R.I.P GooGooGoggles

Anji to Me: can't say a lot as i have posted you a letter and will only repeat myself and as i am boring i better not spoil what crappy news i do have. but you won't get the letter until end of next week...about....i guess. we have been looking after the pre-school fish for the holidays...so far so good, so in 2 weeks i will hopefully be able to return them with a smile, on my face, not theirs, but they can smile if they want to...one is called one eyed sam as he (you guessed it) only has one eye, he's very cooky looking...eerie really. have asked him to only swim with his good eye looking my way.

Me to Anji: If anything happens you can always get a replacement fish. "Guess what? Over the holidays Sam grew A NEW EYE!!!" Well, I certainly wouldn't call you boring. I should be so boring! Elizabeth ran off the rails last week because of the snowstorm, and I got an early phonecall on Monday from her boss, Bernice. "Do you know what's going on with Elizabeth?" I said, "No. Why?" "She hasn't been to work since last Monday and she won't return our phone calls." Me: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWK!!!
After my Monday jin shin appt I went to E's, pounded on the door, and pretended I had x-ray vision (I didn't know for sure she was in there). She opened the door and I flew in and told her I was taking her to work -- "Get ready. We have to be there in FIVE MINUTES." Took her to work and went in and was all angry and mean to her. I told her boss later I'm not really that mean but not to tell E. Thursday morning I get an early-morning email -- "E didn't come to work and didn't call us." But it was a false alarm as E came in 5 minutes later having missed the bus (she said it left the stop at 7:01 as she was coming down the hill to catch it and I believe her). I think I have her back on track... there were several other things I won't go into. I
think going to New York and changing her internal clock, plus the snow, got her mixed up so that she was staying up late, unable to get up. She wasn't able to get out of the evil trend herself -- I blasted through it with my
super-hero-like powers of Extreme Irritation and Biblical-Strength Meanness.

Anji feels her abilities with fish are limited since the unfortunate end of GooGooGoggles and company. I was totally into the idea of GooGooGoggles and wanted to make him a webpage, with a Fish-cam, and with Anji writing life from his viewpoint (we are all in our fishbowls anyway) as she can be very funny. I went so far as to see if the name www.googoogoggles.com was taken -- and it wasn't. Then the foul domain-name company stole the name on me, and alas, Goo croaked -- so there was nothing left but Anji's unease. I hope she can maintain these fishes. The nature of fish in captivity (and, indeed, in the wild) is to be rather ephemeral, so I don't think one should take their deaths personally, unless, like Paige, you PURPOSEFULLY DON'T EVER CLEAN THE BOWL TO KILL POOR LITTLE GUPPY (A GOLDFISH).

Out, You Visigoth Scum!
In the obits today it was revealed that a woman's last names went from Geier to Maier to Reider. In high school I had friends who became boy/girlfriend and both were surnamed "Johnson." And Marie's older brother Paul married Jack's older sister Paula. Names are interesting. I've always had the same name, and I don't have a middle name. Elizabeth is the only one in my family to have a middle name I would reckon as she was born in the USA and there was probably a line my father had to fill out that said, "middle name." Not having a middle name is normal, to me, but when I was at school children just thought I had a bad middle name and wouldn't tell it to them. At the time the bad names might've been "Edna," or "Gertrude," or something like that. For boys it might've been "Irving," "Horace," "Leslie." Name fashions change and names come into, then go out of, style. At each degree of stylishness the name appeals to a different group of people. My mother chose names that were uncommon at the time, although her choices became popular later (except Vivian). If she hadn't named me Vivian she would've called me Morag -- after her friend at the time who was married to an airline pilot. Morag would be a mess when her husband was out of town, then get spiffed up when he was due to return. She said, "There -- isn't it nice!" about the extreme change. I wanted to be called Morag and not Vivian, as a child. Actually I still do. I used to not like "Vivian" -- I am reconciled, now, though.
Vivian: from the Latin for "Lively but Gets Crippled in Later Life." Saint Vivian was a French bishop who protected people during the Visigoth invasion in the 5th century.
Morag wouldn't've been very suitable as I'm not Scottish. It's also related in some weird way to Sarah -- which is Elizabeth's middle name. We are related weirdly enough as it is. That puts me right back to being happy to be Vivian, I suppose.
Case closed.

Dave Riding Around in Illinois



I'm being driven mad from lack of sleep again by a horrid noise that sounds like this: nnnnnnnnnnnnnnCA-CHUNK every five minutes all night. My landlord thought air might be in the hot pipes (heat is hot water) and assigned me to sit in the garage and listen, which I'd already done. It's not louder when I am cosied up to the water heater. I noticed what I think is a (related? unrelated?) valve problem while I was sitting there -- it's difficult for me to do nothing so I was "reading" the plumbing. As I was doing laundry I was thinking about noise. I want to open a door and thereby dilute the noise (since it woiuld have to fill that room) so it would be less loud upstairs. Last night I tried sleeping on the couch, but that was terrible. It's been a problem since Sunday. TJ doesn't hear it, and I don't know about Tom.

Beautiful As Usual

Yawn