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Sunday, July 6th, 2008
(comment on this)
chiller
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4:37p
I am so hung over I ought to be able to register it as a disability.
Supper last night was good, silly fun - featuring, among great piles of sashimi and buckets of sake, Sapporo's famous "sushi pizza"[1], - and as usual everyone piled back to my place afterwards and legendary drinking was, also as usual, cruelly interrupted by dawn. Ugh, dawn. Although at that point I still felt great. This morning the empty bottle check revealed:
1 large bottle vanilla vodka
1 bottle creme de cassis
1 bottle triple sec
1 bottle bourbon
Yea soda water bottles
- and a huge pile of limes.
Still, and somewhat heroically, I have managed to walk to the garden centre and back (this was intended to be a bracing stroll in soft weather, and then the bloody sun came out and by the time I was too close to my destination to reasonably turn back, it had gone from a "bit of fresh air and stretch my legs, hurrah, hurroo", to "oh dear god let this end: the light, the light!"[2]); cleaned my pond filter (clarity readings now demand a longer piece of dowelling, which is frankly marvellous news); set up an additional colony of daphnia, and done my washing. You can post my medal to me now, kthcpls.
In an effort to somewhat assuage the concern expressed last night that no, during the course of the last year I have not flirted with anyone, canoodled with anyone or kissed anyone at all, not even slightly, or a bit, not even half, not even drunk, (gasp etc[3]), I am proudly announcing today that I am in the middle of a raging love affair with Tubtrugs.
 No, not an elljay user of that name, but the brightly coloured, flexible plastic buckets with handles. Is there ANY task that is not rendered more easy and colourful by the addition of a tubtrug? Watering plants! Creating daphnia colonies! Cleaning the pond! Moving compost about! Damn, they're good for everything. I think I have about eight now, of various sizes, including a gigantic black one hauled back from Wickes, that I use to condition water for my various fish (I leave it filled constantly, which means that any time I want 75 litres of clean, dechlorinated water at an ambient temperature, it's right there).
Be still, my beating heart.
If someone could just bring me a blanket and a cup of hot chocolate and some biscuits, that would be great, so.
[1] This is not a pizza at all, but it is pizza shaped. It is also one of the best things you can put in your mouth.
[2] Physics tells us that light has weight. What is interesting is that a really good hangover makes it possible to detect this, as its unbearable mass slowly crushes your skull and spine.
[3] Planting a big comedy smacker on someone of the sort you'd do right in the middle of a cat's tummy doesn't count.
current mood:  sore
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(comment on this)
dfwtx
[ alisoleil ]
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12:49a
Has anyone had to sell a home?
Just buying my house was a hassle alone, but now I am finally getting somed nerve to deal with selling it. It is a "handyman's dream" now- thanks to my ex's "remodeling" job! I still owe on it with no equity really, and no plans to fix it up first before selling. I know someone who might possibly buy it but they only have about half the cash I am looking for. What steps do I need to take to actually sell it then? Do I need a realtor or just call the mortgage company? This is all a big stomach ache just thinking about it. I called HomeVestors awhile back hoping they would buy the house and be done with it but no such luck. There are a couple more people I can talk to about selling it to too, but I dont know the next steps after that. Any help would be greatly appreciated....
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(4 comments | comment on this) Saturday, July 5th, 2008
chiller
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6:14p
you carried me with you all the way
Today has been so packed and wonderful! After the garden place this morning with C&P, I nipped up to the fish shop and bought two dear little tropical chaps, who combine the qualities of being reasonably hardy, very pretty, and friendly to other fish.
Of course, as soon as the fish man put the bag in my hands, I became so excited that I promptly forgot what they are called, so if anyone knows, do please fill me in. They're about an inch long, completely translucent, pale pink, with small fins made of glass, and you can see all their tiny pink insides. They have a pearlescent blue/pink sheen as they swim. They may be some sort of Tetra.
Dear god, I am useless.
As they're the first two fish in the tank and may well croak, I have not named them.
Then I got back, put them in their bag in the tank to acclimatise, faffed about with the outdoor fish for a while, then went to the caf, then came back and did all my watering, then finished decorating a garden bench (the arms are painted a darker shade of purplish blue and then the light blue is dry-brushed over them to pick up the pattern):
Before (oooh, yuck!):
After (ooo! Wow!):
And now I'm off out to dinner.
current mood: happy
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(1 comment | comment on this)
(comment on this)
chiller
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12:40p
the pursuit of perfection
C&P and I went to a vast trade garden supply place this morning - spent about 3 hours and about £500 quid between us, worth every penny. When we were paying, C said "it's all together", and the woman at the till had overheard us talking about our separate gardens and different colour schemes, and said "So you have separate gardens ... but you garden together?" and there was a really sweet little moment where we all looked at one another and grinned and then said "Yes." AWW. Neighbourlove!
My NBF, the gigantic Interpet P4 filter, is making my outside fish very happy chaps. They frolic constantly in its stream in a really joyous fishly way I've never seen before. I cleaned it yester-eve (which I will have to do at least daily for about a month, I reckon, to get the water perfect), and a ton of emerald algae came out of it. I poured it straight on my courgettes (waste not, want not) and took visibility measurements and a bunch of water quality tests, because clear water isn't necessarily healthy water, but everything was fine, and I have good mineral readings for koi, which tempts me to get some men in to dig a proper big fuck-off pond. (*nishikigoi lust*) But that's a project for another year. The tests showed that I had an inch more clarity than I had the previous evening.[1]
I did the same this morning - cleaned the filter and tested everything - and have gained six inches' visibility overnight. This thing's working. Fast.
[1] Clarity is being tested by dint of poking a bit of dowelling with a small blob of white paint on the end of it into the barrel. When I can no longer see the blob of white paint, I make a mark on the dowelling.
current mood: pleased
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(5 comments | comment on this)
dfwtx
[ iwakuralain16 ]
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6:10a
Kittens up for adoption! - Webpage!
Yes, it is me again. LOL
I actually was able to take recent picture of the kittens that I have up for adoption. Also have a couple of videos of them playing outside. They are indoor/outdoor right now. We bring them in at night because they have been wandering near the street because of the bugs under the street light.
All five are currently available. There are three boys and two girls. One of the boy kittens is black and the rest are gray. I have had others back out so they are all ready to find new homes. ^_^ I will try one or two other things before next weekend to try to find them homes. If all else fails, I am going to try to find someone that lives in NRH to surrender them to the city pound. I have heard alot of good things about that one in particular and I know rescue groups do regularly visit it and they do not put alot of animals to sleep. That is what I have heard though... the Keller pound is extremely small and I know they won't last.
The kittens are about 6 weeks old now. Maybe 7.
Click here to view the web page I made for them.
Please let me know if you are or anyone else you know would like to adopt a kitten. ^_^ Thanks!
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(comment on this) Friday, July 4th, 2008
(5 comments | comment on this)
mischifthefool
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1:54p
Doh!
Install new video card - Check
Install drivers for video card - Check
Run Wow with all settings at full - Check
Hear loud popping noise - Check
Smell smoke - check
Guess I fried my home PC....gotta love it
current mood:  sad
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(1 comment | comment on this)
elf044
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10:11a
Your result for The Commonly Confused Words Test... Advanced
You have an extremely good understanding of beginner, intermediate, and advanced level commonly confused English words, getting at least 75% of each of these three levels' questions correct. This is an exceptional score. Remember, these are commonly confused English words, which means most people don't use them properly. You got an extremely respectable score.
Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it!
For the complete Answer Key, visit my blog: http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/.
Take The Commonly Confused Words Test at HelloQuizzy
Not as bad as it could have been. :)
current mood:  amused
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(1 comment | comment on this)
(comment on this)
chiller
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2:03p
Jesus, people come out with some eyestretching comments, sometimes. I just had a new guy tell me that the term "theme tune" was new to him and he had only ever heard that sort of thing referred to as "theme song".
When I pointed out that it can't be a "theme song" unless someone is singing it, and that wordless themes are therefore called "theme tunes" or "theme music", he looked at me as if I'd just laid an egg.
current mood: bored
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(2 comments | comment on this)
chiller
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11:59a
I am quietly gripped by the series "Tribal Wives" on BBC2, the premise of which is that a British woman of some degree of dissatisfaction with her life joins a tribe (various) and does her best to fit in with them for a period.
Initially I thought it was going to be the worst sort of exploitation TV - you know - sulky 25-year-old dumped in with a load of very different people so we can vicariously experience her culture shock and horror at their primitive ways &c as she tries to cope without her iPod (because, let's face it, that's what Channel 4 would have done). Instead it's well done and fascinating, the tribes genuinely adopt their visitor and are astonishingly kind to them, and this week's was amazing.
A youngish woman (late 20s? Early 30s?) who had had problems with alcohol abuse and who had the self-esteem issues that tend to go with it, went to live with the Afra people in Ethiopia. They're a strict Muslim tribe, and during the course of the programme we basically found out, bit by bit, that the women essentially live as what we might define as slave labour, are circumcised very young, and beaten regularly by their husbands once they leave their family homes. Yet, as their guest pointed out with utter bafflement while weeping about the hardships the women had to endure: "they are so happy". In the course of her stay with these women (really, the men hardly featured at all, unlike some other tribes where men and women mingled with gay abandon), the Brit woman rediscovered what it is to care about herself, and ... I dono, gained a sense of proportion. But not, as one might have expected, in the "when I go home I will be jolly glad I don't have to do this any more" way.
I'm not, of course, suggesting that the route to happiness is slavery and circumcision. Yet the fact that the two conditions are not incompatible is deeply thought provoking.
The happiness seemed to stem from the sense of community and mutual support the Afra (and other featured tribes) share, and the fact that at the core of their lives is a network of infallible, genuine kindness, which seems to render the cruelty and hardship they encounter... powerless, meaningless.
I have found all these programmes very interesting, but I literally cannot stop thinking about that last one.
current mood: contemplative
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(10 comments | comment on this)
chiller
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10:13a
Isn't the advert for the Nintendo DS Light, where they all go on a family holiday and all anyone does is play with their DS, just about the saddest thing in the world?
***
For anyone who likes keeping fish, you can buy live daphnia here, for what appears to be a reasonable price. Obv haven't actually received them yet, but if they are indeed live on arrival, I will report back.
Daphnia are filter feeders who like green water. It so happens that I have a surfeit of quite green water in my pond, so in addition to fitting it with a dirty great Interpet P4 filter[1], I'm stocking it with a colony of daphnia. Fish eat daphnia with great enthusiasm, so to protect them from their inevitable fate, I have constructed
A FIENDISH DEVICE!!!11onety!
Yes.
Well, I think it's pretty fiendish. Obv we want the moving water and algae particles to get in with the daphnia. But we don't want the fish getting in there. Or the young daphnia getting out. So I took an old lampshade, removed the fabric so I was just left with the rigid wire frame, covered it with a very sheer stocking, attached a floatation device to the top of it, and when the little guys arrive, I will have a floating, permeable daphnia hatchery in the pond, ensuring live food at all times. Am quite pleased with this.
[1] This thing is my NBF and I can't stop dicking around with it. It is submersible, has a motor on it like a bloody speedboat - you can actually use it as a fountain as well as a filter - and aerates the water as it filters, providing you leave the top of it exposed to the air. I daresay I will have to clean the filter daily for the first month, but after that it should be plain sailing. The fish love playing in the moving water.
current mood: pleased
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(25 comments | comment on this) Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
dfwtx
[ agingdragqueen ]
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9:46p
Where is the closest low cost neutering place to Grapevine? All I know of is the place in Denton.
There's a kitty that's been recently abandoned in my apartment complex (They call him Moo-moo). The story is that he knocked up the girl kitty they also owned and they dumped him because they thought he ate the kittens. What really seemed to happen is they let both him and her be outdoor kitties, she probably had them in some bushes somewhere where they are invariably dead by now since he's been homeless for a few weeks now :(
If anyone wants to take him in, he's a beautiful long-haired tuxedo-colored guy, probably between a 1-2 years, sweetest thing ever- he let me spend an hour taking out his fur lumps and stickers. I already have three myself, otherwise the boyfriend would love to have him :( If any of you are interested, I'm happy to upload some pics tomorrow, you know you want him! :)
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