Things that happened over the holidays

- I became obsessed with playing Scrabble
- I fell in love with my baby doggy all over again
- I gained like 10 pounds over holiday foods
- I made a pact to wipe the slate clean with B
- I refreshed my attitude to start the new semester off well
- I moved out of the Ravines and into CB!
- I sold a few books online and made a little income
- I discovered the West Wing, thanks to B's family
- I did a lot of cooking and baking just for fun

Incoming income!!!

I sort of pride myself for being a little bit of a savvy money maker/money saver when I need to be. I'm not really talking about budgeting or learning how to not spend on "wants" (these are things I'm trying to learn), but I'm talking about buying/selling books for school (now a hobby), rebates, finding free things to sign up for without a lot of time or hassle, using credit card reward points, MyCokeReward points (but not my Coke!), and points from survey websites (such as epoll.com, which I've been using for forever so I've accumulated a ton of points) I've basically made a good couple hundred dollars since I stopped working at Ricardo.

The income is still flowing just a little bit but I am spending it faster than I was when I was working... a good kick in the pants that I need to take advantage of working (if I go back or pick up another internship next summer) and madly save.

How does the quote go? I think it's something like "live like you're in college when you're in college so you don't have to live like you're in college when you're out of college."

I keep tracing the wrong things, coming up empty

Continuing on my last entry, I started thinking a few days after I wrote that. The question became "does he miss me the same way?" and I started to selfishly answer the questions myself. Maybe I underestimate him sometimes.

Today, one of these should finally ship today to Ann Arbor! I made a book called "The Last Six Months in Pictures" and it's taken a long time to print and ship. But he doesn't know about it yet and it should be there when we head over to his place tonight.

Oops, blogging at work! Gotta go... more later!

We added a few and renamed Clyde to Claude

More additions to B's saltwater tank!

Here's Scooter the Scooter Blennie claiming one of the rocks. He hoovers around the tank and likes to climb all the rocks, and he looks like he is smiling! But it is hard to get a good picture of him because he blends in with his surroundings.
The two Ocellaris Clown fish also known as Percula Clown fish. We named them Bonnie and Clyde (Clyde is the one on the left).
Schenectady (yes, like the city in New York), our Bangaii Cardinal fish, swimming near a frag of tan Button Polyp Coral.

Pumping Xenia Coral, also known as Waving Hand Coral, moving with the current of the water.

Our Bubble Tip Anemone, which was meant to be a friend for the clown fishies. We added him and the clown fishes to the tank yesterday and this morning, we found that Clyde had discovered the Anemone and was laying on it like a pillow. I think we need to get another Anemone for Bonnie, especially because her partner in crime has a new lover!

Green and purple button polyp coral that Bryan picked out. The algae on the rock isn't that bright, neon green either, it just looks that way in the picture.

Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming

The clownfish needs an anemone that is not an enemy :)

Couple things I forgot to mention in my last entry:
Wynton Marsalis concert
Dinner with Natalie

Went to the Plymouth Ice Sculpture show with B Saturday... here's a piggy bank, a dragon, characters from Ratatouille (Little Chef, Linguini, Chef Skinner, Anton Ego), and the last one says "Cat I love you, marry me?" :) Cute huh?

Then B and I went to Pet Connections yesterday and bought the newest addition to his aquarium (his name is Jacob... he's a Firefish Goby that's about 2" long):

Because it's bottled up inside

I've started several entries throughout the holiday season, but mostly to rant about some of the life changing events that have been taking place. I keep having to retract my train of thought to make sure I'm not constantly ranting like a mad woman - a bad habit I've recently had pointed out to me repeatedly.

Anyway, lots of exciting things are happening:
Went to the Motorcycle show at the Rock Financial Showplace
Went to Windsor with Stephanie and had a blast
BGS and my new hobby of his saltwater biocube aquarium :)
Detroit Ignition soccer game tonight
North American International Auto Show coming up
Monster Jam also coming up
Tickets to a Detroit vs. Miami game that BGS got me for Christmas

I lent my camera to my mom so I didn't have one in my entire trip to MA and NY, so I'll have to post some cool Christmas and New Years pictures later after I get them from everybody.

Stressed backwards is desserts

This week has been quite extreme.

I woke up today and actually wondered to myself how I will physically handle these next couple weeks. I feel like I never sleep well or feel like I still haven't slept for days after I wake. My body weight has been madly fluctuating, which I know is not good.

Senator Levin visited our facility today, and we've been spending the last few days prepping for the tour and what not. Everything worked out well, but as usual, it was incredibly hectic. I find that I've lately had more interaction with some of the other exec's that I don't usually talk to, including Dean. He wandered over to me when everyone was sort of waiting for the Senator to ask how things were going and what not.

Manvinder is here this week, so it's been a little bit weird being around him. I don't know why, but it really really bothers me that he's sitting at Claude's old desk. I keep looking over at his reflection in the window the way Claude would check to see if I'm late (hehehe). And completely by accident, I came around the corner talking loudly to Kristi (we always talk over walls and talk to each other as we walk around) about a meeting I had with JVA, and I said, "Well that was a waste of my time!" Oops.

I had an accounting exam at the end of last week that I got back this week. I flipped out because my recorded exam grade on Blackboard was not very good, but then I received an email from my professor saying that I accidentally skipped a page and she would let me finish it before she recorded my final grade. On the downside, I don't think that one page makes a big enough difference to bring my grade up to what is ideal, but it definitely made me feel better that I hadn't actually done so bad.

Last year, part of what helped me keep less stressed through school was all my dorky hobbies, which I've picked back up.I consolidated my aquariums (you thought I was going to say something about loans or money when I said the word "consolidated" didn't you? haha). It's still in the process, but I haven't been making enough time to maintain all three. So I thought my baby guppies should be big enough to join the rest of the fish, but a few minutes later, I found half a body floating around without a head. Ewww. If you're going to eat each other, at least finish each other off so I don't see any leftovers.

I also have gotten back into scrapbooking, and naturally, I have also gotten back into my habit of spending a ridiculous amount of money on scrapbook embellishments. Even though embellishments are usually no more than $3 or $4 unless you get something real fancy, I always think about what I need/don't have while I scrapbook and make frequent trips to scrapbook stores to buy paper and stickers or what not.

To come in the next week-ish:
Celebrating my birthday with my hunny :)
My week long trip to San Antonio
GVSU with BGS to visit friends

Painting and aquariums

I'm trying to catch up on a few things I haven't written about recently. Maybe just in pictures? D and I finally took down the 25, set it back up again, took down the 40, set up the 45, and set the 40 up over here.

We also decided, spur-of-the-moment to paint the main room in D's apartment and rearrange the furniture, which now looks amazing!

My eventful week in pictures

My first fish auction

My first fish auction was also the first auction I'd ever been to.

It was quite serious for the buyers and sellers that showed up. Everyone had very concerned, serious looks on their faces when they inspected the bags of fish and scribbled down the reference number for each fish. You know only the serious aquatic fanatics show up at these things, so you also know that the sellers and buyers really know what they're doing.

I bought a whole bunch of plants. Over a dozen small bundles of Saggitaria and a good few handfuls of Baby's Breath. The Saggitaria was dangled in a web of thick roots, so when I got home, I replanted the roots just to see what might happen.

Oh I also bought a python syphon for $11 (usually, this is nearly $60 at a store). It is 20' long and has attachments for a sink, so now I can avoid carrying buckets back and forth.

D's made a spur of the moment purchase - a real nice 45 long, gallon aquarium and stand for less than half the price of buying it brand new. The condition is great and looks like it has never really been used, although the stand is a little bit beaten up.

This means I get D's old 40 tall! I can't wait to set it up and start my aqua gardening!

But alas, we promised each other that neither of us would mess with the take down or re-build of our aquariums until school is out.

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww

My pregnant fish died of abdominal dropsy. And my orange platy with pop-eye and abdominal dropsy also died. Seriously though, abdominal dropsy is absolutely the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my life - to the point that I have been physically sick and uncomfortable for the rest of the evening. With pop-eye and abdominal dropsy, my platy's eyes popped out (each about 1/8th of an inch) and the fish's body blew up until all of the scales were sticking out line a pine cone seeds and actually started popping out.

Being so grossed out by the first two fish, I picked out one of my guppies that has recently become deformed and decided to end it's life in the toilet for fear of having to find it floating dead in my tank tomorrow morning with other fish eating away at it.

And PQ (which stands for Prom Queen... the other blue Pseudotropheous is PK for Prom King) has some type of fungal infection which I have to take care of since D is out of town. We went through hell Tuesday morning trying to catch her to put her into what Martha calls the "hospital" (it's just a mesh floating separator that hangs on the inside of the tank) so PK would stop harassing her.

The only good news is that the Ick on my cardinals is cured, but even that was a pain to have to see and research.

I am so grossed out that I am short-term considering stopping my fish hobby.

Oh PS...

D is in Atlanta with the Lightning team and getting drunk with the mentors at the hotel (and BBQing off the balcony unless hotel management made them stop), and I am extremely jealous I did not get to go!

I counted over 30!

At about 9:00pm, Dusan came over and we put the "Security" sweater on Romeo (he was not happy wearing the sweater - hahaha). He instantly went from a hyper mode to a slow mode. If you know my puppy, you know it takes a lot to calm him down, so I don't think he was too comfortable wearing the sweater. My mom and D kept joking around saying that Security was "slacking off" - hehehe

My large, pregnant guppy that I mentioned in the last entry had babies yesterday :) It must have happened right after 9pm because I came home around 8:45pm and thoroughly looked through my tank (I check every day for new babies or dead fish or whatever). When the three of us finished teasing the pup, D had to use our internet to do some studying, and I went back to syphon my tank and found the babies!

First, it started out to be like 2 or 3 hiding in the corner. But I soon discovered more and more hidden in the plants and corners of my tank. Altogether including my original 4 baby platys, 2 baby guppies (1 was the one I watched be born), 1 teenage guppy which is now released into the tank, and the 5 teenage platys that I got from Petco, I have a total of 35 baby/teenage fish in my tank. That's 23 babies that were born last night!

*Sigh* I'm such a dork about my hobbies, I can't help but geek about these things.

Some aqua updates

Last Friday was my pup's one year birthday! He had some ice cream, we bought him a black sweater that says "Security" on it, and took him to a bunch of pet stores and other places to make his day eventful. It never ceases to amaze me how small he is, especially when he sits down next to me or sleeps in my lap. So tiny!

I bought a few new plants and fish for my tanks - another Rotalla, two Micro Sword plants for my betta tank (these plants need a lot of light!), and a Bacopa plant nicknamed the "minty" plant because it smells like mint.
But wow, some of the magazine pictures I found are amazing! I mean look at some of these I found online:
I decided I'm switching from Neon Tetras to Cardinal Tetras. They look almost identical, but the red on Neon Tetras are only on half of the bodies while Cardinal Tetras have the red stripe all the way across their bodies. Also, the colors on Cardinal Tetras are a little bit bright. Most importantly, Cardinal Tetras are more "durable" even though they are more sensitive to the water type. So I currently have 5 Neon Tetra and I bought 2 Cardinal Tetras.
Meanwhile, when I start a new tank (or start over with an older tank), I want to have a school of Rummy Nose Tetra. Bernie said that as long as I have a school of fish, Rummy Nose will generally stick together with the Neon and Cardinal tetra, so I bought 1 Rummy Nose (that was all he could catch anyway).
Oh I almost forgot!
The other day when I went to Petco with D, there was a tank full of baby Red Wag Platys, some just born and some a few months old. It turns out that my little floater of baby guppies are not all baby guppies! The ones with a more orange-ish tint and black tails are Red Wag Platy babies! So I have two different kinds of babies!

I guess someone donated the bunch of baby Platys to Petco, and when I asked about them, they gave me 5 of them to adopt. They are sooo cute!

So I bought a very pregnant, full grown guppy from Bernie. My pregnant guppies aren't even full grown - they're like half the size of a full grown guppy. I figured I have 7 babies (used to have 10 but 1 died and I somehow lost 2 in the transfer of tanks because they're so tiny!) If I'm going to raise babies, I might as well raise a bunch more at a time and sell them or give them as presents.

Anyway, I hope I can make the time and money to keep indulging in this hobby when school gets out.

Tag - you're it!

Student government elections are so ridiculously intense!

I talked to Muhi who is running for Maize and Blue president (which is what I voted for), and some other random guy for Unity Slate sort of followed me after Muhi left to talk to me. The politics in this are unbelievable! I've heard some real crazy stories about what people on each side will do to win a vote or put the other party to shame. It's sad that politics are just this way but I'm pretty happy that there are such dedicated students out there vouching for things I didn't realize the student body had any power over.

On a separate note, the weather this week has been incredible so far (I'm sure I don't have to convince you - if you're in the area, you know what I mean).

Yesterday, carpooled with Steven and studied for Econ with him. It gave me an excuse to be late enough for work that I didn't have to go. I don't usually play hooky but I have to say, it was really nice to get out of class and have the rest of the day under my control instead of booking it to Ricardo. And Steven and I got to geek about our aquariums (his 60 gallon looks amazing and I am jealous!)

Speaking of which, I've decided that at the end of the semster, I'm going to do 1 of 2 things:
- Completely scrap my 25 gallon and start a saltwater tank since I don't have the money to buy a BioCube or
- Move my 25 gallon's gravel into a new 20 gallon, temporarily move what are left of my fish to my 5.5 gallon, and start over with the 25 gallon picking and choosing which of my plants and fish I want in that aquarium.

For sure, I need a centerpiece fish. Either a dwarf cichlid or an angel fish. I'd really like a discus fish but those might be too high maintenance for me to handle.

Undeveloped thoughts

Spent the weekend nights with D, Tom, and Alandra and got to see Ava yesterday!

And spent the majority of this past Saturday doing a real thorough cleanup of my room, the bathroom, and the laundry room. Unfortunately while my bed sheets were in the laundry, Romeo puked on my bed twice (bleh) so I have to figure out what else I can do to clean it off.

Worked on my tanks a little bit too. I'm thinking when the semester is over, I'm going to sell my unwanted fish and unwanted plants back to Choice, move my wanted fish and wanted plants to my other tank, scrap the entire tank's setup, and start a saltwater tank. It'd be prime to buy a BioCube because those are more for saltwater tanks, but unfortunately, I don't have that kind of money to burn :(

I recently started a new scrapbook for myself. It'll be a compilation of major events in my life of 2007. I've never completed a scrapbook for myself before, I don't think. But I've made many for other people. What I really need to do is get a big scrapbooking bag with tons of pockets so I can organize the ridiculously large amount of equipment I have, but again with the money! I can't believe how expensive those bags are!

Anyway, Catherine moved in with Gary because her apartment lease is up and they're getting married in August anyway. She gave me this awesome crockpot because Gary already has one. It has a deep lid that I suspect you can flip upside down to use as a tray or to heat something else, and the pot itself sits on this heating thingie that you can also use as a skillet! For the first time, I can say I successfully made chili for the first time this past week. The recipe called for garlic, which messed it up a little, but now I know not to use it. The best thing, too, is that I bought these new Reynold's slow cooker liners that came with a little booklet of recipes. When I was done with the chili, all I had to do was throw out the liner and wipe down the moisture that collected on the lid.

I have a couple other things but I'm getting kinda drowsy...

Sluggishness mess

While catching myself in the middle of a sentence today, I realized there are some things I hate to admit about myself because I don't like the way they will sound out loud.

I don't want to make excuses for myself, but lately, I think I have become lazier than I was before because I'm a lot less motivated and interested. I'm starting to realize I don't really like working at Ricardo anymore. I'm starting to think kind of badly about a lot of people I work with, which annoys me. I feel like I can never catch up with the endless amounts of "intern" work (to put it nicely) everyone has for me. But simply, I'm starting to feel bored with nothing new lately or no one new, and I'm starting to daydream more than I actually pay attention to reality.

Itching to find out if I received any of the out-of-state summer internships I applied for, I'm also nervous to maybe have to find out I was not accepted and will have to spend another summer doing what I've been doing. In general, I think I'm ready to be somewhere new, do something new, see something new, and meet new people. Does this have something to do with the fact that I've been in Novi/Northville almost my entire life? I feel like I have never really established myself here the way I would like, and I still don't think I'm doing a good job of it during my first year at UMD. I guess I just want a new and different chance to try - or do I just want a different situation to confirm I really do have my priorities all wrong?

The other night, I took Gabe to Jay's new school to introduce the two of them since Gabe is becoming more interested in martial arts. Er I should say... UFC (which is not martial arts). Jay had me go out on the floor and train with everybody (me in my jeans and T-shirt too). Usually when I do this, I just need to refresh my memory before I'm caught up to where I left off. However, last night, I came to a complete brain freeze and still could not complete forms and routine training practices we used to do after working through the motions 3 or more times. I don't know why, but this bothers me a lot realizing that one of the things I've been most passionate about, I didn't even stick to.

Although I have always, always thought I should strive to grow up and be a completely independent and business-driven woman, I recently had a strange, opposite thought: I think I could easily be happy just tending to my various hobbies and taking care of a house/family. Not to offend anyone, but up until now, I would have never allowed myself to be this before being that independent and business-driven woman (especially after seeing what my mom went through in her marriage - I've seen the importance of establishing a "me" before anything else). In fact I could even say I sort of looked down on girls who don't have a personal ambition before wanting to be a wife and mother.

I had a conversation with Natalie at dinner earlier today about someone who purely wants to marry her boyfriend right out of college. She's somehow convinced she'll be making a ridiculously high salary being a family psychiatrist or at least be able to spend the money he'll have (I guess you have to know these two people to understand the irony of this). Needless to say, their relationship is an absolute mess too.

While questioning why long-term satisfaction doesn't motivate me as much as it should, I wonder why I talk gun-ho about becoming successful. But right now, I'm lazier than ever. Is it me who needs the reality check?

With a sense of poise and rationality

Went to the Pistons vs. Bulls game a few weeks ago (where everyone boo'ed every time Ben touched the ball) - hands down, the loudest game I've ever been to! We won by a 2 pointer Webber shot in the last 2.2 seconds:

When I really think about not going anywhere for spring break, it's okay because I tell myselfI'll just wait until I've graduated and have a job. Then I will have to money to really enjoy myself, take a good two weeks without having to worry about coming back to school, I'll be old enough to go to Vegas to gamble and drink if I want to, I'll be able to spend a little extra money to upgrade to a nicer hotel... you know. Stuff like that. I ended up working most of the week but I did get to do 3 really cool things together since I had more time:

1. Ricardo hosted the annual Casino Night last Saturday. Since our company is small enough to have these little outings, they invited all the employees plus one guest to this banquet hall where there was catered food, a chocolate fountain with fruits and pastries for dessert, casino dealers, and a deejay for music. And yes, all those chips sitting in front of me are mine! Of the 9 people at out table, I wiped out most of them :) Until the last hand where I matched the last person left all in because I realized my funny money was not enough to win the grand prize.And to keep it going, D had some buddies and me over for euchre and more poker:
2. D's Aunt Martha wanted to get rid of one of her aquariums. He and I spend literally a day and a half taking apart, taking down, cleaning, and re-setting up the 40 gallon aquarium at his apartment. I am jealous - it has such gorgeous fish! They are mostly cichlids - two orange, one dark yellow, and two blue striped - but he also has a plecost*mos catfish (D says it's bad luck to spell out the whole name), a clown loach, an upside down fish that actually swims upside down, and a fish called a Daffodil, like the flower. We bought this great looking castle with lots of places for the fish to hide in because they are very territorial. It was hard though because they swim fast. Oh and there are 4 giant zebra danios as mediators but really, they just steal all the food.
3. I got my hair highlighted. I haven't done that in a few years since it's pretty pricey! But I also needed a haircut bad so I got it all done at once.After a month and a half of this on going thing, things with my mom are finally getting better. We talked about random things for like an hour yesterday while playing with the puppy. She was asking "how are things at work" and "how are things at school". Turns out, she was talking to a friend at work and decided she might want to start a blog or something so I was showing her one of the blogs I made about the pup.

Back tracking a little bit, my female guppies have been having baby guppy fry (did I already mention that?) About 3 or 4 weeks ago, I actually sat down to watch my fish while I was on the phone with D and my 2 pregnant guppies looked really fat so I separated them into the floating trap tank. I called it - I told him on the phone "This one looks so pregnant, I bet you if I sit here for 5 minutes, it will burst" and sure enough, within half an hour, one of my pregnant guppies had 2 fry! Unfortunately, the other pregnant guppy ate the second guppy less than a minute after it was born, and I got to see that too (blehh).

Tonight, Justin came over and me, Tim, and Justin were watching my pregnant fish again. I moved them back to my floating trap tank since they are the largest I have seen since the last time I watched them have babies. It was pretty much a replay of the last time I saw the births. We watched for about half an hour and when I thought I saw two tiny eyes poking out, Tim whipped out the camcorder and we watched in awe. To make a long story short, we watched and taped for 8 minutes and in the end, we concluded that what came out of the pregnant guppy was either a deformed and dead baby or it was a really really large, strange looking piece of poo. I really do think it's a dead baby though, but we have it all on tape either way.