R.I.P. Dusty's Rhodes's Balls

So yeah, yesterday, we took the new cat to the shop to get his sexy parts removed. It came in at a cost of roughly $231 more than any previous cat neuterings I had known of had cost, but eh, Dusty's a good cat, and worthy of only the finest in ball-removal. He was pretty much wiped out for most of the day yesterday, but he's back to normal now, albeit a few grams lighter.



Meanwhile, Crackhouse still don't cotton to him none, so she's getting the run of the rest of the house, while Dusty stays locked up in here. We gotta try to get her claws capped pretty soon, but that's a terrifying proposal, so we're dragging the shit out of our feet on that one.



Meanwhile, there's fish-related goings-on, but first, a horrifying look into the world of the currently fishless 14-gallon tank. (Once again, R.I.P., two nameless otocinclus catfish) The other day, along with pulling out two fairly large Argentine swords (or were they Amazon swords? Or was one Amazon and another Argentine? God damn it.) for use in other tanks, (more on that in a second) I trimmed out this much dead plant material, plus a few handfuls more that went either in the kitchen or bathroom garbage cans:



And after all that, the damn thing still looks like this:



Off the top of my head, that's got one (massive) Amazon sword, one Argentine sword, three dwarf lillies, one absolutely goddamn gigantically huge aponegeton, (when I pulled it out to trim it, it was a good three feet from root to leaf tips) and an assortment of aponegetons and an anubias (I think that's what it is) tossed in as reclamation projects from other tanks, past and present, that don't have whatever sort of voodoo plant-growing magic that this tank has. Gotta be something in the water.

But yeah, the big stuff. Sarah finally got a couple of her underwater friends over here from the old homestead in Ada.


First, there's this five-gallon tank, featuring Boris the crowntail betta:



This picture doesn't really do him justice, because he is the goddamn craziest-looking fish I ever saw. He looks like something from one of those old 80's heavy metal album covers, all flying through the sky with lightning around him. Like he's something Dio would have to sword to death in a music video.



Yeeeeah. But anyway, he pretty much acts like he looks. He is like GODDAMMIT: The Fish. Like all he does is thrash around and eat worms and HATE. It is insane.

But the real coolness is this; a scheme that Sarah hatched months before we were all chillin' up in the same crib, but has finally come to fruition, with the addition of her two gallon tank and my shelves:



THE BETTA SHELF. Constructed from a bookshelf, three two-gallon tanks, one of those grow light things from Walmart, a handful of screws and tacks, and a chunk of that black cardboard backing that used to be attached to the back of the bookshelf. A finely tuned engine of animal husbandry if ever there was one.



On the left is Picasso, my damn-near year-old regular veil-tail betta, who's shown up in a few posts before; just scroll down, because I update like once a year, so if I last spoke of him in September, it should still be on the page. He has a little bulldog-face and is awesome.



On the right is Maurice, (The Fightin' Frenchy) Sarah's half-moon betta she picked up here a while back. He's awesome and looks like a watermelon under certain conditions.



In the middle is a brand-goddamn-new fish that Sarah got me as an early birfday present, Rufus. That's not a really good picture of him, because he's turned hella-pink ever since we got him out of that cup he was in, but I'm tired of messing with fish photos, so that's what you people will have to live with. But yeah, you better listen to this dude, because he knows what he's talking about. And remember to wind your watch.



In other news, I got an absolute shitload of photos and happenings over the last few decades that I've been meaning to throw up here, but never have. If I can ever figure out how to add one of those "click to read the rest" links to a post, I'll do some sort of massive clearinghouse sort of thing. Until then, I'll leave this with no explanation: