--295 days

--OK...theoretical, but very-realistic-possibility question: Let's say you wanted to get away for a weekend or so. You found unbelievable deals to two places. Which would you go to: Lincoln, Nebraska or Buffalo, New York. I don't know much about either of these cities, and I don't know if I'd even go. But, what do you guys think. And yes, those are the only two options. Other than, "Andy, both suck, don't go." Discuss. Seriously...you guys are far better traveled than I, even with my year of business travel. :)

--Otherwise, it's Friday, and if I want to get out of here on time (yay summer hours!), I need to bust my butt on work that I have to do.

--296 days.

--I need a couple minutes of break time from slaving over this story. The one thing I hate about interviewing people months in advance for a story is having to then go back and read all 16 pages of interviews to remind myself what I was going to focus on for the story. So my brain is marginally cashed out right at the moment.

--Yesterday evening, I made the decision to move the four baby fish into the 2-gal. tank I bought. It was getting really dirty in that Rubbermaid container, though that didn't seem to bother them to this point. But I figured I could actually try to start feeding them instead of letting them find food in the container themselves. Plus, the more stable temperature and the filtering of the water should be more beneficial. Still can't tell exactly what they are...I mean, I'm pretty sure they're danios, but they have these really, really peculiarly blue eyes. It's probably just that they are so small, they look different. But we'll see. Hopefully my feeding attempts are successful.

--I'm coming to the realization that I might have to bite the bullet and get a new (used) car sooner than I want to. As in, before the wedding. But I'm still holding out hope and planning on driving this thing until I absolutely, positively cannot. I currently am operating with the rear passenger window stuck closed, no a/c, several dashboard lights burned out and the steering wheel radio controls wreaking havoc upon the radio itself (i.e., phantom volume control--thankfully only lowering the volume, not raising it--switching presets or not working at all). I realize that none of these are necessary items (though Laz would argue a/c is), but it's probably a damned good sign that the car is giving up sooner than later. And none of these is really worth fixing with the amount of miles on it. My goal now is to at least hit 200,000 on it. I currently am in the 193,000s. That said, I may still make it until after the wedding...who knows? Especially with me and cars. :)

--299 days. Oh no, we're within 300 days! What will we do?!

--So Saturday, I discovered in the Rubbermaid container outside in which we have the aquarium plants (thriving quite well in the fresh air and semi-stagnant water and indirect sunlight) that we have BABY FISH. There are at least four of them swimming around in there. Eyes with stick bodies. They're swimming amongst the mosquito larvae, and they must be eating the larvae too, because they've been in there (as eggs and little fish) for almost three weeks now, without me feeding them or anything. So they've found SOMEthing to eat...So that's interesting...our pet shop friend was stunned when I told him. I said I was stunned too. I believe they're danios (fan-freakin'-tastic), because one of the danios was fat with eggs and chasing around the skinnier ones before we took the plants out of the tank. So some eggs must've stuck to the plants and voila. If the babies survive, we'll have to see what we can do with them. Maybe the pet shop will take them and give us credits for them (even if it's 33 cents or something...). Only because I don't know what kind of room we have for them in our tank. We'll have to see.

In other tank news, the ich spots have been gone for a while now, so we should be able to stop treatment of the tank the end of this weekend. Then I can put the carbon back in, put the plants in and possibly restock what little we've lost (so far).

--That's about it for now...I don't even know if anyone's reading. :)