Mortaine’s Blog

3 reviews of books:
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (ungraded)
Submerged by Daniel Lenihan (grade B+)
The Shivered Sky by Matt Dinniman

 

 Reviews: Fast Food Nation, Submerged, The Shivered Sky [5:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

First rule of fish club is: never leave fish club empty-handed…..

OK, I went to fish club with about 15 females to give away from my fry tank, plus Natasha, pictured in my userpic. Love her dearly, but I can’t keep a hermaphrodite in the breeding program, and I gave her to a woman who just keeps them as pets and loves them so much.

Carolan has been returned to me, but he is moping around on top of leaves and at the bottom of the tank– he may not make it. Not sure what’s going on, or if he’s just stressed, but it worries me.

Also, a beautiful yellow-orange boy that I brought home from the auction expired rather suddenly after I’d put him in a new jar with water. Not sure what happened– he was swimming around, very active and energetic, then suddenly just kind of stopped. I’m pretty sure I put water conditioner in, but something obviously wasn’t right.

Also purchased at this auction were a pair of purple plakats and a pair of white bettas with marble genes. They’re from the same spawn as a couple of prize-winners, so I have good hopes. I’ve set up the breeding tank and put the male in with an almond leaf. Tomorrow I’ll put the girl in, in hopes of a nice, quick little spawning action.

From my own spawns, I put all the remaining fish back in the 10 gallon tank, and pulled all the smallest ones out into jars, so they can grow out a bit.

Finally, I got another daphnia culture from a friend, which I’ve now put into a gallon jug of “green water” (water from a tank cleaning) and set it aside. Theoretically, they double their population every few days, so I should have a nice steady stream of live food, provided I remember to add bacteria-laden water on a regular basis. With so many fish, dirty water is not hard to come by.

YAAAAAY!!!!

This was from Wednesday, when I was sitting at my desk, working away,
and all of a sudden I was surprised by some noises over in the
redwood trees next to my window. I looked out and saw a doe, a young
doe, and our friendly neighborhood buck, all wandering through my
redwoods and heading up to snack on the wild strawberries behind the
house.

At about 1:00 PM, I backed into a concrete post at the Shell gas station on Mt. Hermon Road. I scraped the post minimally, and scraped the hell out of my rear driver’s side fender, crumpling and scraping two panels.