Oooof

This week is essentially my last week for the year. Due to my company's vacation carryover policies, I have 6 days of vacation to burn between now and the end of the year. So Mon-Wed as vacation days, Thursdays holidays and I don't normally work Fridays, means I'm off for the next two weeks. Yippee!

However, since I will be off, I've got the dreaded tying-up of loose ends this week. Add in a couple 4-5 hour projects, combined with just returned from a trip slackies (so I did little yesterday) and I was already a little cramped for the week. Then yesterday, at the 11th hour, a crisis arose. We were supposed to do an install Tuesday, but another already-in-production customer that simply MUST be kept happy (and that's not a sarcastic must, the system's champion at this site is a huge booster for our company) is in a world of hurt, and the coworker who was supposed to do the install has to be at the other site on a rescue operation. But this new little site NEEDED to go off.

So what did I do? I volunteered to go up and take care of it. Now I need to cram four days worth of work into two, all while being more worried about holiday affairs than I really care to think about. *sigh*

Wiley thinks that was one of the cardinal sins of parenting

I'm not so sure.

Suckerfish-suckerfish* (the new-ish pleco we'd bought) died over the weekend. Oooops. Rather than try and explain death to Miss Widget, we took the coward's way out and went and bought a new pleco. Yeah, if that makes us bad parents, so be it. Widget certainly didn't notice the swap.

And keeping in mind halleyscomet's words about "if the plecos are fine, the goldfish will be", we've added a heater to the tank setup (it was in the low 60's, now it's warmer, within the recommended pleco range) and a Ph testing kit (that was a little off too)

So, now we have a peppier pleco, and still three happy goldfish, and Widget's none the wiser.

* Widget is responsible for all the fish names. So we have Dorothy (three guesses where *that* came from), Shark and Whale as goldfish, and Suckerfish-suckerfish the pleco. Cute, eh?

Amusing Widget tale

About a week ago, Widget was going on and on about how she was "writing down what she ate". I didn't think much of it.

Then she did it again last night, and made a huge deal out of it. Finally, the bulb went on and I realized just what she was actually doing. See, both I and Widget's nanny are on Weight Watchers. A major component of the program is, you guessed it, writing down all the food you eat in a food journal. She's imitating us. How cute is that? How slightly disturbing is that?