Doug vs. the interweb

September 11th, 2009 3:49 PM

NEVAR FORGET

Wonderful! I was on a roll, throwing down entries like it was 1999 again. Everything seemed to be stabilizing! And then fwoof, job's gone!

The last couple months have been weird indeed. Vacillating between unemployment and working from home. Mostly the latter, lately, which was extremely fortunate, though it has emphasized the need to have a separate room for work; otherwise it all globs together in an unpleasant mass, where it's hard to differentiate being at work and being at home, and distractions abound. I've been on edge not only because of the tension and uncertainty about how things are going to continue, but also because I know I'm not being anywhere near as productive as I could be, and end up having to work into the night to make up discrepancies.

The aquarium has had several gigantic changes. For one, I got a much larger tank, 29 gallons. Jeff was headed back to Pittsburgh and already had a lot of tanks and creatures to deal with, so I got a deal I could not refuse. With the increased space, I have been able to make some really elaborate rock formations, with significant portions above the water -- thus, I could have more than just underwater folks. This was already somewhat necessitated by having the salamanders reaching their adult phase and requiring oxygen. I hadn't even realized they were just in their nymph form, since their bodies were fully formed except for the gills.

Also, I had been introducing some rather unpleasant interspecies confrontations; I caught a tiny catfish, and he seemed to like to eat catfish tails. This culminated in him eating a good portion of one of the salamanders. I always upset the nice balance by bringing in something that just eats everything. Luckily, providing more land area gave the other salamander room to keep out of the fish's way.

Then, I caught Gawain, a fairly large green frog. The focus became frogs! Of course, this meant that whenever the tadpoles grew into frogs, I had to let them go fairly soon, or else he would just eat them right up. Frogs really have no allegiances. Once I had more frogs in there, I would occasionally see a frog lunge at another frog's knee because he moved it funny. When I throw a bunch of crickets in there, it's complete chaos: frogs jumping at crickets, frogs jumping at frogs who are jumping at crickets, frogs jumping at the same cricket and making comical bonks..

At one point I managed to catch a rather tiny (relatively!) large mouth bass. He was hardly much bigger than the large minnow, but he quickly became a terror (definitely could have seen that coming). Quite a few of the other minnows went missing, and attack marks appeared on the large minnow, so he was definitely kicked out, though it was really neat while it lasted. It's fascinating seeing what is normally such a big fish swimming about in tinyland. He just had too much crazy energy for that tank; even when I had him in a bucket with a lid on it to bring him back to the pond, he kept bonking on the lid -- launching himself straight out of the water.

Another adventure was when the larger ladyfrog disappeared from the tank. This was the night before I sent the bass packing, and was part of the reason for my displeasure with the brute. Although it seemed highly improbable, his voracious attitude and limitless propensity for violence, he was definitely suspect #1 in the ladyfrog's disappearance. I dismantled the whole tank, exposing all the little nooks, just to be sure, but she was not in there. I saw a suspicious little bit hanging off Gawain's mouth, but it turned out not to be a toe, but that still did not prove his innocence.

Then, while I was cleaning the tank, since I had it all dismantled, I came back to find Gawain perched up on the upper lid of the tank, staring at me in defiance. Now, the tank does have a cover, and a lid that can flip up, but I had the lid flipped all the way up, enabling him to perform his acrobatics. And lately, I had taken to propping up the lid slightly so that the air would circulate better, keeping the glass from fogging up. It seemed now far more likely that the ladyfrog simply managed a way to escape!

Of course, the night prior, Sabrina had suggested that the frogs were conspiring to take over the apartment, and I brazenly declared that if they could get out of the tank, they could have the apartment. Now, I had to start turning over everything in the apartment to see if she actually had gotten out. However, after checking the closet, corners, shoes, couch, tv unit, and such, I figured I had checked enough, because it was unlikely she would've gotten much further than that if she had gotten out. The case was still open, but I had no more leads.

The next night, I was on the phone with my mom when one of the cats started showing undue interest in our ottoman. I halted the conversation immediately, and pushed aside some junk that was on the other side of the ottoman -- and sonofabitch, a frog butt was poking out from under the thing.

She was extremely pale from the lack of water (and I can imagine sitting on carpet would only exacerbate that), but after going back in the tank and being all cricketed up, she seemed fine. I now keep the lid closed and secured.

ANYWAY NOW I AM GOING TO NEW MEXICO