whoever sent me this birthday gift is FIRED!!!

snow sucks. snow on my birthday sucks even more. the only consolation is that at least i work from home now so i don't have to go out in it. oh, and i hear that snow on your birthday is good luck. i really hope that proves to be true.

i totally forgot to pull my plants in at the beginning of this freeze, but last night i decided they couldn't get any MORE frozen than they already were, so i left them out to get snowed on. so now i've got little green icicles growing up from pots in my back yard. poor things, they really deserve better mothering than i give them. the iris will be fine, i know. the palm? maybe not so much.

the OTHER consolation is that my girlfriend is taking me out for dinner tonight in her 4-wheel drive pickup and we're going to celebrate with some yummy food. 4-wheel drive and sensible driving guarantee that we'll get there and back in one piece. my girlfriend's company ensures that i'll have a celebratory evening, in spite of the funk i'm in over this whole frozen-housebound thing.

until then, i return you to your regularly scheduled snow. bleh.

oh, yeah! i forgot my other HappyThing... i finally got my secondary fish tank set up. i have moved my fishes from their big tank downstairs that was getting WAY too much direct sunlight (and was thusly growing big, nasty, slimy mats of algae in places where my algae-eater couldn't go) to their cozier tank upstairs. that took all of MLK day, basically. well, that and some WoW business, cuz i'm a big ol' geek...

anyway, that freed me up to move the big tank across the room - because you don't want to move a fishtank while it's full, and i didn't even have to try it to learn that! in its new spot, it will get a very small amount of indirect sunlight. so i've cleaned all the fish and snail poop out of it and filled it with chlorine-free water. i'm going to hook up the filter and airlines tonight and start cycling it (growing ammonia-eating bacteria) so that i can get some fish in there with my next paycheck. yippee! this is going to be my artsy "concept" tank in which all the fish are black, white, or black-and-white. i may even move some of the zebra danios (bet you can tell from the name what color they are, huh?) from my upstairs tank into the downstairs one so that i can add some more of the colorful tetras upstairs, now that the snail poop is under control. maybe i'll even go get a buddy for joey, the clown.