DecoWood

from the fishy business department

I was at the pet store at lunch, looking into the fish food situation. Blue, who has been eating voraciously lately, is not quite out of food -- but he may be some day. He has also been very busy building little bubble nests at the top of the water, blowing little globule of air that stick to the single branch of the plastic plant that sticks out of the surface. It was my original intention to see if there was any floating plastic foliage that would amuse him a little bit more.

There wasn't.

Instead, I found a sale on a little aquarium decoration that looks like a tiny stump of wood with an assortment of weird plants growing out of it. All plastic. All very minature so that it fits in the teenie-tank.

I dropped it in around lunchtime. Snail-Bob clearly loves it -- or is simply oblivious to anything new in his environment. He's traced nearly every bit of the surface and scoped it once over.

Blue, on the other hand, is not amused. He has been cautious all afternoon, tucking himself into the corner or as far away from the new contraption as fishily-possible. Then he hovers there, tilted upwards at a twenty-or-so degree angle, and stares at it. Then he turns and stares at me for a while, probably considering what he would do if I were just a little smaller. Occasionally, I've caught him circling the plastic-wood log, flaring at it, like it's some sort of evil intruder that can be scared off.

Alas, some day (possibly tomorrow) he'll be friends again. He'll figure out that it's not an enemy -- it's another hiding spot -- and then I'll never see him again.

Silly fish.

03:54 PM on 20/01/2005 | comments (0) | trackbacks (0)

blue christmas

I took the chilly-weathered lunch break opportunity to change Blue's water. The poor little guy has been pretty quiet lately, and (even though fish don't really care about the holidays) gets to spend Christmas alone in his tank with Snail-bob.

I neglected to mention that a couple weeks ago Karin and I picked up a pair of Bettas for our apartment. While out on tour with Brett and Lenore one evening we all got it in our heads to buy out the local pet store. Three mini-tanks and about ninety dollars (total) later.... I'll let you figure out the rest.

I went out "fishin'" as it were, and came home with one bright blue betta and one bright red betta, the new inhabitants of our dual split tank. The tank, being somewhat oblong and triangular is split with a clear plastic divider down the center so the fish can see each other, but can't actually reach each other. Fire and Ice (the monikers promptly bestowed by Karin upon the fish) spent the first few mintues in their new home, exploring the inner corners of their relatively large residence. Three minutes into their arrival Fire flared at Ice. Ice ignored him for about five minutes, and eventually flared back. I don't think either fish has spent more than ten minutes not fiercely defending their little angular tub of water since their arrival.

Some day I'll tell the story about why I slightly modified the defectively designed tank so that I won't need to come home after work and fish a mangled loser out of his roomates turf again.

I suppose, at least they have company for the holidays -- like they care.

Blue has no such luck. He's tired of the antics of his snail pal, and spends most of the day watching me from the safe haven of his plastic plant. A fresh tank of water was the least I could do.

02:08 PM on 20/12/2004 | comments (0) | trackbacks (0)

fish and chips

As requsted, SnailBob and Blue. They seem to manage the weekends alone, and now that Blue is eating regularly, he doesn't seem to have such a need to pester his tankmate.

After eating some seafood -- real, grease-laden deep-fried fish and salty fries -- on Friday, movers arrived at our office with the remnants of the late Calgary office. We sorted a bit -- somehow lacking the enthusiasm due such a Friday afternoon activity -- but this morning has been an unpacking adventure. The deep work began, though, with a new desk and an assortment of new cabinets, I feel like I have my own new workspace.

Blue has yet to comment on the change.

11:11 AM on 25/10/2004 | comments (1) | trackbacks (0)

blue tha'bully

I thought the snail was dead this morning when I came to work. This was, of course, a major disappointment because (a) it's always sad to lose a pet, and (b) Lenore had requested a photo of the silly thing -- and a dead snail isn't a very good photo subject no matter how you look at it.

He wasn't dead.

I scooped him out of the bottom of the tank and let him sit in a plastic cup for a couple hours. By lunch he was merrily crawling around the edges of the cup looking for whatever it is that snails look for. Quite healthy. Quite snail-ish.

Rather than dead -- it turns out -- I think that Blue is a bit of a bully. The fish had not only been flaring at the snail, but had been pecking at him too. The snail had reacted -- and quite appropriately I might add -- by sucking up into his shell, dropping to the bottom of the tank, and playing dead. And now, since dropping the little golden invertibrate back into the tank (and feeding Blue too) I've seen some very interesting fish behaviors as the betta checks out his tank mate with a little more courage and curiosity than he had on Friday.

It's Wild Kingdom, right here in my office.

01:34 PM on 18/10/2004 | comments (0) | trackbacks (0)

fish wars

I probably shouldn't have messed with a good thing. That said, the results are still forthcoming.

I was telling Karin just yesterday how "perky" blue has become, swimming around in his little bowl, building bubble nests, exploring, hiding, eating. Throwing some extra gravel into the tank seems to have triggered some kind of pyschological fish-nirvana, making the little guy happier'n heck.

I was out walking in the chilly fall air this lunch hour and I found myself at the pet store again. My ears were a little nippy from the wind, but warming myself up among the rows of fish supplies, I noticed that they were selling snails. (Mom and Dad recently had an episode ridding their aquarium of snails, but I'm not too worried.) I bought one of course, bundling the inflated bag with three ounces of water and a little golden snail bouncing around inside, under my jacket and speed-walked back to my office.

I'll spare the sound effects, and simply write that the new invertibrate was added to the water. Initially I thought it had died from the cold, but as of twenty minutes ago he's officially made one thorough lap around the mini-quarium.

Blue isn't so enthusiastic. He's been sneaking up on the little snail -- which is roughly the same size as the fish -- and inspecting it from about an inch away before darting back to the other end of the tank. It's like a little game, and he repeats it over and over -- though mostly, I think, because his memory is probably three seconds long and he has forgotten that there's a snail in the tank by the time he gets back to the other end.

The snail doesn't seem to care, instead scooting along the plastic bowl at a snail's pace, and occasionally dropping to the bottom, resting, and making the climb back up.

So, it's a whole new ball game. (A basball metaphor in tribute to the World Series! Go Leafs!)

Perhaps, like Lenore's bunnies, they will eventually work towards becoming the best of friends -- sharing stories about life outside the big green bowl -- reminicing about times past -- and generally having a good time of it all. For now, well, it's just a weird sort of mini-universe.

03:30 PM on 15/10/2004 | comments (3) | trackbacks (0)

blue goes two

I happened to forget that Blue celebrated a milestone yesterday. But, unfortunately, after two months the best I could offer as a present was "terrain." Kristie, while working to clean up the office, coincidentally found an abandonned bag of fish gravel. Handing it off to me, I added it in wild peaks -- two giant mounds, in fact -- to Blue's aquarium. The new landscaping obviously gives him both a little more world to explore and a few more places to hide because he seems to have perked up considerably even in the last twenty-four hours.

I didn't think he'd survive two weeks. Two months? That's not too bad.

08:56 AM on 14/10/2004 | comments (0) | trackbacks (0)

one way to make my day...

... involved taking some brad-time to tune into the long-awaited internet broadcast of the teritiary phase of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy on the BBC4. Thirty minutes of completely unrelatable joy at thirty-two kilobits per second real audio... live... a new episode for the first time in twenty-five years: In which Arthur wakes up, Trillian opts out, and Marvin is stuck fast ...

I shiver. And then I return to the monotony of web design details for the remainder of the afternoon.

12:05 PM on 21/09/2004 | comments (0)

a bit of a sulk

Apparently blue is a bit of a brooder. He's healthy -- at least as far as my diagnosis abilities can derive from his otherwise active behavior -- but the poor little fish seems a little too morose and stressed to eat. That's too bad. According to a handful of Google searches, he's just pouting about his recent move, and he should pick up in a few days.

In other -- much more important news -- Karin and I are doing dinner out tonight. For some reason I seem to remember that about, well, uh, exactly a year ago, we had this really big party. Inivted a whole bunch of friends and relatives. I seem to recall that Karin wore a really nice dress, we were paraded around a little bit, and everyone kept taking our pictures. Funny how those things just sort of linger in your mind.

10:28 AM on 16/08/2004 | comments (2)

meet blue

The first step in assuming responsibility of something larger than oneself is to grasp the effort involved in menial caregiving, and purchase something within the limits of disposability. In other words, if my new fish were to die in the near future, no big loss. It would suck for the fish, but a new one costs, like, three dollars.

I bought one of those little mini-aquariums yesterday. It came with the standard assortment of plastic plants, a burst bag of green gravel, and a little jar of chemical which makes the water you and I consume everyday, safe for habitation by aquatic animals.

And then I went back to the pet store later and picked up blue. He is a male betta, officially termed Betta Splendens and popularly known as a Siamese Fighting Fish. He was living in a small plastic drinking cup, stacked neatly on the shelf with about thirty of his closest relatives -- and I'm still not sure if he likes his new digs, a spacious two litres of green-hued plastic, more or less than the plastic cup.

Some of you, the astute ones, may have already seen the webcam. No guarantees on how long that will last. Perhaps only until I'm certain he's not going to expire when I go home at night. Perhaps.

11:12 AM on 13/08/2004 | comments (0)

indulgence and beer

I was disappointed that we couldn't watch Jess last night. A consequence of work: sleep or don't bother. I'm sure the fiddle was wonderful.

Occasionally, as the city lurks behind corners one can't anticipate, there is surprise. Other times, there is the draw of indulgence, when the light beams fall across the thin carpet and it is possible to stretch out and imagine something both within and beyond that scope.

I find myself wrapping deeper into certain elements: the foci of my life are narrowing, bending inwards, and drawing frail webs of casual emergence. There are patterns, relationships, and defining moments of pure ecstatic revelation when I can align matter and energy, syneristically, into something chaotically wonderful. It seems abstract. It is abstract. There are elements of surprise around every corner, and the patterns dance like fractaline waves, their nuances offering better and bolder imaginings.

Distill creativity. Bottle it.

There are answers there that are too simple. There are other which have complexity beyond complexity.

I find a cool and refreshing pint can clear those complexities quite easily.

03:48 PM on 11/08/2004 | comments (0)

where there is...

Browsing: this morning peechie had a link to a personality test. I usually don't indulge, but I thought it was a good was to start off the crazy week after a long weekend.

You are a WRCL--Wacky Rational Constructive Leader. This makes you a golden god. People gravitate to you, and you make them feel good. You are smart, charismatic, and interesting. You may be too sensitive to others reactions, especially criticism. Your self-opinion and mood depends greatly on those around you.

You think fast and have a smart mouth, is a hoot to your friends and razorwire to your enemies. You hold a grudge like a brass ring. You crackle.

Although you have a leader's personality, you often choose not to lead, as leaders stray too far from their audience. You probably weren't very popular in high school--the joke's on them!

You may be a rock star.

Take it, and use the comments to post your results.

09:12 AM on 05/07/2004 | comments (5)

killing lobsters slowly

Brett and Lenore were over for seafood last night. It's the [plug] Save-On Foods Lobster Event, wherein we land-locked folk are able to puchase for a reasonable price the temporary companionship of a live lobster. We bought four, and cooked them in a broth of lemon and onion.

It's one of those rare events: a brutal evening when one is forced back to the primal roots of times past of killing one's own food.

Maybe that's why it was suggested (albiet mostly in jest) that we should make a little lobster snuff video. We didn't, and instead retreated to the living room to discuss politics over the muted election debate broadcast on CBC.

There's almost a metaphor there, no? Four helpless politicians being prepared for election, dropped into a boiling cauldron of twists and spices, could almost be an analogy to our dinner last night. Odd how those things connect.

01:05 PM on 16/06/2004 | comments (2)

change is good

It seems that the wind is blowing once more. It whisps through the passages of the city, between the low houses in the west, up across the industrial smaug of etched ideas, through the wandering fragments of illusion that speckle the broken sidewalks traced through grassy fields turning green in the spring rain, and then drops anxiously into the high-rise jungle where it is absorbed by the angry masses hiding their fear of what might be coming. It seem that change, for better or worse, is once again fell in the western breeze. I think I may need a jacket soon.

03:01 PM on 31/05/2004 | comments (0)

between the cracks

Organic growth meets concrete and steel between the cracks of the city.

We planted boxes of small, helpless leafy organisms on our patio -- flowers, vegetables, herbs, and fruits -- their bundled roots twisting like hundreds of slender white worms through the dark brown soil. I bought thirty litres of dirt, soft and fresh, packed in a colourful plastic bag which we hauled up the elevator and out the sliding door. We ripped in, gorging on the peat with our bare hands as we scooped clumps into pots and trays smoothing it into the controlled spaces of our design. And then, poking wells into the organic mass with probing fingers, I plunged and packed the green and leafy masses bottom first into the spaces.

And now we wait.

Growth of something in a seemingly sterile environment. A space without life beyond that which I supply -- or that which finds it's way unwelcomed into the gaps I leave in my care.

I read a story once about a man who finds himself two hundred years into the future. Humanity has all but been wiped out, and what is left doesn't dare enter the city for lingering fear of the plague that destroyed their unlucky ancenstors. The man is shocked to find that the plants -- the tropicals, tomatoes, and violets -- have sprung to eccentricity, and unchecked, have filled the spaces left by humanity's absence.

If I left tomorrow -- however that might be -- would my mint, my strawberry, or my marigold go on to spawn countless generations of ever-mutating breeds, filling those spaces in the city that I left behind? Or would they dry up, wither, and die? It makes you wonder.

06:31 PM on 22/05/2004 | comments (0)

a city

It is a place of contrasts. Large. Vast.

Imagine a fold of individuality, stacked, squared, boxed, shuffled, linked, spun, and woven into a delicate hive.

Where once, perhaps, there was simplicity, lisps of light and dark organic matter stretched in ubiquitous harmony across a field of shapes and rolling hillsides of ancient foundations, there is now marvelous complexity. It is deep and daunting, holding promises of whimpering forces steady in their shrouds of layered dreams and haunting the eclipsed spaces of gaps between the fringes of what is real and what is not.

The city is exactly what it is. An organism of human invention, alive in ways that a brain could barely percieve, hanging between intellegence and function. As it ebbs and beats it's spirit along the fringes of our perceptions, stories leak from the rubbing gashes, rips, tears, and swollen breaks that would otherwise wash gently upon organic smoothness.

It is complexity that drives further complexity.

It is the city, itself, woven tighter and tighter, with ambient froths of power and life blending into coils of ever tighter loops and whorls, spinning and churning into something greater, that breeds upon itself. And one might wonder, etched in the rough and trailing fringes of these bleeding memes, where and when we might begin to feel the interaction of it all.

09:59 PM on 21/05/2004 | comments (0)

seasonal variance

Jess mused poetic this morning on the arrival of summer, lurchingly marked by a waking frost and a bit of snow on the patchy spaces between everything. It reminded me of yet another reason for my own disposition to a new living locale: seasons.

I grew up with seasons. Four in fact. There was summer, of course, but also a definite autumn when the air got brisk and the leaves fell. Following close behind, winter made it's mark with steaming mugs of hot chocolate, wind-chill reports, and snow (oh, bless-ed snow!). And of course spring, leaves budding from the trees, the first robin pecking for worms in the lawn, and anticipation of a summer's worth of camping and hiking and reveling in wearing sandals everywhere, is a nice season, too.

Vancouver lacks seasons. Oh, I'm sure some would disagree, argue, present detailed evidence of vague changes in temperature. And I might even agree with that, adding the caveat that Vancouver seasons are just really, really subtle, the maximum temperature variation only thirty degrees celcius between winter and the peaks of summer.

It's always t-shirt weather there.

Here, as I remember the temperature swaying easily in the ninety degree spread, from minus forty-five in the deepest of January to positive something similar in the heights of summer, well, it's just more rewarding somehow. Being able to survive the vast climate variations is something amazing.

Ask me again in January, of course, but for now I'm relatively happy.

11:29 AM on 06/05/2004 | comments (0)