Cody’s blog

Silver died yesterday. I found her when I got home from the movies last night at around 10 o’clock. It was too late for a burial then, so I found a small box for her coffin and left her in the freezer overnight, and held services this morning. I buried her next to her mother, Fred, covered her grave with a stone, and said a prayer over her. Now there are three cairns in the yard for Bitsy, Fred, and Silver. My lower yard is turning into a goldfish graveyard. I keep thinking I should get some sort of markers with their names and dates on them, instead of just blank stones, but I haven’t. I like the simpleness of the stones, and I know who’s buried where… I don’t suppose anyone else but me really cares about my goldfish.

Silver was seven months old. Just a baby fish, really. She was always the smallest of the children that survived, and there seemed to be something slightly crooked about her left gill. I don’t suppose she was that healthy to begin with, and the recent heat wave was too much for her. She was only sick for a few days, so at least she didn’t linger and suffer for long. The rest of the fish all seem healthy, so I don’t think they’ve been affected. I’ll probably go ahead and treat the tank with Melafix when the new supply arrives. And go ahead and discard the old bottle—it’s past its expiration date, and possibly only made matters worse instead of better.

I’ll change some of the water today. In fact, I should do it this morning before I go to work—there’s time, since I’m not planning to do a full cleaning, just drain and refill about 1/4 of the water.

Anyway,  that was a bit sad, although I wasn’t as attached to Silver as I am to the other fishies, and certainly not as much as I was to Fred or Bitsy. I half want to just stop keeping fish, but I won’t as long as my current ones are alive. And if I can keep them healthy, they’ll be around for many years yet. It’s just so sad and frustrating, things keep going wrong and it’s really hard to maintain a healthy tank here, with the difficulties heating and cooling the room they’re in, and maintaining the electricity. Now that my big fishies are gone, I’m not as attached to the little ones. I could give them away, I suppose, but I don’t think anyone else would care about them the way I do. Which means I am more attached to them than I think! When the little ones get big, it will be nice having big fish again.

I just took a break to vacuum the tank and drain off some water. Yeesh, even though I just cleaned it three days ago, there was still an awful lot of crud under the gravel. I’ve got to make sure I clean it every week, not every other week, especially during the heat of the summer. The water’s a bit green, which is not harmful yet, but shows how quickly the tank gets dirty in the summer.  I’ll have to make sure I clean it on Monday when I get home from Vegas, no matter how tired I am.

So, on from fishy matters to more fun things! My brother and I went to the movies last night. We saw Live Free or Die Hard, the latest in the Die Hard franchise. It was lots of fun, many things blew up and crashed. Bruce Willis is still great at the snarky comments, and I liked Justin what’s-his-name as the hacker who ends up as his sidekick. The main villain was kind of boring, but his Asian kung-fu girlfriend was pretty kick-ass. All in all, a fun action flick.

Tuesday turns out to be Family Fun Day at the Hitching Post Theaters—all tickets $4.50 all day long, and you get a free large drink with a large popcorn. So tickets, popcorn, and soda totaled $13.50 for the two of us. Not a bad deal for a night out! John says Jill works Tuesday evenings these days, so Tuesday would be an ideal movie night for the two of us. We agreed to do it more often, as long as there’s something good playing at the theaters.

Work was very busy yesterday. Fortunately, I’ve got my energy back. Yay vitamins! I’m sleeping much better, and feeling better, now that I’m taking them again.

Today is my last day before my vacation. Eek! I bought D batteries yesterday so I could try out my air pump and air mattress. Filled it last night, and it worked just fine. I was going to leave the mattress filled overnight to make sure it held air, but Spot kept trying to play on it and I was worried he might poke a hole in it with his sharp, sharp claws, so I opened the valves and put it up on the couch to deflate. But I think it will be fine. So all I have to do now is pack and get ready! I don’t think I need to do any more shopping, except maybe to get some snacks for the three of us when they arrive. If I do, there will be time tomorrow to go into town before they get here.

Here are some elephants at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, taken during a day trip last summer.