I&#039ve got a pile of things to ramble about to update you all about my week. We&#039ll start with the fish.

When I got Squeak the 2-gal tank, it was so he could swim around and be happy and have lots of room. The problem with a 2-gal tank versus the 1/2-gal bowl I had for him is that it&#039s a lot harder to clean a 2-gal tank on a regular basis than the 1/2-gal bowl. I couldn&#039t get a plecostomus because they have decent-sized fins and Squeak would just kill it. I opted for a snail figuring that Squeak couldn&#039t beat up on it because of the shell. Thus along came Cthulu. Squeak was annoyed at the intruder and stalked the snail for quite some time, but seemed to be otherwise leaving him alone. Then just last week, I saw Squeak ram into Cthulu&#039s side, and worried for Cthulu&#039s safety and well-being, I decided to move him to the 1/2-gal bowl away from Squeak. That&#039s what I did yesterday after getting home from work, transferring them both to the bowl while I did a thorough washing of the 2-gal tank to get rid of the algae which had been accumulating. Once that was done, I put Squeak back into the 2-gal tank, leaving Cthulu in the 1/2-gal bowl where he began wandering around and climbing on everything, all happy to be alone. Squeak, however, for as much as he picked on that poor snail, obviously misses him and is moping. He floats around the top of the tank with his nose in the air (sometimes literally–bettas can breathe from the air) and hasn&#039t been swimming around like a nutcase like he normally does. Insane fish!

The next update is that I went out last night with Deb C. to Buffalo Wild Wings here in the Haute. She is kinda addicted to the trivia game that you play on little consoles there, and she figured it&#039d be fun for us both to play since Wednesdays are sci fi questions night and I&#039m a sci fi amateur which is more than you can say for most people. Deb knows all the ins and outs of the game which is cool &#039cause I had no clue what was going on some of the time. We did eventually get in the live chat option that is on the players, and there were a couple guys on who kept asking for single women and we kept telling them that we were either taken or too old for them. I had a lot of fun though my coat and scarf now smell like cigarette smoke because we were sitting in the bar area. We played pretty much from 6:30 to 10:00, and I won twice and came in second a couple times. I even got two all-time high scores which will be up until someone else bumps them off. Sweet!

When Deb and I left BW3, it was snowing which brings me to my third update: the six inches of snow out there. When we left the bar, there were about two inches of snow, but when I got up this morning, there were six inches everywhere including on the Mom-mobile. I have a long-handled scraper which has a brush on the back, so it didn&#039t take too long to swipe off the snow which clung to all the windows and was mounded up on the windshield. My pant cuffs are still wet though from having to walk around in all that snow heaped up around my van. I didn&#039t have any trouble getting here to work. Thank you front-wheel drive! It&#039s insanely windy here in the Haute (imagine that), so there will be a lot of drifting today which will cause problems. Luckily, there aren&#039t many areas where there is ice under the snow, so that&#039s a bonus. I just hope it stays really cold so the snow doesn&#039t melt a little then freeze back up. I hate snow.

So those are my updates. The only other things I have to say are that this is my last day at the library, I have a ton of wrapping/crafting to do in the next two days, and Damien is going to come over and stay the night at our place tonight. That&#039s about it. If I think of anything else, I&#039ll let you know.

Posted: December 23, 2004 at uh, half past eight.