Wednesday 2 May 2007

All work and no play...

...new levels of busy-ness have been reached. Now I know why it is called business (ha ha!). I'm busy than a busy thing, as my friend Kim would say. In fact, so busy, I forgot to get lunch today until about 4pm. I thought that I was hungry!!!

More indecipherable cyrillic writing (really must at least learn the alphabet)... contract documents... estimates, estimates, and even more estimates. Oh, all good fun!

On a sad note, our goldfish Toby died, after a short illness. Poor Toby. Not really a goldfish, rather a shubunkin.

Here si the story of our fish tank. Once upon a time, we decided to get a fish tank. We went of to the pet shop and bought a 'starter' tank and two goldfish - CJ and Danny.

The catalyst for the purchase of the fish tank was watching the West Wing. In the West Wing, journalist Danny trying to impress White House Press Officer CJ (that's Claudia Jean) asks one of her colleagues what she likes. "Goldfish" is the reply. So, Danny buys CJ and goldfish. However, it wasn't the fish that was meant but the Goldfish Crackers!!! However, the fish stays with CJ until the end of West Wing at the seventh season. So, obviously CJ and Danny were named for those two characters. Well. CJ and Danny grew (alarmingly) and soon we decided that they needed a bigger tank.

So we got a bigger tank. Then we decided that they were probably lonely. So Toby, Sam and Nemo arrived. They were shubunkin. Toby and Sam flourished. Nemo, not so much. Nemo had a dodgy fin (hence the name, originally he was called Leo - Toby, Sam and Leo are further West Wing characters). Nemo died at a young age, and was buried in the garden. So for a while, they were four again.

Then we decided that some further companions were called for (aparently goldfish live in shoals and thus should be kept in odd numbers). Cue the arrival of Donna, Gail and Inky. (I decided that there should be more 'girl' fish - not that we have learned to accurately determine the gender of our goldfish). Donna is another West Wing character, Gail was the name of the goldfish in West Wing that started it all and Inky was named as he had black marking rather like inkspots all over his body. Sadly, one by one these fish also all died. Leaving the four alone again.

I declined for some time to purchase further fish on the basis that they kept dying. However, Rich maintained that the tank needed more fish - so eventually we went back to the pet shop and brought home Charlie, Abby and Jed. Charlie and Abby are tiny goldfish (they're a bit bigger now, but put them next to CJ and they are still very small). Jed was a shubunkin. That's right. Was. He died less than a week after we took him home. This time we took our deceased fish back to the store to get a replacement (yes, fish come with a guarantee). Welcome T'ealc. I decided no more West Wing characters (Jed is the President in the West Wing, Abby his wife and Charlie another character). I decided we should name our fish after a different TV show... why not Stargate SG-1!

So - for a month or so, all was fine. Then Toby began acting odd - his tail looked ragged, he looked thin, obviously he was not well. We'd seen it too often before. Fortunately his illness didn't last too long, and he died in the castle where the fish hide out sometimes. For a couple of days we thought that Sam was sick too - but it seems that he was mourning his friend, as reports from the fish tank today say he is back to his old self!

So that is the story of our fish!