I'm such a sucker. I admit it.

The other day daughter asked for a black and white fan-tailed goldfish she saw in the petstore. Before I knew it, I was driving home with not one, but three fish: "Moo", "Baa" and "Meow" (no, I'm not kidding...)

I spent the rest of the day setting up an old aquarium, finding plants and gravel, but I needed some rocks for decor. So I headed out to the backyard and picked out two large specimens and scrubbed them free of dirt. I filled up the tank with water and started cleaning up the room while the water conditioned.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted movement in the tank. Unexpected to say the least, as I hadn't put the fish in yet. I took a closer look and couldn't believe what I saw. Swimming up from one of the rocks was a tiny spider, with a bubble of air around his head! He must have been hiding in the crevices of the rock.

My first thought was "Damn, why don't I have my camera?"

My next thought was to save the poor thing. I mean, he's going to all this effort to live, I might as well help. So I got a kleenex and dipped it in. The spider grabbed hold and I took him outside to the garden.

I felt so good. Beaming with heroic pride, I returned to the tank and transferred the fish to their new home. As I stood admiring my hard work, I saw a bubble on one of the plants leaning over that same creviced rock.

Oh crap, ANOTHER spider with a bubble had emerged (yeah, I DID do a great job washing it, didn't I?). I got out the kleenex to save the second tiny creature.

However, before I could reach him... Gulp!

"Moo" had his first meal.

Poor spider. My heroic pride was shattered. Well, I managed to save one.

At least I hope I did... that bird in the garden sure looked hungry.

Jerry Seinfeld ("The Opposite" episode): "Everything will even out. See, I have two friends. You were up, he was down. Now he's up, you're down. You see how it all evens out for me? ..."

Life often evens out for me as well. Take last Thursday, for example. A friend sold me her spare 4 Gig iPod for a paltry sum. Even though I already had a "no-name" 512 MB MP3 player, I took her up on her generous offer.

That very same day, my husband’s car was broken into while parked on our driveway and his MP3 player was stolen…the one we bought him last Christmas.

Yes, It sucks.

Yes, it could’ve been worse.

Yes, it was depressing when the police actually laughed about reporting it.

Yes, it’s sad that we are expected to accept criminal acts as a way of life nowadays.

But at least I can give him my spare player… see how it all evens out?

Which is exactly what I did.


Emerging from the house yesterday, quietly contemplating the serene spring morning, little did I know of the menace lurking in the darkness of the neighbor's flower bed.

As I rounded our van to unlock the driver's door, my solace was swiftly broken by a flurry of feathers and protesting "QUACKS!" as a female mallard burst from her hiding spot, flapping wildly on her escape path directly at me. Luckily my collision-avoidance-system (instinct) caused me to, in fact, DUCK, and retain my head.

I did not, however, retain my dignity nor composure. I must have looked like an idiot dodging a duck in my driveway.

Good thing I work in Cardiology.

I just about had a heart attack.

...than to leave me to wander the local Geek-Big-Box-Computer-Store.

We were there last week to get daughter a 22 inch widescreen monitor for her 16th birthday. While hubby was paying for it, he foolishly let me "just take a look" at the laptops.

Bad move. I soon spotted my baby; an HP Pavilion Media Centre with 1 Gig RAM, 80 Gig HD, DVD/CD burner with Lightscribe, wireless, Altec-Lansing speakers, slots for my camera cards and the HP Media Suite software for photos, videos, movies, even TV .... all for $599 CDN. With 3 months to pay no interest. Yeah, I could handle that.


Can you say "Geek Heaven"?

Actually, it solved three problems:

1) Hubby wants a computer he can play, er, work on.
2) Daughter needs a computer downstairs.
3) I need a computer I can travel with.

So now my desktop PC moves downstairs and the new laptop is in my office upstairs. Luckily, daughter was so thrilled to get her "jumbotron" for her bedroom computer and another PC in the basement, she didn't mind my splurge on myself.


I mean, at that price, I just couldn't leave the poor thing at the store, now could I?

I've read that Disney actually had live animals in their art departments so the animators could draw their characters' features and movements from real life.

As a pet owner, I can see why. Some days I feel like I live in a cartoon... take yesterday, for example:

I was in my bedroom getting ready for work. Dakotah our black cat, as usual was sitting ON my clothes laid out on the waterbed. Casey our dog, was at my feet tripping me at every chance she had.

Our older cat Sheba decided she wanted to join us. However, instead of her usual graceful leap, she unfortunately chose the end of the bed to pounce on.

This was unfortunate for two reasons:

1) She mis-read the distance and came up short

2) She came up short on our quilt, folded and partially hanging off the end of the bed.

Now our waterbed is quite high, with two sets of drawers underneath.

Like Sylvester in a Looney Toons cartoon, there was Sheba, frantically clawing her way up the quilt, which was slowly sliding off of the bed.

One paw up, the quilt descends.

Second paw up, her unsuccessful advances being thwarted even more by gravity and a heavy quilt.

Soon all I can see (in between my howls of laughter) is her small face, HUGE eyes pleading for help disappearing off the end of the bed. It was so funny to see it all happen in what seemed like slow motion (and I swear she even had that cartoon-style last gasp of dread while suspended in mid-air)...

At last, with a "thump", Sheba landed on the floor, soon followed by the quilt covering her.

With her last bit of dignity, she re-emerged from below the pile, flicked up her tail and walked out of the room as if she never even WANTED to get up on the bed anyway.

I guess it didn't help that I was laughing so hard I was near tears.