…dedication.

Sometimes it takes a concerted effort to do something exactly right to truly screw it up.

Most of you know that Carolyn lost her mom this summer. At the time, she came up with this wonderful notion of adding a snow-viewing lantern to our pond in memory, not just of her mom, but of all our parents and the others who have gone before us.  We knew just the kind we wanted; unfortunately, once we started pricing them out, the cost became prohibitive to us. We truly thought we were going to have to compromise with a lesser lantern. Then, out of the blue, we get a phone call from OSG, who is off in Canada at World Con, NOT to order the lesser lantern we’d settled on.

It seems that, unbeknownst to us, a wonderful bunch of folks who have asked to remain anonymous had taken up a collection to get us something for the pond, and when Carolyn mentioned the lantern on her blog, they immediately knew where to designate the funds. They were … incredibly generous. Thanks to them, we were able to order exactly the lantern we wanted.

Now, comes the total screwup. I’m in charge of the pictures, right? Well, I thought the folks who did this should get first look, so, I asked OSG to go ahead and send pix to them.

Then, thinking it was so special and had been Carolyn’s idea as ’twere, that it should receive special treatment to the largest viewing audience. She gets way more hits than I do, so I gave her the pictures to post on her site, along with her formal thank you.

So…patting myself on the back that I’d really done everything right…I let it go, only to wake up the other day and realize, in no small horror, I had no idea if anything had ever been done.

I began asking questions, and, (a) yes, OSG had done her bit, and (b) Carolyn didn’t know how to post pictures and didn’t realize I’d passed the bloggish torch on this one project out of all of them we’ve done. Verbal communication between writers is never the best….sigh.

So…here we have the long overdue slide show with many thanks. I’m still trying to get a good picture of it at night with the candle in it. I have to take a time pic, and have misplaced my little remote plunger thingy and tripod for my camera. When I find it, we’ll give you the full effect, but I’ve included here the ones I took holding it by hand, which aren’t too bad.

By the looks of them on this screen, I could have gone to a shorter exposure and they would have been clearer. I didn’t use flash, but it looks like I did. It didn’t show that bright on the camera review.

How could I screw up on something this cool/generous/wonderful? Unfortunately, a bit too easily. I’m obsessive, remember? The next project came up, and I just…I hate to say it…forgot.

So with many thanks, not just to those who contributed funds, but to all of you who support and encourage us, day in and and day out…the lantern:

Does anyone else have a pet that just smells good? (Spouses don’t count. They’re supposed to “smell right.”)

I’ve had three wonderful cats, Effy, Elrond and Efanor. Loved the first two dearly, and Rondo was, IMO, the Most Amazing Cat Ever, but I was never conscious of their smell. But then, they never parked in front of my nose every morning. Efanor is a morning cuddler, and a confirmed smoocher. I wake up every day to him lying across my arm, his head on my pillow and my nose buried in his ruff….and I just realized this AM, I love the way he smells. He always smells…sunwarmed.

Oh…I promised pics of current state of the mural. It’s virtually impossible to capture the color I’m talking about. It’s very subtle blues in the water and sky and green in the main mountain. I’ve enhanced the contrast a bit on the one of the mural itself to try and bring it out, but it doesn’t really capture it.

As you can see, the waterfall is still, which gives the backyard a whole different look. It’s getting so cold at night right now, that we turn it off at night. Since I haven’t “set” the rocks of the fall, I fear that freezing would cause the rocks to shift all funny, tho it would probably be really pretty. :D

Thursday morning. Time to bail again. This time, the Main Tank.

Actually, because of the rug, and with two of us to shuffle buckets, we siphoned the water off into buckets, removing specimens as we took the level down, and putting them into the buckets. At this point, catching the tang was relatively simple, but while I was at it, durned if I wasn’t going after the Murderous Pistol Shrimp, too. Read the rest of this entry »

Wah! I lost a post. I’d written this, I know I had, and when I brought it up, there was only:

Wednesday. Aquatic Dreams day.

That’ll teach me to try and work ahead. Of course, had I remembered to post some time in the last several days, I’d have discovered this sooner. My only excuse is, I’ve been working on covers…and been seriously into them. Staying up way late and getting on them as soon as I wake up. I’ll have some more slide shows soon, though none as cool as the Groundties and UpLink ones, because these are more and more from scratch and the layers aren’t near as developmentally cool.

Anyway…Wednesday. Aquatic Dreams. Read the rest of this entry »

My darling little fish, for whom I’d gone to so much trouble…was MIA. Read the rest of this entry »

Saturday.

I have an appointment to meet Sharon and Joan for my first ever manicure/pedicure. This wasn’t just an indulgence, but another Necessity: My fingernails were an absolute mess from all the stuff I’d been doing outside, and I thought I’d go check the place out, because someone I know has feet which could use some serious TLC, and this someone doesn’t trust people to mess with said needy feet. Joan and Sharon had set this up and I decided to go with the gang and check it out.

It also meant getting up at the crack of, after getting to bed sometime between 2 and 3 am, because before manicures happened, I had to get the tank’s “extras” up and running, Read the rest of this entry »

to yesterday’s post.

I forgot to mention…you see, even tho it was hard to see Sharon leave (but then, it’s always hard when one of your best friends ever leaves) it was, in the end, a Very Good Thing. Remember the title: Necessity’s a Mother. If she hadn’t left, we’d have done it the same way Carolyn and I did it before, which, while it worked, still placed a dangerous strain on the main sump tank. This way, we now have it set up so the removal of the pump is both (relatively) simply and most importantly, gentle on the sump. So…

Thanks, Sharon, for leaving. It was meant to be.

Huggies!

Ja ne!

Ja ne!

distraught

Where was I? Oh, yes. I’d been deserted. Yes, deserted.

Oh, I don’t hold it against Sharon, not at all. There really wasn’t anything she could do, from her perspective. As she says, she thought it was just new pump time and nothing to be done until morning when we could get to the fish store. Besides she was gawd-awful tired (her work schedule is unbelievable) and had a lot to do before leaving for World Con on Sunday (this was Friday night) and I was in such a state of shock, I couldn’t even say “But wait! Read the rest of this entry »

Quick recap: took Carolyn to the airport, spent first day with plants and Joan, second day, went to Aquatic Dreams to get the RODI filter checked. Got home and began running water, with the idea of doing the water change before Carolyn got home, so it would be one less thing on her mind. Maybe do a little tank cleaning while I had the water level down.

Couple of little details I forgot to mention. I took the pump Carolyn said didn’t work, which I thought I had fixed earlier this summer, to AD to see if it really was dead…naturally, it worked just fine when he powered it up. Don’t ask me, but I don’t look gift horses, etc. And it’s worked fine since…which becomes significant. The other thing, and the one that probably prompted my notion to do the water change before Carolyn came back, was the presence of an adorable, plump tail-spot blenny at the store. Now, this is one of our favorite fishies, and we lost our previous one…we think to the murderous pistol shrimp. We hadn’t been able to get a replacement for over a year, so I didn’t want to let this one get away. Read the rest of this entry »