Just wanted to wish everyone here a Merry Christmas!  

I hope Santa brings you everything you want :-)

And, if you're working Christmas Eve or Christmas day, may you be blessed with pleasant, easygoing customers. :-)

I worked on gutting my 55 gallon of gravel today. It is not gravel-free because it is needed to keep up the biological stuff, but it is gravel-LESS. Meaning, I put less gravel in. WAY less. Instead if 50 lbs, it is probably 5-10 lbs. I will be showing you pics later. it is still in progress...but it won't be done until after the new year due to some family things (very ill relative). However, it was keeping too much grossness in it and I couldn't keep it clean enough even with weekly water changes to keep Sophie healthy. I don't know if I'll lose her or not. She kept hiding under ornaments and getting stuck. All old ornaments are gone. She's the only fish suffering from effects--fin rot and of course torn fins from getting stuck under the driftwood.

-smoke lots of cigarillos
-drink whiskey sours
-eat Montreal smoked meat
-embarrass myself in front of people I don't know
-not kiss anyone when the ball drops

This will be my third New Year's in Montreal. Weird!

she must have a contract because this is the second time she's been featured in the things saks send out through email.

( one image under the cut )

Could anyone tell me when we have to use our vacation hours up by? If it's Jan. 1st does that mean next week we can still use them? I'm new to full time and none of my co-workers I asked knew either.

2009 general work. a recurring 'theme' i see in my art, is that i rotate subjects. mostly from human, to furry, back to human again, back to furry, etc etc. i go through phases where sometimes i just want to draw animal people. and then i get sick of it, i guess, or i get ideas for 'real paintings' and get back to drawing more traditional things.

also summertime seems to make me want to draw more colorful, for some reason. strange. i must have seasonal affect-your-drawings syndrome.


i also just finished a painting that i can't remember where i saw it in my head before. it must have been one of those things that comes up when i'm falling asleep. i certainly know i didn't see it in a dream.
i did see, the other day, in a nap, my comic. it was a [comic-related] biblical story, where horace was playing a savior named mathuiyas, and keesha was playing a lame/blind homeless girl named kiesha [who in my brain-character-logic is the 'biblical' origin for her name]. the interesting thing is that i think i dreamed it in comic format.

( the txt file i wrote down groggily after i woke up -- )

it was in black and white and had still frames instead of moving. actually, i think most of my dreams are in still frames, now that i think of it. i am not a moving pictures kind of person. anyway, it was weird because most of the time i dream in color [supposedly unlike the rest of humanity. i know for a fact that i do because it's been an integral part of the story and details of many, many dreams i've had]. and i don't believe i have dreamt much about my characters before, either. i used to get jealous of other people who were so wrapped up in their chars that they would dream about them. now that i've distanced myself from that, i find myself dreaming about them.

So I started my very first goldfish tank today.

( GOLDFISH )

( yeah, ugly. )http://www.topmodelgossip.com/nik-pace-demands-70000-in-child-support/

The winner of MxNTM was announced last week and I wanted to share the portfolio for the first winner Mariana .

( Portfolio )

My husband and I kept a ten gallon aquarium many years ago, but when it fizzled out, we let it. A few years ago, he wanted to try again and I let him with the agreement that they would be his fish and his responsibility. This year, he basically threw up his hands and gave up on it. I couldn't stand the brown water and felt sorry for the fish, so I took over.

Don't laugh too hard, but I'm reading Freshwater Aquariums for Dummies and an interesting thing is happening. Not only am I learning a whole lot and exploring further via Google, I'm getting excited about aquariums and having fun improving our tiny little tank! It has a lot of issues that need correcting, bit it is already in much better shape and the fish are getting healthier, even without the much needed equipment upgrades.

Allow me to illustrate the tank for you. It has gravel and natural rocks, a poorly-functioning undergravel filter, a heater and a water pump. That is all. It houses four neon tetras, a cory and a pleco. In the last two weeks, I have vacuumed twice, changed half the water twice and switched out the plastic bridge for the rocks. Then I took the pump off the uplift tube (wasn't doing much anyway) and propped it at the surface for aeration.

Yes, I know there is a long way to go (and a much bigger tank to be had), but the fish are all feeling much better now. The neons are vivid and active and the cory's dorsal is always up now. The pleco is feeling insecure, but all issues will be addressed as quickly as funds allow.

My ideal is to have two fifty five gallon tanks, one for rehoming the poor mismanaged tropicals and one coldwater tank for black moors because this is turning out to be a lot of fun.

I AM DONE EXAMS. FINALLLYYYYYY.

Overall, I think I did pretty well; I've already got one mark back - Eng 362 - and I got 86. Which is the highest I've gotten in English since Eng 221 (87%), so that's pretty cool.

I had two exams on Friday. Eng 364 which was a bit weird because it was at 830 in the morning and I wasn't thinking straight, and Psych 350 which was again weird because I was completely strung out after being stressed about it all day. But I'm pretty confident about both.

And I breezed through Psych 302 today. I didn't know the definition to only one term. One term out of the whole exam. That's pretty awesome.  And I guessed the answer to that correctly anyway, as it turns out.


I don't want to go to sleep. i have so much to do over the next two days :(

here are the lyrics, although the real song is in japanese, here is the translation~:

red and silver, black and white, yellow i am thinking of
these colours in my tank go back and forth back and forth
red is lively, black is honourable, yellow is traditional
no matter what colour, my favourite
pearlscale is number one!

ryuken is dignified, black moor's eyes are big, but cute
comet is really easy to find, goldfish have so many names!
ryuken is big, black moor's eyes are wierd, koi is expensive
all these things considered, my favourite
pearlscale is number one~

pearlscale, oh pearlscale, oh pearlscale, oh pearlscale
pearlscale, oh pearlscale, pearlscale is number one~

circular body, a corks balance in water, and scales of pearls!
every day i feed you again and again, but you grow more round!
here, eat, here, eat again, here, eat alot~!
regardless, you grow fat,
pearlscale is number one!

pearlscale, oh pearlscale, oh pearlscale, oh pearlscale
pearlscale, oh pearlscale, pearlscale is number one~
you are my favourite,
i love you so much,
you are number one in the universe!

Studying for history and listening to ridiculous September songs.
FML

But I got Lola, red lipstick and gold nailpolish!

Thanks to drazick24 at RTV Games forum.

( SCANS ++ )