Somehow November, barely a week old, has become the month of spending. I’ve been trying to be better on that count, with limited success. But the last week has been ridiculous. The pump for the 50 gallon fish tank finally seems to have wedged a snail into a locale that we just can’t extract it from, and makes this horrible grinding noise when plugged in. I’ve taken it apart and rinsed it out twice, (which usually fixes it) but to no avail.

Then my cell phone died. And not one of those “I’m bored with this, lets see what happens when you spike it on the cement!” deaths either. The battery has, apparently, been leaking acid for quite some time. The contacts have some really interesting crystaline features on them now, and the battery acid that got on one of my lab printouts will someday be immortalized forever on microfiche. So a new phone was purchased.

Then the tank showed up. In the begninning of August, I ordered a bigger tank for the tropical terrarium. At the time I felt (incorrectly) that I could afford it. When the end of October rolled around and it still hadn’t shown up, I felt like I could legitimately ask for my deposit back. Except they had no record of my deposit. I went home and looked around. Apparently, neither do I.

I was planning on asking them if they could give me store credit or something (I drop rather a lot of money on pet food there, they know me), but once I got my new cell phone up and running, I discovered that I had three messages: each from the Vivarium, each from a different person letting me know that my tank was there, and two of them happened to mention that it was beautiful.

…

Of course it’s beautiful. who the fuck custom orders something ugly?