Things Fishy
I only realised last night when I was showing off the fish tank to some friends that there is basically no algae left in the tank – no bad, nasty, take-over-the-tank algae anyway, which is really all I was worried about. So this is highly exciting but makes me realise that I have been neglecting my fish a little. However, on my way home also yesterday, I went via Coburg. I bought some more of the feathery plant – Condamine or something? – because there was nothing of it left in our tank. I also bought a bristlenose catfish… and two little silver angels… It took J quite a long time to notice them in the qt, because they are the same colour as the mollies. They cost me $14 (all up); I could have got them for $3.95 each, but the tank that had that price on them only had fish that looked red around the gills and even some around the base of the fins, so I thought it best to go for the more expensive and more of a chance of surivival.
I have spent a large part of today watching Ajax (a large part of my fish-tank-watching time, anyway, which is not necessarily a large part of the actual day) …which reminds me, I noticed a stowaway on the new plants yesterday but by the time I got to pulling it out of the water, he had transferred himself to a different plant. So I was quite worried about a snail plague (which J thought might mean buying clown loaches). However, this morning when I was doing some planting and pruning, I found the stowaway snail! I have put him in the qt, in memory of the other, rather more bewildering pop-up snail who got washed out when we moved house. Anyway, Ajax: he has been remarkably active today and very fun to watch. Even J agreed.
Mars Attacks
Of course I’ve seen this before; I’m watching it right now to prepare for Film Studies. Very funny. I like it. Students might not get all the funny bits, though, since I’m sure most/all won’t have seen all that many old scifi movies such as this movie is based on. I’m sure there are lots of sly gags that I don’t get, because I haven’t seen the right movie.
Which reminds me: I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Independence Day, but I don’t remember ever noticing the start-up screen message and sound when Jeff Goldblum’s character, David, opens his laptop: “Good morning, Dave.” HA HA HA. I had to stop myself from laughing out loud in class since I didn’t think the kids would think it was that funny.
Books I am in the middle of
There’s quite a few. Mostly history books that I have begun and got bored of/waylaid from. It’s guilt-making – which is a bit silly in itself, really, because why do I insist on feeling beholden to a book, for goodness’ sake? But here’s a sample:
History of London Bridge – I think I got up to about the last chapter of this and then got waylaid. I should go back and just finish it off, but her style got on my nerves a bit.
History of London – Peter Ackroyd’s bio of the place – is not really designed to be read from cover to cover, I think. The chapters are essentially vignettes, and I should read them as such. I should actually read them…
Something about Emma and Enid, the last two ‘English’ queens (ie before the Norman Conquest; actually Enid is the last, since Emma is French herself…). This was a really full-on bio, and I found it quite hard to read and fairly dry. I should try it again now that I’m actually teaching the period and have a better, if still rudimentary, knowledge of it.
Chaos – James someone wrote it (Gleick, J says; I pronounce it Glike, he Gleek…) – I started it mainly to see how my attempt at reading real science would go, albeit something written for a fairly lay audience. After a while, poorly, it turns out. It was interesting, but…
1066: the year of the three battles. Begun the first time I was teaching this period. A bit too much military stuff for me; I just don’t have the head for that sort of info… I find it hard enough visualising which way north is, let alone anything else.
And there are a few more books on the shelf, throwing accusatory stares my way every time I start a new book rather than finishing them off…
Cecilia Dart-Thornton
I read The Ill-Made Mute over the holidays. I had heard a whole heap of reports, most of them negative bar one. I got a bit annoyed with her style – she tries too hard to be poetic, twisting her sentences around way too much and using words I have never heard before and could only guess at from the context. However, I did enjoy the plot and the characters a bit, and I was so frustrated when I finished it I nearly shrieked (truly; it has a very clever ending). The one person I heard a good report from, though, I thankfully saw at church that night and she has today given me the next two books (thanks, Krick), so that’s good… except that tomorrow I have Parent/Teacher interviews so I start at 2pm (until 9pm!), and I really ought to do some work rather than just reading which I will be very tempted to do.
Fish and all
Haven’t written here in a while. I am thinking of renaming Ajax, or at least giving him a sobriquet: Action Snail. He has been zooming around quite a bit lately, which has been rather exciting, particularly when Mum was here – she thought he was pretty cool.
There are no new babies left. I didn’t realise this for a number of days, and then I looked carefully and realised there were none left! Notwithstanding being moderately cranky when they were born, I am a bit sad at them having been et. Oh well.
The lily pad plant is going nuts, which is great, and the chain plant is also going well. I do think I need to buy some new plants, though, since they are the only two plants I have left, which is a bit sad. I am also thinking about new fishies… maybe slightly bigger ones, to give a bit more presence to the tank. I’m considering silver dollars.
Dead fish
He died a couple of hours after my last post. I moved him into the little isolation tank to get him away from Bitch Fish, and I rather suspect that the move probably contributed to his death. Poor little thing… he didn’t have a very happy little life…
Fish, after a week away
Yes, have been away for a week… the fish survived… but. I was on the ‘phone just now, and I noticed that the very-non-alpha male, which has been in the QT for quite a while now since he was getting bullied by the alpha male in the main tank, is looking very sad. He’s got black happening on his sail fin – I don’t know whether this is a problem or not – as well as swimming very listlessly. Worse yet, Bitch Fish is having the occasional go at him… he looks like he is missing a few scales in places. He is swimming sometimes vertically, sometimes with only one fin although there is nothing noticeably wrong with the other, and often just going with the flow. I don’t know what to do with him, because I am sure that the alpha male would have just as much of a go at him as She does.
On a brighter note, the main tank is looking fairly good. We still have some algae issues, climbing all over my plants, which is annoying me a lot. I need to go and buy some more plants, I think… the chain sword thing is going well, although it hasn’t grown as much while we were away as we had anticipated.
Ajax is, of course, very well.
Dirty Dozen
When I was at the video store the other, I saw The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission. It had Lee Marvin, and Ernest Borgnine, and I thought that it might not be too bad. How wrong I was. It’s appaling; I’m watching it at the moment. Even Lee is wooden and stilted. Very sad. I’m blaming the script, personally; it’s very close to the original, in some ways, but with no panache; quite different in others, but really bad.
Books
Well.
I read and finished Garth Nix’s Mister Monday, and I’m excited because there will be 6 more in this series and that’s really, really cool. I am really looking forward to reading the rest.
Then, I had to choose something to read next. I had yet to find Rise of Endymion, about which I was very cranky; so I started The Gutenberg Revolution, by John Mann, which J bought me ages ago. I’ve read the introduction. Then I got restless, so I started The Ill-Made Mute by Cecilia Dart-Thornton. Interesting: a number of people have told me it’s crap, then another friend told me she really enjoyed it… so it really will be interesting to see what I think of it. I’ve read the first chapter and a half. And then…I went into the city tonight with Kate because she was involved in a reading night with her CAE class. So, I thought I’d check out Readers’ Feast in the off-chance that they might have it; no. So I bought Ilium, also by Simmons, instead to make me feel better. Then Kate had a brilliant idea: go to the CAE library! And because I have a library card with Yarra-Melbourne libraries, I can borrow there. And they did have it! Hurrah! So excited.
So I’m reading that.
No more quarantine tank
That’s right, no more quarantine tank. Instead, it has turned into a molly hatchery.
Bitch Fish, Queen Hera, lulled me into a false sense of security: she didn’t have any fry in ages, and she doesn’t look all that fat, so maybe she isn’t preganant… then I wake up this morning, and what do I discover? About 10 fry, and a very skinny mother. Grrr.
J doesn’t see what the problem is.
The main tank is threatening to get algae happening again; it’s on the sword plant a bit, and some other bits… I did some rather brutal-looking aquascaping the other day, in that I chopped out all the bits that had no leaves on them. As a consequence we look like we’ve lost a fair few of the plants, but actually they were bits that just looked rubbishy anyway.
I only have four rainbows left; this is a bit sad. All of the harlequins and Colombian tetras are still going, though, as is Ajax of course. So… I’m thinking I need more plants… ones that might actually survive, this time. And I’m thinking about new fish, too. Serpaes, perhaps. Or silver dollars.
Randomly Yours, Alex 