Psychic Departure Bunny Lounge

Weekend wrap-up

Busy weekend. The weather sucked on Friday - 90 degrees with terribly high humidity. I had many errands to run but I have no AC in the car so I limited the errands to those most necessary (and close). First stop was Borders, where I got a yummy iced tea and looked over the DVDs. They didn't have either Sirens or Persuasion but I did find Duran Duran's Sing Blue Silver and Arena/Making of Arena were finally out on DVD. After all these years! I decided that I needed SBS. I also procured a cheap and cheesy horror film for $3.99. I hope it's good. I also picked up the HP3 soundtrack just for the "Double Trouble" track. It was cheap. Cheaper than the new Cowboy Junkies, which I wanted, too, but did not buy.

Then it was off to Petco to get another fish tank and some new fish* and then to Safeway for ingredients to make marshmallows and a cherry tart for a birthday party. The party (on Saturday) was for sweetie's friend's wife (it was her birthday). As a surprise, her husband had arranged for her mother and sisters to fly in from England. She knew about her mother coming but not her sisters, so she was ecstatic when she saw them (I gather).

Dennis and Susan have come to our parties and Susan had mentioned a few times that she thought we'd get along with their neighbors because of the whole Gorey/horror/kitsch etc. thing she saw going on at our house. Well, we finally met them (Kari, Chris & their 8.5 month old, Madchen) and I must say that Susan was pretty right on. I figured Kari was the one immediately, as she had Bettie Page hair. What I didn't expect was what she pointed out: we both had on black crop pants and pink tops - and not only that, but I had on mary janes and Kari said she would have been wearing mjs too if the buckle hadn't broken when they were getting ready for the party. Her daughter was also dressed in the same manner - it was very funny. I was glad I hadn't gotten my bangs cut in the last two weeks (although I'd decided that the bangs are coming back) or it would have been a bit eerie.

But while I think Kari and Chris would be great people to know, I feel like it's a weird situation. They live about 40 minutes away and have a small child - just how does one go about pursuing a friendship with another couple (or at least another person)? If we just leave it up to seeing them at the next party, it could be years. But since we just met them and don't really know if we'd get along, it seems too soon to really do anything. Ah well. I guess I'll just forget about it for now.

Oh, on the way to the party (they have a very cool house), we came across a road named Loth Lorien. I had to laugh.

Yesterday, I actually got out into the garden and ripped up all the grass that had taken over during cicada season. The grass had overtaken the roses and was full of mosquitos and daddy long legs. Ick. But it's all cleared out and mostly mulched. I also cut down the honeysuckle bush because it was supposed to be native but is, in fact, not native to this area and a weed. I'll consider another bush for that area eventually, I guess. Sweetie took the weed whacker to the area behind the fence and cut down all those nasty weeds and vines that keep creeping into my fence bed. Yay! The weed vines keep crawling up the trellises. It's very annoying. The jessamine and clematis are supposed to be doing that. Speaking of the clematis, I don't know what happened to the multi blue. It's just gone - never bloomed, I guess. The blue and white balloon flowers are doing really well, though. Very vigorous growth. The cilantro is not doing well, though, and the mallow are still weeny. Too weeny to put in the ground but maybe I'll do that next weekend anyway. Unfortunately, I exacerbated my usual bad back muscle doing all that gardening. Sigh.

* See, I had 5 fish: male and female Siamese Fighting Fish/Betta and three albino cory cats. When the bettas seemed to be having an ick problem, I promptly dosed them with the correct medication (just noticed last night that it also has salt) and a bit of salt. However, what I didn't know was cory cats cannot deal with salt at all, so they suffered and despite water changes and correct ph, hardness, 0 nitrites, 0 nitrates and no ammonia, they continued to get sicker. One finally died. Knowing that the salt in the aquarium was gone and the water was safe, I purchased three more albinos and two panda cory cats and bought a 3 gal for the male betta (so I could remove the divider in the 10 gal and let the cats swim free). Well, the male betta is as happy as a clam in his new home although I think he's a bit lonely. He's used to flaring at the female (who is gravid - majorly - but they just never actually mate when I put them together. I just don't know what to do with her - what does one do when a female is full of eggs but doesn't mate?).

Anyway, the new cats looked good in the store and seemed happy in their new environment. 24 hours later, though, I found one of the pandas dead. Not only dead but decayed and falling apart as if he'd been dead a long time (it was less than 12 hours) and his entire belly area was full of blood. Uh-oh. I hadn't quarantined the fish (not having a separate tank for that). I got my money back but I felt incredibly guilty about killing the panda (they're so cute) until I did more research and realized that the pandas were sick. Really sick. The symptoms point exactly to haemorrhagic septicaemia (apparantly, cory cats are known carriers of this disease). The other panda is showing signs of the same thing although he (she?) is quite lively. I'm dosing the whole tank with the recommended medicine and that's about all I can do.

In the middle of the all this, I decided to change the water because if I had to keep the carbon out of the filter, I figured I'd better start with a fresh tank to keep ammonia levels down. I didn't realize it at the time, but changing the water stimulated the new corys into spawning. Whee. I now have eggs in the breeding net (I bought it in case the bettas had any success, not that I plan on breeding fish and/or I needed to quarantine a fish quickly) and it seems like the medicine I am using to nurse the tank is exactly the medicine to use to keep the eggs healthy. I wonder if they'll hatch? And if so, if some will survive. We shall see.

( 10:08 FH | silly hooha. )