being so late! And they got to beat shit up! And meet the new player character they’ll be adventuring with in the future!

Anyway, I got home at midnight last night, to find that the neighbors were having a bonfire party with drums. I set up the fish as best I could so late, and headed off to bed, crawling under the covers at 1 AM. Still drums going. Fortunately, our bedroom is pretty quiet at night. I turned on the air filter and drowned out the noise entirely.

Unfortunately, I didn’t drown out the sound of my watch alarm going off at 7:30 this morning, so I got about 6 hours of sleep and am very sleepy today. I just cleaned out the breeding tank and set it back up with the heater and fresh water. I also set the new fish up in tanks, but the girls are very stressed out and clamping up, so I’m hoping their quarantine won’t bee too bad for them. The boys are also a bit stressed, though not as bad as the girls. Last night, I put the girls into a divided betta hex, just for overnight. This morning, I split them into 2 hexes with a couple of plants so they can hide. Unfortunately, the water was too cold for one of the girls, and she abruptly went into torpor. I warmed her up, but she’s still stressed, and she was already kind of stressed and unhappy to begin with!

The boy I bought at auction is what the breeder called “black butterfly,” in that he’s a butterfly markings (fins are two-tone), but instead of white tips on his fins, he has black. My Cookie Monster is a marbled betta, so perhaps cross-breeding their offspring will result in some nice patterns.

So, anyway. I now have 5 fish to name. Two boys (I think John’s naming one of them “Red”), and three girls– the two from yesterday, plus the green girl from before.

Sun 02/26/2006 19:36 Fish

Went to a meeting of the betta club yesterday. http://www.cbsbettas.org

And the bank called. Apparently, my debit card # was in the hands of fraudsters.

So I no longer have that debit card number. I cannot put # into the account without going to the ATM (between now and Monday, I will not be around when the bank is open). I opened a new bank account to replace this one, but the debit card (and checks) for THAT one won’t arrive until next week sometime.

*sigh*

99 cent charge from iTunes via PayPal: went through.
$22.00 overdraft charge from my bank.

No song is worth $23!