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!

Honesty, disconnection, and selfishness

Everyone always always asks "how is school?" and "how is work going for ya?" and such. I mean I ask this too but often because I don't know what to ask or how to engage in conversation by starting off asking something "how are you" (which would generate a typical response and I'd be left having to ask another question or reply to a "good, how are you?" kind of thing). The best thing would be to remember past conversations and remember what he or she said and then ask about that instead.

Lately, I've starting answer "how is school?" and "how is work?" honestly.

"Well school isn't going too well... I just haven't been doing too well," and of course I get the: "Well grades aren't as important as they seem... what really matters is ______," and I protest because that what I used to think until I started really looking into internship, co-op, business programs, and grad school requirements. Then you know it matters. "And work isn't going too well either... I applied to some out-of-state summer internship programs but haven't heard back from anyone so I guess I'll be at Ricardo this summer," and I get "It's okay, you're still young."

I mean not that I wanted to be dishonest before, it's just that to a random acquaintance or old friend, I don't think I should dump emotional baggage on him or her. I suppose it is kind of sad that it has come to this - that I feel like I haven't had someone to really vent to and discuss things with that I take the opportunity to talk to just about anyone who is willing to ask how I am. Boy do I think I often make them sorry they walked into such an awkward conversation.

I've recently been really bothered by the fact that me, my mom, and Tim are sooo disconnected. I mean, ultimately, we don't really look out for each other, and I think for all three of us, we secretly know that it would be easier to not have to deal with the other two. We have to make an effort to things together and spend holidays together, and even then, it is depressing that there are only three of us to exchange presents or cook food for. I thought about last Christmas when my mom repeatedly told us that we should not exchange presents and waste time/money because she felt that we all knew what the true meaning of Christmas was and that was all that mattered. We all half-heartedly bought a few things for each other anyway, but it really upsets me she does not feel that we should take advantage of one of the easiest opportunities to do something nice for each other, since we rarely even do for birthdays.

I hate to admit that sometimes I think about how things could be if I had a dad and we had a family that supports each other. I was telling D about my dad a few days ago, about how intelligent he is and I was telling D about something my dad had taught me or said to me (or something) when I was little. I started talking about what he probably does now and where he probably is.

I also admitted to D that because I know my dad currently makes a ridiculous amount of money, I selfishly wish that one day when I decide to find him, sit down with him at lunch, and let him know about how his behavior has affected me, he will apologize and change. We will have a decent friendship and I will meet his new wife (and possibly my half siblings, if I have any) and he will use his richness to pay for the rest of my tuition or my car or something.

I know, it's so selfish.

When the sun goes down

I think the main reason why I'm so eager to win an internship is because I feel like I have been missing out. Almost everyone I know has moved away to college or has met a new group of friends or something. I'm not saying I have to move away to school (I'm actually pretty happy with UM-D) but I'm itching to move on to something big and exciting - a new job or a new home or new people...

It looks like I'm going to be spending another summer at Ricardo though, and I'm not too happy about it. It's starting to feel like I've hit a plateau there.

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.