All the fish are dead.
We put in the ich medicine, doing just what the label said, repeating the dosage every alternate day, but we must have been too late. On Friday night, Duenna and Lionel (the replacement catfish) died within two hours of each other, after lots of the fish equivalent of gasping for breath, supposedly a sign of the disease. Duenna didn't surprise me; the parasites had clearly ravaged her. Her tail was shredding, almost fuzzy, by the time she went down. Lionel had looked healthier, so I hadn't expected him to follow, but it makes sense enough.
We'll try again after I clean the fish tank out the best I can. This time we've got medicine at our fingertips and will be able to jump right on the problem if we see it, before the spots get bigger. Despite my private, half-joking protestations that I don't run a fish orphanage, I'll probably end up taking Emily's three guppies, which her favored betta doesn't like. (Emily, incidentally, blames the fishes' demise on our having named them; apparently it's a superstition in her family. I kind of thought she was kidding, but now I think she isn't.)
On a happier note, I picked fourteen pounds of apples yesterday (I seriously didn't think I had that much), and Erica and John picked likewise, so there will be more apple-related food in this house, soon, than you can shake a stick at. ...Where does that expression come from, anyway? It would never occur to me to shake a stick at pretty much anything, except maybe an orchestra.
I like my FYE class best of everything I'm in this semester. We were really given a fantastic group, and the reading is interesting, and...and it's just lovely all around. Would that teaching were really like this; I'd know with more certainty that I should do it. But it's different to be the one actually teaching than the one answering (at times stammeringly, only half-prepared) the odd question, looking over papers, and sometimes joining the class in giving Dr. Strong weird looks. (I really shouldn't do that; it feels like I'm trying to play both sides, be the obedient peer leader and then, when he isn't looking, ingratiate myself to the freshmen. But sometimes the things he says are so random...)
Still, Jessie, who is super-sweet, told me on Sunday, as we walked to Ade to pick up our boxed lunches for the apple-picking trip (on which, in the end, she didn't go, citing excessive homework) that she thinks I would be a good professor, and was excited when I told the half-secret (since it is not a typical part of FYE) that I'd probably get to teach something by myself, once as an experiment, before the semester is out. I'm glad she's excited; Dr. Strong has already mentioned that I should try to find something.
That's all for now, except that I'm glad that New York State has Regents exams. Standardized curriculum, for its potential faults, also ensures that the average student entering college has at least been told how to write an analytical essay, whether or not they've listened. Some of the teachers as the FYE kids describe! Sometimes, it appears, high school is the last refuge of the incompetent. As much as I would like to believe that everybody tries hard to do well in whatever they do, and as much as I'm in no position to talk, I really can't help concluding that, in the majority of cases, if you can't teach at the skill level of the New York Regents, then you're not trying to teach kids to measure their self-worth by something other than grades; you're being lazy or a crackpot.
Insert brilliant, argument-clinching conclusion here.
-Laurel
9.19.2006
And another update...
Well, the ich medicine was bought and is being applied, but we're now down to two fish. Fflewddur, who was my favorite, is gone. I don't mean that he died and we took him out, either. He flat-out disappeared. All we can think of is that the catfish ate him, 'cause there isn't any fish-body on the floor outside the tank. Darn you, Wal-Mart icthyoid. Bring ich into my tank and make short work of my favorite fish. Sheesh.
Most everything else is good, though I may have contracted a form of "pharyngitis," as I imagine Crandall would call it. I think I know where my adenoids are now, simply because I know that more than just my tonsils are swollen. For some time now I've considered letting AURS demonstrate a tonsillectomy on me, as long as I got the work for free. :-P
Karate is getting a little easier, warmups in particular. I get my gi tomorrow (that's the uniform); that will help, too, 'cause I'll feel more legit, instead of being some yahoo in Dr. Seuss pajama bottoms. ::giggles:: (I really have been wearing those, too, 'cause I left my gym pants at home, thinking we'd have uniforms right away.)
Book plug: The Smell of Sin: And the Fresh Air of Grace, by Don Everts, the awesome guy who wrote Jesus With Dirty Feet, the book that sort of reminds me of the musical Godspell, in a good way.
Okay, I'm out.
-Laurel
Most everything else is good, though I may have contracted a form of "pharyngitis," as I imagine Crandall would call it. I think I know where my adenoids are now, simply because I know that more than just my tonsils are swollen. For some time now I've considered letting AURS demonstrate a tonsillectomy on me, as long as I got the work for free. :-P
Karate is getting a little easier, warmups in particular. I get my gi tomorrow (that's the uniform); that will help, too, 'cause I'll feel more legit, instead of being some yahoo in Dr. Seuss pajama bottoms. ::giggles:: (I really have been wearing those, too, 'cause I left my gym pants at home, thinking we'd have uniforms right away.)
Book plug: The Smell of Sin: And the Fresh Air of Grace, by Don Everts, the awesome guy who wrote Jesus With Dirty Feet, the book that sort of reminds me of the musical Godspell, in a good way.
Okay, I'm out.
-Laurel
9.17.2006
Tales from the Aquarium
Oh man, fish ordeals. Got back from Stratford yesterday (which went very well) to find the fishtank light physically in the fishtank--a situation that is, shall we say, not optimal. Chris had been feeding the fish since I'd left, but said it hadn't been there that morning or any time before.
Apparently the light had been dirty, because the tank was all manner of dusty-dirty, and the water was a very light shade of tan. Besides that, the light hadn't actually turned off when it fell in. While I'm glad that tank lights are manufactured in such a way that fish don't get electrocuted at times like these, the light still being on raised the temperature of the water past what it should be for healthy fish. Granted that too warm is better than too cold, but all the same.
Oh, and Landlubber, Lily's catfish, had died the day before, so we were down to two fish anyway. ...I should call time-out for a second and name/describe our two remaining. Duenna stuck as the name for the swordtail-girl; she's been described already. The zebra danio is, I believe, a male, and I've named him Fflewddur. He is a bright and curious fish, boldly striped, but skinny--partly because he doesn't appear to be the bravest thing in the world. He'll kind of come up to a flake of food, get ready to chow down, and suddenly turn tail and flee when Duenna (who does have a size advantage) comes near him, and like as not she'll steal the flake from him. (I'm not sure I've ever seen a fish so voraciously hungry as Duenna. It's hard to feed anyone else, 'cause she'll take it all, and there's no real way to distract her.) Fflewddur's got the speed advantage, and probably the brains advantage, but he seems to be easily-intimidated. So I called him Fflewddur, 'cause he looks bold but doesn't act it. Passable name, and literary.
Anyway, back to the mishap. I knew I had a sort of siphon for the tank, but I didn't really, to be technical, know how to use it--and besides, the siphon in question didn't look like it'd been made to deal with water this contaminated. So I filled a plastic punch bowl with water, made sure the temperature was okay, and transferred Fflewddur and Duenna into it. (See, if I were really smart, I'd have fed Fflewddur all by himself when he was the only one in the bowl, 'cause I transferred him first. I guess startlement took my wits.) Then I removed as much of the tank water as I could, bailing it out with a plastic pitcher. (I couldn't just dump everything down the sink. It's all hooked up and right, and anyway, the gravel would've gone down the sink and who knows what.) Filled the tank back up, put in the water conditioner (which I'd forgotten to put into the bowl, but F and D seemed to be doing okay), changed the filter stuff (which was reeeeally dirty). Waited as long as I could for the temperature to drop (it was still a bit too high, but the temp in the punch bowl, with the water still unpurified, was slowly dropping, so I figured the tank would actually be safer), then put the fish back in.
Things progressed fairly well--the filter was doing a good job with the dirt I couldn't remove, the fish were still alive after all the chaos--but now we had no catfish. The thing about catfish is that they're good to have if you want a clean tank. It's one of those things that's just plain good to do, have a catfish. But it was Sunday and darkling, and the pet shop was certainly closed. I figured I'd try to do it today.
But Emily came over last night, and one thing led to another, and we ended up at Wal-Mart. Now, Wal-Mart is open 24/7 and sells tropical fish. I know their frogs tend to die off quickly, but the fish didn't look so bad, though the store wasn't very good about keeping a good water temperature (some were okay, but some were too high, and some were probably a little low). Their upside-down catfish (yes, upside-down; that's the breed, and describes how they swim) looked lively(/hyperactive) and good, so I bought one.
Well. This is probably what I get for buying a Wal-Mart fish. Emily had asked last night if the catfish maybe had a couple of white spots on him, and I'd said no. I still don't see any, but maybe he did have some, for this morning I came down and Duenna had tiny white speckles on her, like grains of salt. This is a bad sign. This means ich.
Ich (spelled ick in many cases) is short for ichthy-something, basically Latin for "annoying little fish disease." Ich is basically a thing where parasites infest your tank, and if you don't treat the water soon, your fish's scales will fall off, and the fish will die. And this will happen to pretty much every fish in the tank, 'cause it's really contagious. It's easy to treat, but you've got to get right on it, and you've got to be vigilant about it for a while (some say three days, some say three weeks...we'll see what my bottle of fish medicine says). I've never dealt with ich; I don't think we ever had a case of it at home, or else my dad treated the water and I just don't remember. I hardly know what to blame, in this case: either the catfish brought it in with him, or Duenna picked it up somehow 'cause of the excitement yesterday, since it also tends to strike fish who've had to deal with water-temp fluctuations (yup, check). In any case, if Lily doesn't go to Wegmans in the next hour or two, I'm going first, 'cause we need some medicine ASAP.
In the meantime, the catfish, who was so lively in the store and in the tank last night, has been practically motionless all day. (It is, however, alive. I touched it with the fish net to check, and it moved.) It better be nocturnal like the last one, and not about to die like the last one. I still don't see any white spots. Whatever.
I don't know how to explain this. I'm not the kind of person who kills every living thing I try to keep. Why is my tank, like, a disaster? ::snort::
Okay, end.
-Laurel
Apparently the light had been dirty, because the tank was all manner of dusty-dirty, and the water was a very light shade of tan. Besides that, the light hadn't actually turned off when it fell in. While I'm glad that tank lights are manufactured in such a way that fish don't get electrocuted at times like these, the light still being on raised the temperature of the water past what it should be for healthy fish. Granted that too warm is better than too cold, but all the same.
Oh, and Landlubber, Lily's catfish, had died the day before, so we were down to two fish anyway. ...I should call time-out for a second and name/describe our two remaining. Duenna stuck as the name for the swordtail-girl; she's been described already. The zebra danio is, I believe, a male, and I've named him Fflewddur. He is a bright and curious fish, boldly striped, but skinny--partly because he doesn't appear to be the bravest thing in the world. He'll kind of come up to a flake of food, get ready to chow down, and suddenly turn tail and flee when Duenna (who does have a size advantage) comes near him, and like as not she'll steal the flake from him. (I'm not sure I've ever seen a fish so voraciously hungry as Duenna. It's hard to feed anyone else, 'cause she'll take it all, and there's no real way to distract her.) Fflewddur's got the speed advantage, and probably the brains advantage, but he seems to be easily-intimidated. So I called him Fflewddur, 'cause he looks bold but doesn't act it. Passable name, and literary.
Anyway, back to the mishap. I knew I had a sort of siphon for the tank, but I didn't really, to be technical, know how to use it--and besides, the siphon in question didn't look like it'd been made to deal with water this contaminated. So I filled a plastic punch bowl with water, made sure the temperature was okay, and transferred Fflewddur and Duenna into it. (See, if I were really smart, I'd have fed Fflewddur all by himself when he was the only one in the bowl, 'cause I transferred him first. I guess startlement took my wits.) Then I removed as much of the tank water as I could, bailing it out with a plastic pitcher. (I couldn't just dump everything down the sink. It's all hooked up and right, and anyway, the gravel would've gone down the sink and who knows what.) Filled the tank back up, put in the water conditioner (which I'd forgotten to put into the bowl, but F and D seemed to be doing okay), changed the filter stuff (which was reeeeally dirty). Waited as long as I could for the temperature to drop (it was still a bit too high, but the temp in the punch bowl, with the water still unpurified, was slowly dropping, so I figured the tank would actually be safer), then put the fish back in.
Things progressed fairly well--the filter was doing a good job with the dirt I couldn't remove, the fish were still alive after all the chaos--but now we had no catfish. The thing about catfish is that they're good to have if you want a clean tank. It's one of those things that's just plain good to do, have a catfish. But it was Sunday and darkling, and the pet shop was certainly closed. I figured I'd try to do it today.
But Emily came over last night, and one thing led to another, and we ended up at Wal-Mart. Now, Wal-Mart is open 24/7 and sells tropical fish. I know their frogs tend to die off quickly, but the fish didn't look so bad, though the store wasn't very good about keeping a good water temperature (some were okay, but some were too high, and some were probably a little low). Their upside-down catfish (yes, upside-down; that's the breed, and describes how they swim) looked lively(/hyperactive) and good, so I bought one.
Well. This is probably what I get for buying a Wal-Mart fish. Emily had asked last night if the catfish maybe had a couple of white spots on him, and I'd said no. I still don't see any, but maybe he did have some, for this morning I came down and Duenna had tiny white speckles on her, like grains of salt. This is a bad sign. This means ich.
Ich (spelled ick in many cases) is short for ichthy-something, basically Latin for "annoying little fish disease." Ich is basically a thing where parasites infest your tank, and if you don't treat the water soon, your fish's scales will fall off, and the fish will die. And this will happen to pretty much every fish in the tank, 'cause it's really contagious. It's easy to treat, but you've got to get right on it, and you've got to be vigilant about it for a while (some say three days, some say three weeks...we'll see what my bottle of fish medicine says). I've never dealt with ich; I don't think we ever had a case of it at home, or else my dad treated the water and I just don't remember. I hardly know what to blame, in this case: either the catfish brought it in with him, or Duenna picked it up somehow 'cause of the excitement yesterday, since it also tends to strike fish who've had to deal with water-temp fluctuations (yup, check). In any case, if Lily doesn't go to Wegmans in the next hour or two, I'm going first, 'cause we need some medicine ASAP.
In the meantime, the catfish, who was so lively in the store and in the tank last night, has been practically motionless all day. (It is, however, alive. I touched it with the fish net to check, and it moved.) It better be nocturnal like the last one, and not about to die like the last one. I still don't see any white spots. Whatever.
I don't know how to explain this. I'm not the kind of person who kills every living thing I try to keep. Why is my tank, like, a disaster? ::snort::
Okay, end.
-Laurel
9.13.2006
"Where would you rather be than right here, right now?"-Marv Levy
So my time management is still, shall we say, hit-and-miss. Karate, too, is definitely still kicking my butt (warmups are easier, but now we're into actual karate moves, at which I'm definitely one of the worst in the class, and perhaps the actual worst). I seem to have lost my new hoodie, which I got as a hand-me-up (if that wasn't a word, it is now) from my brother.
On the whole, however, I am so happy to be here. It's just...Alfred. And that makes almost anything okay. I wish I'd known sooner that this kind of contentment was going to come out of this place. I don't think it'd have spoiled anything to know.
Classes go fairly well on the whole. Oddly enough, FYE is probably my favorite. We really ended up with a great group, and it's just so interesting to sit there and soak it in. It's a weird position I'm in, really neither student nor teacher. Knowing I might end up teaching has made me look at how my professors do it (and I guess I've been watching professors closely in general, as I don't have classes with Otto or either of the Westacotts), and the kind of openness and sincerity and--I don't know, benevolence or something--that I've found from them is just so...I don't know. I find myself wanting to ask questions I don't even have words for.
Writing Center has gone well. It's a little frustrating, but I've gotten kind remarks. (Oh! On that note: there is such a thing as a squinting modifier! I found it in one of Vicky's grammar books! More on that some other time.)
Bible study has gone well, too. I joined Maggie and Tim's, so I got really lost last night as I tried to find Peet Hall. It's always nice to know State kids better, though I know these ones fairly well already. I finally got to see Tim's robot, though she wasn't in her full walking-around glory.
We have tropical fish in the house, three so far. They're fun. Two are mine, but I haven't named them yet. I'm thinking of "Duenna" for the red velvet swordtail, which I know is a girl because her tail isn't sword-shaped. It's not a very good name, but I'm determined to be geeky and give them literary names, and the Duenna from Cyrano de Bergerac is the only character I can think of who's as simple, and as enthusiastic about food, as this fish. Maybe I'll come up with another.
More later, but I thought I'd give you a glimpse of myself, content half through rapture and half through, oddly enough, fatigue.
-Laurel
On the whole, however, I am so happy to be here. It's just...Alfred. And that makes almost anything okay. I wish I'd known sooner that this kind of contentment was going to come out of this place. I don't think it'd have spoiled anything to know.
Classes go fairly well on the whole. Oddly enough, FYE is probably my favorite. We really ended up with a great group, and it's just so interesting to sit there and soak it in. It's a weird position I'm in, really neither student nor teacher. Knowing I might end up teaching has made me look at how my professors do it (and I guess I've been watching professors closely in general, as I don't have classes with Otto or either of the Westacotts), and the kind of openness and sincerity and--I don't know, benevolence or something--that I've found from them is just so...I don't know. I find myself wanting to ask questions I don't even have words for.
Writing Center has gone well. It's a little frustrating, but I've gotten kind remarks. (Oh! On that note: there is such a thing as a squinting modifier! I found it in one of Vicky's grammar books! More on that some other time.)
Bible study has gone well, too. I joined Maggie and Tim's, so I got really lost last night as I tried to find Peet Hall. It's always nice to know State kids better, though I know these ones fairly well already. I finally got to see Tim's robot, though she wasn't in her full walking-around glory.
We have tropical fish in the house, three so far. They're fun. Two are mine, but I haven't named them yet. I'm thinking of "Duenna" for the red velvet swordtail, which I know is a girl because her tail isn't sword-shaped. It's not a very good name, but I'm determined to be geeky and give them literary names, and the Duenna from Cyrano de Bergerac is the only character I can think of who's as simple, and as enthusiastic about food, as this fish. Maybe I'll come up with another.
More later, but I thought I'd give you a glimpse of myself, content half through rapture and half through, oddly enough, fatigue.
-Laurel
9.07.2006
Okaywow.
I learned tonight how awesome Dr. Myers is. I mean, I knew that he was pretty cool, but now that I've been lectured by a cultural anthropologist who isn't him, just by comparison my understanding has increased fivefold.
Though, to be fair, probably most anthropologists don't use the term "verticality" instead of what anyone else on the planet would say, namely, "water flowing downhill." Or refer to my entire sex as...what was the term? Genatrix? Yeah, that, and guys are "genitors."
Yeah. End rant.
-Laurel
Though, to be fair, probably most anthropologists don't use the term "verticality" instead of what anyone else on the planet would say, namely, "water flowing downhill." Or refer to my entire sex as...what was the term? Genatrix? Yeah, that, and guys are "genitors."
Yeah. End rant.
-Laurel
9.05.2006
I still live!
So I switched one of my Writing Center hours with Quinn's permanently, 'cause she didn't realize it messed with one of her classes. So now, rather than have two Tuesday hours, I only have one, which is nice. In exchange, though, I've just added yet another thing to do on Mondays. Granted that in a way this is simply changing one hassle for another, but we'll see how it goes.
I think that settles it: my office hour for FYE is definitely going to be on Wednesday nights. I can't take any more Monday action.
Things here are...passable. Though so far it's without any consequences, I have fallen behind on practically all my reading for classes now (even the Shakespeare, partly 'cause I never get to the library to read the massively-long thing on reserve), and have discovered that my body is doing its stupid thing where, no matter what time I go to bed, I'm not going to get eight hours anyway; I'm going to be forcibly awakened by my own body at around the six-hours-45 mark. Or maybe I did get into the sevens. It depends on when I fell asleep last night. I even refrained from napping yesterday in an effort to stay asleep. Much good it did me, hmph.
Also, my parents are coming this weekend, and I know my dad and I are going to have an argument about grad school. We don't have a lot of arguments, but this one's been a long time coming. Great.
On another note, I really think Facebook's getting more stalkerlike every day. I used to like the thing a lot, but like a month ago it decided to start taking over the world, apparently, and it's been crazy ever since.
Okay, breakfast and reading. Reading, reading, reading.
-Laurel
I think that settles it: my office hour for FYE is definitely going to be on Wednesday nights. I can't take any more Monday action.
Things here are...passable. Though so far it's without any consequences, I have fallen behind on practically all my reading for classes now (even the Shakespeare, partly 'cause I never get to the library to read the massively-long thing on reserve), and have discovered that my body is doing its stupid thing where, no matter what time I go to bed, I'm not going to get eight hours anyway; I'm going to be forcibly awakened by my own body at around the six-hours-45 mark. Or maybe I did get into the sevens. It depends on when I fell asleep last night. I even refrained from napping yesterday in an effort to stay asleep. Much good it did me, hmph.
Also, my parents are coming this weekend, and I know my dad and I are going to have an argument about grad school. We don't have a lot of arguments, but this one's been a long time coming. Great.
On another note, I really think Facebook's getting more stalkerlike every day. I used to like the thing a lot, but like a month ago it decided to start taking over the world, apparently, and it's been crazy ever since.
Okay, breakfast and reading. Reading, reading, reading.
-Laurel
9.02.2006
Anyone have a hot water bottle I could stick on my entire abdominal-muscle range?
Four words on the title: first night of karate. It was on Wednesday, if you want a sense of just how out of shape I apparently am. Should be fun, though.
I didn't mean to be melodramatic in the end of my posting about the twins back whenever. I mean, I do see them. Just that, often enough, I don't seeeee them. I'm sort of just in the same places they are. Or at least I feel like that.
Whatever.
FYE is going all right, though most of the mistakes we made in today's "digital dash" (picture-taking activity around campus) were my fault (good job, Peer Leader). I've gotten to know a few of the kids particularly well: my honors little sister is in there, and so is a super-sweet girl named Jessie that I keep seeing around. I know more names than I expected to by now.
Honors seminar is going to be amazing. It's a new one, about local history in terms of food (as I've said, the Alfred liberal arts faculty appears to be made up almost entirely of food-loving people), and we're taking field trips to awesome places...Dr. Mayberry's to see her husband's beehives, the Lains' to see the cider mill, Harold and Bev's(!!!!) to see their dairy equipment...the list goes on.
Had my first Writing Center tutee this morning; I guess you could call her a "walk-in," in that she was using the computer in the room for about 40 minutes before she asked me to look over the draft she'd just completed, heh. Things went all right, I guess. I'm not as good at explaining things as I'd like to be. ...Final training tomorrow morning; Vicky promises it'll be not-too-long, and she's bribing us with doughnuts. So I'll get to see whether there's actually such a thing as a "squinting modifier," or if Dr. Strong has unintentionally made a fool of me.
Okay, more when I'm not so tired.
-Laurel
I didn't mean to be melodramatic in the end of my posting about the twins back whenever. I mean, I do see them. Just that, often enough, I don't seeeee them. I'm sort of just in the same places they are. Or at least I feel like that.
Whatever.
FYE is going all right, though most of the mistakes we made in today's "digital dash" (picture-taking activity around campus) were my fault (good job, Peer Leader). I've gotten to know a few of the kids particularly well: my honors little sister is in there, and so is a super-sweet girl named Jessie that I keep seeing around. I know more names than I expected to by now.
Honors seminar is going to be amazing. It's a new one, about local history in terms of food (as I've said, the Alfred liberal arts faculty appears to be made up almost entirely of food-loving people), and we're taking field trips to awesome places...Dr. Mayberry's to see her husband's beehives, the Lains' to see the cider mill, Harold and Bev's(!!!!) to see their dairy equipment...the list goes on.
Had my first Writing Center tutee this morning; I guess you could call her a "walk-in," in that she was using the computer in the room for about 40 minutes before she asked me to look over the draft she'd just completed, heh. Things went all right, I guess. I'm not as good at explaining things as I'd like to be. ...Final training tomorrow morning; Vicky promises it'll be not-too-long, and she's bribing us with doughnuts. So I'll get to see whether there's actually such a thing as a "squinting modifier," or if Dr. Strong has unintentionally made a fool of me.
Okay, more when I'm not so tired.
-Laurel