Goings On

Since mid January I’ve been working part-time, as a contract legal assistant in Golden. It’s great. I really enjoy estate planning, it’s helpful! Seriously, law mostly feels like civilized arguing, but estate planning is helpful to the people who seek it out. OK, I’ll stop kvelling.

What else is going on….. Our betta fish, Mr. Rocky Balbetta, has been adopted out after eating my oldest cherry shrimp, one of the younger shrimps is now pregnant (although it’s her first clutch and she drops an egg or two every time she shifts her gestational sack to poo). We also added two spiky dwarf snails to the aquarium, who ate all the algae off the windows in 3 days! Now we have to add algae tablets to the tank once a week to keep them well fed.

Two weeks ago was Ben’s lab ski retreat. I did the meal planning and took the two first-years who organized the trip to Costco. They seemed to think it was going to be a bachannal, it wasn’t. Some of the older students (Ben’s age and post-docs) brought their Magic The Gathering cards, and someone else brought National Parks Monopoly. It was what we all needed, two days of great skiing and evenings of eating too much and hanging out in the hot tub.

Last week, Ben and I went to a preconception class at the Boulder Community Hospital. It made us realize that 1) BCH is awesome and it would be a great place to birth a baby, 2) we’re not financially or really even emotionally ready to have a baby, and 3) I need to loose 10-15% of my body weight to have as healthy a pregnancy as I can. That might take a while. The good news is that I can indulge my selfish emotions and spending habits by continuing to ski, buying new skis, and exercising on them in the meantime. So the only thing that’s changed since the Affordable Healthcare Act has upgraded my insurance to include dental and maternity care is that I’m going to the dentist next week and I’m experimenting with starting pre-natal vitamins and trying to find one that doesn’t block me up (apparently high doses of good-for-you-stuff makes me have sad tummy). Please, don’t ask about anything until Ben graduates (December at the earliest).

This past weekend I fell in love with a pair of demo skis. I’ve been using Becca’s old skis, but they’re not right for me, so I rented a pair of regular old intermediate skis and HATED them. Seriously, I don’t know how to ski on those, it was like skiing on 2x4s, so I went back to the rental shop and told them as much, after chit-chatting with the technician he asked what I usually ski on (busted old hand-me-down 156 Nordica Dobermann skis with some seriously heavy racer bindings). He gave me last year’s Volkl Kenja skis, 149, and ultralight Marker bindings, and I fell in love with them. They’re some of the lightest skis in the all-mountain category, and they felt GREAT, but I’m not sold yet. So, Thursday, Lisa and I are going up for a Women’s demo day, up at Loveland, to try out my dream skis and some cheaper ones too. Becca and her dad, Ed, have sourced my dream skis for $425, un-mounted, and I’ve heard rumors of financial assistance when it comes to bindings…. That’s still a lot of money compared to the free ones I was on, but those no longer suit me.

Also this past weekend was  a big fundraiser dinner for Aish Kodesh, the local modern orthodox congregation. I got a free ticket by being one of the board members for the local Jewish CSA (Tuv Ha’aretz), since we donated a large share with a fruit share to their congregation (the original idea was that it could be used for kiddishes but they decided to auction it off, whatever), so they gave us a ticket to the gala as a thank you. It ended up being one of the highest valued ticket items, and one of the most bid on too. Ben was able to go as a representative of our Young Adult Minyan for only $36, and we entered the iPod Touch raffle and big on a pair of earrings (and won!), so we didn’t feel like complete free-loaders. It was fun and we actually knew a lot of people there.

Finally, this week my boss in Golden is out of town (thus the Thursday ski trip), so I’m working about an hour a day from home for her. It’s nice to have a mini vacation! I get to blog, catch up with my TiVo, give the aquarium a through cleaning, and I’m going to experiment with making granola tomorrow and elaborate challah braids later this week.

So there you go, great voyeurs of the internets, you should all be caught up on the past month’s major goings on now.

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Poor Little Fishes

Cherry Shrimp (x5 magnification), Image via Wikipedia

Right after my last post about my new fish, they got sick. Covered in ick sick. Poor little guys. Ick is basically aquatic lice. No fun at all for the fishes, but the shrimps got all plump and happy from eating the parasites in the water. They BOTH shed during treatment (something they supposedly wouldn’t do if they were sick or felt threatened).

I started treating them with Nox-Ich, as recommended my my local fish store: treat for 12 days by adding 2 drops per 5 gallon every other day, given right after a 50% water change, add a pinch of sea salt and a healthy squirt of Stress-Zyme, and remove the carbon from the filter system before starting treatment (or the carbon with just filter out all the medicine). It worked!

With all those sick fish, I only lost one of my rasboras, the one absolutely COVERED in ick spots, sometime on Sunday. That brought the school count down to only 5, which is too few too school. I was afraid that they would start to stress, so yesterday I bought 5 more (up to 10 total) an two baby cherry shrimp. The shrimp don’t seem to mind the medicine at all, although I’ve read that the full dose can kill them.

The ick must have hitched a rid on some old plastic plants I had laying around and added to the tank about 4 days before the ick outbreak. Stupid old plants and water parasites that can survive outside of water for YEARS. Oh well. I’ll keep treating the tank, with all the new friends I added last night, for another 4 days (2 treatments), just incase any of the new fish are carrying parasites too. Then I’ll have to buy a pair of baby stockings and put a leg over my filter intake so that my shrimps can breed! Baby shrimp! I’m so excited!

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I’m still here!

I’ve adopted some new fishies for my 5 gallon tank, they are TINY and fun to watch. They don’t bother Rocky Balbetta or their two little cherry shrimp friends. This photo shows them bigger than real life, mine are only 16-18mm long!

My two cherry shrimp (the male looks like this, the female is all red and is a more filled out under her tail) are about 2 cm from nose to tail.

My betta, Rocky Balbetta (named after Rocky, obviously), is a while/pearl/pale pink fish with black eyes. I can’t seem to find a good online photo of someone else’s fish and I’m too warm in my blankie and want to get off the sofa and photograph my own fish :P

Anyway, other than babysitting a few times per week, fish watching and cleaning the tank 2x week (I’m trying to encourage the shrimpsto breed -should take about a month- by keeping the tank sparklingly clean) have been keeping me busy. Oh, and my normal unemployed addition to Sims 2. I have the University add-on and would really like to get the pets one and some of the Ikea furniture add-ons as well.

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