Before I escape for the weekend I thought I should mention Blue. You recall, right? The little bettafish swimming around his little green aquarium on the shelf in my office. For those still wondering, yes, he's alive and well. Eating. Munching. Hiding out behind his fake stump for long hours and generally enjoying a peaceful existence.

It's his birthday tomorrow -- or whatever you might call the day marking a one year anniversary of me going to the pet store to rescue him from a little plastic cup on a noisy shelf. One year ago (tomorrow) I brought him back to the office and wondered if he'd survive the weekend.

We celebrated humbly. I cleaned the water in his bowl and gave him an extra helping of dehydrated blood worms. Snail-Bob made an appearance from his usual lurk at the back of the tank, and Blue swam around him for a few minutes until we all got bored.

All-in-all... well... Survival is good. I guess if I can keep a fish alive for a year, maybe it's time to graduate to something larger.

August 12, 2005 after 3PM | fish , work | maybe more»

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.

January 20, 2005 after 3PM | fish , work | maybe more»

meetings of stuff

Today is the day of the many meetings. I have three specific locations to attend within the span of nine hours this afternoon. For some, this would seem trivial. For I, who is seeking the concept of less-meetings, it is not trivial.

eyes wide shut

I was practicing typing with my eyes shut last night. I was awake, but I was trying to enter a zen-like oneness with the computer and... well, actually I just thought it was pretty cool that I could type about fifty words a minute with eyes shut and only make an occasional mistake. Of course, all the source material needs to come out of your brain, so it wouldn't work for data entry or anything of the like, but....

breaking up is hard to do

Or easy if you are ABC. Have you noticed how many television stations are exclusively digital feeds all of a sudden. If you have a regular old co-ax coming into your set, but still see the picture go all boxy and pixelly once in a while, it means the station is on a digital feed. And if you start to see little artifacts and pixelation during quick movements or transitions, it means they're using digital source and they're probably being cheap with their compression. Karin was trying to watch Exteme Home Makeover last night, but the image was stubornly breaking up into wonky little colour mosaics. Suck.

calendar dudes

Now's the time. We picked up two calendars yesterday for 75% off the retail value. That meant we spent less than nine dollars.

fishing in the dark

I'm not sure I mentioned it before, but Karin and I have got two fish at home now. Including Blue at my office, we have a total of three Bettas in our lives. Karin named the two newbies Fire and Ice. (I think I've explained this...) They've been alive for a little over a month now, so I think they'll survive for the moment, especially now that I've learned how to feed them. The trick, since they are in a divided tank and can see each other, is to feed them separately. If you put food in both halves at the same time, they both ignore the food in their own tank and try to eat the food floating on the opposite side, splashing and thrashing, and ultimately knocking down most of the pellets to the bottom rocks where they sit and rot. I've discovered, however, that by feeding them separately no such problem exists: feed Ice, and Fire goes nuts while Ice casually eats his food. Wait three seconds, then feed Fire wherein Ice goes crazy while Fire casually eats his food. Repeat as necessary.

January 17, 2005 after 9AM | fish , life , weird | maybe more»

I think my news years resolution should be to work on my enunciation. Heck, I'm a writer not a speaker -- but things being as they are, you know, self-improvement and the drive to better and brighter futures, I think it's something I should work on.

For example, this morning...

This morning I wandered over to Tim Hortons for a cup of coffee, a semi-regular morning ritual. Sometimes I drink the office brew. Sometimes I brew my own. Occasionally, and mostly rarely, I stop at Starbucks and try one of their blends. But about once or maybe twice a week I cross the road to Timmy's and get an extra-caffienated cup. This morning was such a morning.... and being as the Tim's across the way is one of the busiest in Edmonton, regularly lined up out the door, a progressive, no-nonsense ordering system is understood by those who frequent. The line-up moves quickly as one is to step to the next available grumpy old woman working the register, state one's order, pay, and step to the right to receive the purchased goods. Somewhere in that procedure the order is translated from me to the cashier and the cashier to the pourer, ultimately resulting in a cup of coffee less than thirty seconds after ordering.

I usually take my coffee black with one sugar.

I stepped to the counter this morning, said in (perhaps) a not-so-clear mumble: "Large coffee, one sugar."

"One forty." The cashier grumbled and I paid.

But then, as I was dutifully stepping to the right, she turned and said to the pourer (and I heard her clearly and distinctly, though it took a few moments to register) : "Large, four sugars."

I hestiated. Blinked. Laughed a little private laugh, thinking who the heck would order a coffee with four sugars? And I took the cup and walked away.

Sitting at my desk this morning, one very cold walk later, I sipped the brew. It was a little on the sweet side.

Maybe I need to make the new years resolution to be a little more reactive to my environment. That would help, too.

December 20, 2004 after 3PM | fish , weird | maybe more»

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.

December 20, 2004 after 2PM | fish , weather | maybe more»

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.

October 25, 2004 after 11AM | fish , food | maybe more»

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.

October 18, 2004 after 1PM | fish , work | maybe more»

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.

October 15, 2004 after 3PM | fish , life | maybe more»

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.

October 14, 2004 after 8AM | fish , weird | maybe more»

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.

August 16, 2004 after 10AM | fish , food | maybe more»

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.

August 13, 2004 after 11AM | fish , meta | maybe more»

I was pondering fish the other day. Aquariums to be exact. In a way, I'm trying to accomplish something that resembles an aquarium: literally AND figuratively.

This is beyond the fact that I've been pondering how, exactly, I might go about fitting a small aqarium in my office, setting it up atop the file cabinet, and making sure the little buggers don't die of issues regarding food or cleanliness. This revolves around self contained universes.

Aquariums, watery glass cubes supporting life, are (apart from a minor input of food and heat) minature ecosystems that are distinct from the world in which they exist. A box of life-supporting liquid, maintained to the precision where tiny animals otherwise doomed to non-existence, are allowed to exist in relative peace. Fiction is something like that. In fiction, writing, we build micro-universes -- minute ecosystems -- that are maintained by a tiny input of energy and creativity, and allowed to grow into something self-contained and autonomous -- and unique from the world in which they are stored, displayed, consumed. Our characters are fish. Our plot is water. Our story is a little glass box, sealed shut but radiating it's swarming life to the outside world.

When my world lets me find a place to put it, I'm going to build a whole aquarium of fishes.

June 1, 2004 after 11AM | fish , work | maybe more»