Fookers

My apologies to everyone who received spam from my Hotmail account today - someone hacked into my e-mail account and cheerfully went through my address book.

Grrr.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Dudes. My store is closing. How's that for a kick in the ass? Yes, sometime in June, Knitting Arts will close it's doors for good. Jan, the best yarn store boss in the world, will be focusing on her design business and spending more time with her family. I'll be living in a box under the highway 17/280 interchange knitting with Red Heart.

Needless to say there's been a mad scramble to scoop up yarn to tide me over until I find a new LYS. We shall not mention the fact that are at least 4 other fantastic yarn stores within 15 miles of my home, one of which I can walk to. I'm taking my justification where I can these days, true or false.

Colinette Jitterbug in the colorways "Kingfisher" and "Gauguin".

And finally, here we have fish tank inhabitant #602. To say I've been having problems with this tank is a mild understatement.

A Pseudomugil signifer, also known as a Pacific Blue Eye. No, I didn't take this picture, I stole it off the innernets. I think mine is a girl but she's been decidedly mum on the subject. These little fishies are from the East coast of Australia. I figured if they could fly all the way from Australia to California they should be able to handle the Tank Of Death. Maybe.

Upgrade

Remember when this was a knitting blog? No, I don't either ...

Friday I was sitting at my desk at the House of Torture contemplating my fish now that they had finally appeared from behind the filter. Although they seemed to have suffered no ill effects from the failed attempt by the Gourami Hit Team to send them all to the big toilet bowl in the sky, they still weren't acting very "fishy." Arnold, the male guppy, wasn't chasing the females at ALL. If you know anything about male guppies, this meant that either Arnold needed to move to San Francisco and stick a rainbow flag on his fin or he was dead. Neither seemed to be the case. Leslie was hiding in the anachris plant and Sally wasn't doing much of anything.

I mentally reviewed what could possibly be wrong. Decor - had I made a fishy faux pas in gravel choice? Was off white no longer chic? Food? Was the freaking $9.00 jar of food I'd bought not palatable enough? Filtration? Were there too many bubbles coming out of the filter, causing an especially strong current? Did guppies like a high flow rate or a low? I spent a productive 15 minutes scouring the innernets for THAT answer. There was NO definitive answer.

And then it came to me. What was needed was ...

A bigger tank!

Of course! The gang wanted an upgrade. And let me tell you, we're living large now. Five, count 'em, five gallons of space for a little fishy fun and frolic!

In the picture above is Mollie who is actually a dwarf Platy (haha, little fish humor) swimming around, having the time of her life. I got her Friday night to add a little color to the tank because frankly, Leslie and Sally are not what you'd call babes. They're both your usual bland female guppies. I am very pleased with the new tank. It came with a power filter with ADJUSTABLE flow rate, a light that scares the hell out of Arnold every time I turn it on or off (seriously, I have *no* idea what's wrong with that fish) and fits quite nicely on my desk.

The fish and I, we are happy.