NO!!! Fishy!!!

Remember the little girl from Finding Nemo who has a problem with killing fish before they even get out of the bag from the store? Darla is her name. I totally felt like her today! I didn't go buy a fish from the store or anything and have it in that bag, but I definitely almost killed my mom's pet fish, Spike, this afternoon.

My Mom left a note for me to change the water in his fish bowl, which involves scooping Spike out of the water in a blue plastic cup and letting him hang out there while his new water is cleaned by the chemical drops I put in there. So, after a minute of him resisting the process of getting into the cup, I finally catch him, clean out the old bowl, use the faucet from the bath tub to fill the bowl because his "bowl" is really a 2 foot tall jar that can't fit under a regular sink, add the drops of cleaner that need to do their work for 30 minutes, pull the jar out of the tub and leave it sitting on the edge of the bath. I left Spike alone to swirl in the blue plastic cup, next to the jar, on the edge of the tub. The EDGE of the tub. As I walked away I thought to myself, "Should I take some of the water out of the cup? It's filled to the top, surely he wouldn't be a moron and decide to jump out." Famous last words.

I came back two hours later...

I walked into the bathroom, the blue cup slowly came into view, first I could just see the top, he wasn't there, I figured he was hangin' out at the bottom, as I finally stood right above the cup able to see into the whole thing, he wasn't there! My gaze ventured into the tub... "AH!!! FISHY!!!" I had no idea how long he had been out of the water. He looked like he was in an air-locked vacuum, gasping for air (water) desperately all to no avail! I quickly took the blue cup and poured water on him and tried to get him into the cup so I could get him in his jar, but I guess he assumed I was the enemy because it took me several tries before he would cooperate. I dumped him in the jar and he enthusiastically swam in circles all the way to the bottom of the jar. Where he just laid on his side. Seeming to exert extra effort to breathe. For the next hour. I just sat there staring, hoping he wouldn't float to the top, belly up. He stared back, gasping. As we stared at each other I wondered if he was blaming me for his predicament, I was indeed the one who left the cup full of water by the edge. I told him it was his own lame-ass idea to jump out of the cup in the first place.

Eight hours later, he's still alive. And yes, I talk to my fish. :)

Ha HA! I was right!

So I was at my brother's house this past weekend for my niece's first birthday party, which was super neat, the cake was AH-mazing! But that's not the point of this story. Saturday night, which was really cold, in the 30's or so, I went outside to get my suitcase from my car and I just happened to look up at the sky and notice this giant ring around the moon. I had only seen one or two others before this one in my life, and the difference between this one and the others is that this one was huge. Huge! The other ones I had seen were closer to the moon, not this one. My camera lens didn't do it justice, but this ring was not close to the moon at all and took up a good portion of the sky. After staring at it for a good while I got all scientifically curious as to why a ring like that would form around the moon. My guess was that the air in the atmosphere was so cold that there was an ice layer, or something to that effect, which was acting like a filter to the moon's light. And whadduya know. I looked it up this evening off of an educational site and here is their reasoning behind the aforementioned moon ring:

"The ring around the Moon is caused by the refraction of Moonlight (which of course is reflected sunlight) from ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. The shape of the ice crystals results in a focusing of the light into a ring."

Bet ya didn't know that, did ya? Ya learn something new every day.

God made a pretty this evening!

There was a very pretty sunset this evening! My photo editor kind of fudged the colors a little bit, but there were the most vibrant reds and oranges against an awesome blue sky. I can't decided whether the clouds look like fire or ocean. Either way they look like brush strokes from a Monet painting.

I like the fog

It makes for awesome pictures! Too bad I didn't have time to go around photographing all day. I just had time to catch a few pictures of the farm in the morning.

It's nerve-racking to drive through though. Yet strangely awesome! It was kind of strange for me today as I was driving because there was no one on the highway, the road was the only thing I could see, and the signs and other objects along the way would emerge from the mist only seconds before I came upon them. It seemed kind of post-apocalyptic or something. I'm glad I'd driven that road a hundred times otherwise I would have had a hard time of knowing where I was. The fog was so thick I couldn't tell what my surroundings were, buildings, signs and the like.

Here's Sophie blending in with the grass among the fog.

I hope the bolts don't come undone...

Image © BSG Photography

The space shuttle is SO neat! Space Shuttle Endeavour is making a trip back to Florida from California. How is it getting there? It's attached to the top of a 747, that's how. I don't check the news much so this would have completely passed by me, if not for my brother informing me ( he works for the people whose base it landed at). It's staying in Ft. Worth tonight and leaving for Florida Thursday or Friday, weather pending. I found some pictures of it landing on a random photographer's site. Check 'em out! I think it's really cool. I can't fathom how much energy/wind speed/engine power/"Holy Mary's" it must take to get this duo off the ground. Yikes. Like the title says, I hope the bolt guy did his job and strapped that thing on good.

Nacho chips, dearest?

So, here is yet another post about my beloved. Babe, my dachshund, that is. My dad let her attack the nacho cheese chip bag the other night when only crumbs were left. Anyway, I think the best part is where her head is in the bag, yet you can hear her crunching away on chips. Yum!

Babe! Ew!

So, I have two animal posts in a row. The aforementioned "angry dachshund" (aka, Babe) turned into super-pleased-with-herself-dachshund the other night. She caught a rat. A big one. Maybe not New York City sized, but pretty darn big. She was so happy she caught it that she refused to let go of it. For ten minutes. My dad and I kept telling her to let it go, he tried tugging on it, he even tried cutting off her air supply in an attempt to make her let go but that didn't work. He ended up having to use force by prying her jaws apart and the sad little rat fell to the ground. And Babe had a hairball. Gross.

Here's a link to a video on YouTube if you wish to view the little incident.