If only I had a nickel for every dollar I've won in some international lottery I never entered. Just a nickel for every long-lost distant relative who has died in some African country, and after an extensive search for heirs, I finally was located so I could inherit the estate left behind. Oh for pennies on the dollar every time someone needs to move an obscene amount of money from a foreign bank account to an American account, with a generous cut of that money for me if I'll do nothing more than be the American account the money is transferred to....
I used to keep a file where I saved all of the e-mails I got like that. But I got so many, that I quit saving them. Today's spam was different though. It's the first one I recall that came in the name of religion.
For your reading enjoyment, today's spam, from a Reverend Jones Smith:
Dearest in Christ, Calvary greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am Revrend Jones a member of Redeem ministry, basically a prayer and deliverance ministry. During a Prayer and fasting session in my Minstry, I asked our Lord Jesus Christ to give me the oppotunity to redeem my life and purify what remains of my wealth. God deliverly revealed to me to Invest in His Kingdom through you and your organisation and also give to the needies,orphanages,widows,and charites. You should immediately get back to me so that i can go ahead to send the funds according to the will of God so that you can distribute to the needys and hence further the works of the lord. Remain blessed Revrend Jones.
Rev. Jones Smith. How clever. Of course, that's not the most glaring giveaway that this e-mail is a fraud.
When was the last time you ever heard of a preacher doing the prayer/fasting thing and when he's finished, start looking to give money away? I mean, every time Oral Roberts holes himself up in his tower on the ORU campus in Tulsa, when he's done, he comes down asking you to give money to him. It's the American way. Sometimes Oral even threatens to stay in the tower and starve until we pony up the dough necessary to nourish his spirit. And for some reason, folks in Oklahoma always seem to fall for it.
...
In the mailbox yesterday was my recently-ordered copy of Beginnings, a CD produced by the praise team of the Northtown Church of Christ in Milwaukeeish, Wis. (They might be in Waukesha, I don't remember.) My understanding is that it's the group's first recorded effort, and it's not bad. They credit Free Indeed as inspiration, and there's certainly some FI influence in the music. It's a little lite, only eight tracks and 26 minutes of music, but at least the price was lite too -- just $10 from the place I ordered it.
It was worth every dime if for no other reason than the song Someday, a standard at WCYC and a favorite song of one of my favorite people, Roger Dunnam, who has counseled there since I was a camper. One day I'll write in this forum more about Roger, which I can easily get away with because Roger's a technophobe. He has no computer, and will never see this blog. But I'll refrain from posting about Roger until I can get a good picture of him to include with the post.
At any rate, while I don't usually play songs on the blog before I get permission from the artist, I'm thinking that Northtown isn't likely to sue me anytime soon, so I'll loop Someday from Beginnings for your listening pleasure.
Enjoy.
Friday, October 28, 2005
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Blog this
I learned this week that a good friend of mine in Wisconsin, Gary Cleveland, has entered the blogosphere, and I'm adding a link to his blog in my links list. I encourage you to check it out.
Seems like Gary and I have been friends forever, but our relationship dates back only about a dozen years or so. At the time, he was directing the senior camp session at Wisconsin Christian Youth Camp, and I was putting down roots in Oklahoma City after graduating from OC a few years earlier. I was a camper at WCYC in high school when my family lived there, and counseled for a couple of years while in college. But when it came time to work for a living, with limited vacation time that you had to actually earn before you got it, it had been a few years since I'd been to camp.
The more I talk to folks associated with other Christian camps, the more I come to appreciate WCYC and often find myself in awe of what takes place there. Unlike most Christian youth camps, we offer a two-week session per age group. Many just offer a week. And unlike many camps, our staffs are 100 percent volunteer. From the director on down to the college kid scraping trays and running the dishwasher in the dining hall, no one gets a dime. That way, overhead is lower so more campers can afford the experience. I always get a kick out of seeing the looks on the faces of counselors at other camps when they find out we do what we do for nothing, while they're getting paid for their work, even if it isn't a whole lot of money.
The remarkable thing to me is that it takes a staff of about 25 to pull off a two-week camp session for 90-110 kids. Most of our staff work both weeks. You'd think that if you're asking someone to give you two weeks of their life for no money, you'd have a hard time filling up a staff. And yet most years I'm told we have to turn away some folks who want to be on staff because we simply don't have roles for them to fill or beds for them to sleep in.
I don't know if way back in the early 90s Gary Cleveland had to turn someone else away -- maybe someone he already knew and trusted -- to take a chance on some guy from Oklahoma whom he'd never met before. But because of that opportunity he gave me, some of my most cherished friends on earth are the folks who give themselves selflessly to that effort every year. It's hard for me to imagine who or what might be filling the void in my life had those relationships never happened. I'm not sure even Gary understands the significance of that gift -- that opportunity -- that he gave me.
At any rate, I encourage you to check out his blog, South Moon.
...
If you like gospel music and if instrumental accompaniment isn't a Heaven or Hell issue for you, I highly recommend Randy Travis' Glory Train, released this week.
I'll be seeing Travis in concert this weekend at Crossings Community Church, where he'll perform an inspirational concert -- as opposed to a country concert -- drawing largely from this new CD. On some of his other gospel CDs, like Rise and Shine, Travis sing songs with Christian themes. Most of them are good songs, but not necessarily songs you've heard before. On Glory Train, you get a good number of traditional and folk gospel songs you already know and love, like Were You There, Precious Memories, Are You Washed in the Blood, Precious Lord, Take My Hand, Nothing But the Blood and He's Got the Whole World in His Hands. In other words, songs you can sing along with the first time you spin the disk. I knew from the first listen that 13 of the 19 tracks from Glory Train were going to be transferred to my DellPod.
...
My stat counter service tells me that someone in Slovakia loaded wysiwyg on Tuesday. Twice. Cool.
Seems like Gary and I have been friends forever, but our relationship dates back only about a dozen years or so. At the time, he was directing the senior camp session at Wisconsin Christian Youth Camp, and I was putting down roots in Oklahoma City after graduating from OC a few years earlier. I was a camper at WCYC in high school when my family lived there, and counseled for a couple of years while in college. But when it came time to work for a living, with limited vacation time that you had to actually earn before you got it, it had been a few years since I'd been to camp.
The more I talk to folks associated with other Christian camps, the more I come to appreciate WCYC and often find myself in awe of what takes place there. Unlike most Christian youth camps, we offer a two-week session per age group. Many just offer a week. And unlike many camps, our staffs are 100 percent volunteer. From the director on down to the college kid scraping trays and running the dishwasher in the dining hall, no one gets a dime. That way, overhead is lower so more campers can afford the experience. I always get a kick out of seeing the looks on the faces of counselors at other camps when they find out we do what we do for nothing, while they're getting paid for their work, even if it isn't a whole lot of money.
The remarkable thing to me is that it takes a staff of about 25 to pull off a two-week camp session for 90-110 kids. Most of our staff work both weeks. You'd think that if you're asking someone to give you two weeks of their life for no money, you'd have a hard time filling up a staff. And yet most years I'm told we have to turn away some folks who want to be on staff because we simply don't have roles for them to fill or beds for them to sleep in.
I don't know if way back in the early 90s Gary Cleveland had to turn someone else away -- maybe someone he already knew and trusted -- to take a chance on some guy from Oklahoma whom he'd never met before. But because of that opportunity he gave me, some of my most cherished friends on earth are the folks who give themselves selflessly to that effort every year. It's hard for me to imagine who or what might be filling the void in my life had those relationships never happened. I'm not sure even Gary understands the significance of that gift -- that opportunity -- that he gave me.
At any rate, I encourage you to check out his blog, South Moon.
...
If you like gospel music and if instrumental accompaniment isn't a Heaven or Hell issue for you, I highly recommend Randy Travis' Glory Train, released this week.
I'll be seeing Travis in concert this weekend at Crossings Community Church, where he'll perform an inspirational concert -- as opposed to a country concert -- drawing largely from this new CD. On some of his other gospel CDs, like Rise and Shine, Travis sing songs with Christian themes. Most of them are good songs, but not necessarily songs you've heard before. On Glory Train, you get a good number of traditional and folk gospel songs you already know and love, like Were You There, Precious Memories, Are You Washed in the Blood, Precious Lord, Take My Hand, Nothing But the Blood and He's Got the Whole World in His Hands. In other words, songs you can sing along with the first time you spin the disk. I knew from the first listen that 13 of the 19 tracks from Glory Train were going to be transferred to my DellPod.
...
My stat counter service tells me that someone in Slovakia loaded wysiwyg on Tuesday. Twice. Cool.
Friday, October 21, 2005
Housewares and lingerie
A woman's place is in the kitchen. Well, when she's not in the bedroom, anyway.
Now, if this was my opinion, it would be even easier for you to understand why I'm still single. And you'd have some choice words for me, I'm sure.
But it's not my opinion. It's apparently the opinion of retailer J.C. Penney. Stick with me here and I'll explain it.
I was working today on a feature about a dinner for needy folks the local Catholic church sponsors once a month. One of my sources for the story, who works outside her home, called me from her job at the aforementioned retailer. But I was in the car, driving back to the office, and I asked if I could call her back when I got to my desk.
So when I got back to the office, I dialed the number: (405) 755-5500. No one at Penney's was available to answer my call, so I got the dreaded automated message/extension prompt system:
"For the salon, press one.
"For the catalog or credit departments, press two
"For the home or children's departments, press three
"For housewares or lingerie, dial extension 268..."
Huh? Housewares or lingerie? What? Are they in the same department or something? So if I go to the store and ask a sales person to point me to the food processors, I guess he or she will say something like this: "follow this carpet all the way to the next wall and take a left. You'll find our complete line of KitchenAid small appliances off to the left, right next to the red lace teddies."
I'm not making this message thing up, lest you think I would take creative liberties with the facts on wysiwyg. Call the number if you don't believe me. Best to wait until after store hours to make sure you get the recorded system. Otherwise, there's a slight chance a real employee might answer the phone. Then you'll have the awkward task of explaining to that person that you really wanted to hear the recorded message and can she transfer you to it or do you need to hang up and call again? Been there, done that when I called back to make sure I wasn't hallucinating on Diet Dr. Pepper the first time I heard the message.
Thing is, it's not like they couldn't group the lingerie, at least for the purposes of their phone message, with the women's department. And they do have one, because the rest of the message goes like this:
"For the women's department, press four
"For custom decorating, press five
"For the men's department, press six
"For shoes, press eight,
"For all other calls, yada yada yada..."
Wouldn't you think that lingerie would fall under the domain of the women's department? I mean, absent the male members of the Boy George or Michael Jackson fan clubs and guys who think Texas Hold Em is a sport, women tend to be the primary consumers of lingerie. But even men buy kitchen appliances.
Old stereotypes die hard, I guess. Now if I could just find some sweet young thang to fill my pipe, and then go fetch my slippers....
Now, if this was my opinion, it would be even easier for you to understand why I'm still single. And you'd have some choice words for me, I'm sure.
But it's not my opinion. It's apparently the opinion of retailer J.C. Penney. Stick with me here and I'll explain it.
I was working today on a feature about a dinner for needy folks the local Catholic church sponsors once a month. One of my sources for the story, who works outside her home, called me from her job at the aforementioned retailer. But I was in the car, driving back to the office, and I asked if I could call her back when I got to my desk.
So when I got back to the office, I dialed the number: (405) 755-5500. No one at Penney's was available to answer my call, so I got the dreaded automated message/extension prompt system:
"For the salon, press one.
"For the catalog or credit departments, press two
"For the home or children's departments, press three
"For housewares or lingerie, dial extension 268..."
Huh? Housewares or lingerie? What? Are they in the same department or something? So if I go to the store and ask a sales person to point me to the food processors, I guess he or she will say something like this: "follow this carpet all the way to the next wall and take a left. You'll find our complete line of KitchenAid small appliances off to the left, right next to the red lace teddies."
I'm not making this message thing up, lest you think I would take creative liberties with the facts on wysiwyg. Call the number if you don't believe me. Best to wait until after store hours to make sure you get the recorded system. Otherwise, there's a slight chance a real employee might answer the phone. Then you'll have the awkward task of explaining to that person that you really wanted to hear the recorded message and can she transfer you to it or do you need to hang up and call again? Been there, done that when I called back to make sure I wasn't hallucinating on Diet Dr. Pepper the first time I heard the message.
Thing is, it's not like they couldn't group the lingerie, at least for the purposes of their phone message, with the women's department. And they do have one, because the rest of the message goes like this:
"For the women's department, press four
"For custom decorating, press five
"For the men's department, press six
"For shoes, press eight,
"For all other calls, yada yada yada..."
Wouldn't you think that lingerie would fall under the domain of the women's department? I mean, absent the male members of the Boy George or Michael Jackson fan clubs and guys who think Texas Hold Em is a sport, women tend to be the primary consumers of lingerie. But even men buy kitchen appliances.
Old stereotypes die hard, I guess. Now if I could just find some sweet young thang to fill my pipe, and then go fetch my slippers....
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Comfort food
When I don't have anything really compelling to say (do I ever?), I can always talk about food. It's one of my favorite subjects.
A Sunday evening supper routine at my house these days is chicken and rice, a dish that has evolved slowly over the last couple of years. I like it because you don't really need a recipe to make it, just some general guidelines. I like to tinker in the kitchen, and this presents endless possibilities.
It actually started, believe it or not, in an apple pie class I took a couple of years ago at the local vo-tech. I love pie. Don't mind making them, except I do have pastry issues. Never could seem to get the crust quite right. So I thought the class might offer some help with that problem.
After we made our pies that night and put them in the oven, the teacher started talking about the pastry recipe we'd made, and good ways to adapt it to other uses. Because Thanksgiving was on the horizon, he mentioned that a good way to use up all that leftover turkey was to make a turkey pot pie. A batch of pastry, a couple cans of Cream of Mushroom soup, a can or two of Veg-All and some turkey are all ya need, he said.
Well, I don't like mushrooms, and am fundamentally opposed to putting anything biologically related to athletes foot (both mushrooms and athletes foot are fungi) in my mouth. And I'm not much of a Veg-All man, either. The problem with canned mixed veggies is that the carrots taste like carrots. And the potatoes taste like carrots. And the peas taste like carrots. You get the picture.
But the discussion did get me thinking. The same concept could just as easily be used for chicken pot pie. Sub chicken for turkey, use the Cream of Chicken soup and buy individual cans of the veggies of your choice, and you're on your way. So I started with large casserole dishes of chicken pot pie, complete with a pastry top crust brushed with a little egg yolk and water just before baking to give it that wonderful brown color when baked. Now, if you're wanting a shiny surface on your pastry, you'd brush a little egg white and water on your pastry instead.
Later, I'd do chicken pot pies in little individual serving dishes with top and bottom pastry. The advantage there is that you can customize the pie to the consumer. My geezers like onions. I don't. With the individual pies, you can lay a slice on onion somewhere between the crusts, or drop in some little pearl onions with the soup and veggies, and the onion lovers are happy. Don't like peas? Leave 'em out of your pie, put them in everyone else's.
As for the chicken, you can buy some breasts, cook 'em and dice 'em up. Or, better yet, if you live near a Wal-Mart SuperCenter like I do, go buy one of Wal-Mart's rotisserie chickens already cooked. $4.88 gets you a cooked whole chicken, and all you have to do is take the meat off the bones. I'm all about convenience.
While I still make pastry now and then for pot pie, the meal evolved away from the crust as a time-saver, and now includes rice instead. Ladling some of the "filling" for the pie over plain old white rice works just fine, but take a walk on the wild side. Try cooking your white rice in chicken broth instead of water. Yum. Or, use brown rice or a wild rice blend.
Now I use a wild rice blend. It's a bit more expensive, but adds to the flavor possibilities. Since most wild rice has a nutty kind of flavor, go ahead and toss some nuts into the rice. Slivered almonds work great, but I suppose black walnuts or pecans would be just as good. Never had a pine nut that I recall, but I might try those one of these days. This last Sunday, I explored even more, adding some cooked barley and dried cranberries to the wild rice. Barley is kinda nutty-flavored too. It's very cheap, stretches the rice if you need to, gives you a contrasting shape in your rice bed, and is high in antioxidents and soluble fiber, I'm told. Dried cranberries are GREAT in rice dishes. I suppose raisins would be good too, if you're into those. As soon as pomagranites are in season again, I'll try it with that. If you don't own a rice cooker, buy one. You'll love it.
Anyway, chicken and rice makes a great meal. And it's cheap. You can feed a family of four for $10-12, and that includes the $4.88 Wal-Mart chicken. Give it a try.
A Sunday evening supper routine at my house these days is chicken and rice, a dish that has evolved slowly over the last couple of years. I like it because you don't really need a recipe to make it, just some general guidelines. I like to tinker in the kitchen, and this presents endless possibilities.
It actually started, believe it or not, in an apple pie class I took a couple of years ago at the local vo-tech. I love pie. Don't mind making them, except I do have pastry issues. Never could seem to get the crust quite right. So I thought the class might offer some help with that problem.
After we made our pies that night and put them in the oven, the teacher started talking about the pastry recipe we'd made, and good ways to adapt it to other uses. Because Thanksgiving was on the horizon, he mentioned that a good way to use up all that leftover turkey was to make a turkey pot pie. A batch of pastry, a couple cans of Cream of Mushroom soup, a can or two of Veg-All and some turkey are all ya need, he said.
Well, I don't like mushrooms, and am fundamentally opposed to putting anything biologically related to athletes foot (both mushrooms and athletes foot are fungi) in my mouth. And I'm not much of a Veg-All man, either. The problem with canned mixed veggies is that the carrots taste like carrots. And the potatoes taste like carrots. And the peas taste like carrots. You get the picture.
But the discussion did get me thinking. The same concept could just as easily be used for chicken pot pie. Sub chicken for turkey, use the Cream of Chicken soup and buy individual cans of the veggies of your choice, and you're on your way. So I started with large casserole dishes of chicken pot pie, complete with a pastry top crust brushed with a little egg yolk and water just before baking to give it that wonderful brown color when baked. Now, if you're wanting a shiny surface on your pastry, you'd brush a little egg white and water on your pastry instead.
Later, I'd do chicken pot pies in little individual serving dishes with top and bottom pastry. The advantage there is that you can customize the pie to the consumer. My geezers like onions. I don't. With the individual pies, you can lay a slice on onion somewhere between the crusts, or drop in some little pearl onions with the soup and veggies, and the onion lovers are happy. Don't like peas? Leave 'em out of your pie, put them in everyone else's.
As for the chicken, you can buy some breasts, cook 'em and dice 'em up. Or, better yet, if you live near a Wal-Mart SuperCenter like I do, go buy one of Wal-Mart's rotisserie chickens already cooked. $4.88 gets you a cooked whole chicken, and all you have to do is take the meat off the bones. I'm all about convenience.
While I still make pastry now and then for pot pie, the meal evolved away from the crust as a time-saver, and now includes rice instead. Ladling some of the "filling" for the pie over plain old white rice works just fine, but take a walk on the wild side. Try cooking your white rice in chicken broth instead of water. Yum. Or, use brown rice or a wild rice blend.
Now I use a wild rice blend. It's a bit more expensive, but adds to the flavor possibilities. Since most wild rice has a nutty kind of flavor, go ahead and toss some nuts into the rice. Slivered almonds work great, but I suppose black walnuts or pecans would be just as good. Never had a pine nut that I recall, but I might try those one of these days. This last Sunday, I explored even more, adding some cooked barley and dried cranberries to the wild rice. Barley is kinda nutty-flavored too. It's very cheap, stretches the rice if you need to, gives you a contrasting shape in your rice bed, and is high in antioxidents and soluble fiber, I'm told. Dried cranberries are GREAT in rice dishes. I suppose raisins would be good too, if you're into those. As soon as pomagranites are in season again, I'll try it with that. If you don't own a rice cooker, buy one. You'll love it.
Anyway, chicken and rice makes a great meal. And it's cheap. You can feed a family of four for $10-12, and that includes the $4.88 Wal-Mart chicken. Give it a try.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
I'll have the sushi, please
Developer Frank Battle was my red male Japanese betta fish.
I've kept bettas off an on for several years, and at one point had 23 bettas at one time. If you're not familiar with them, bettas are interesting because they'll live peacefully with other fish, but they don't much care for each other. Put two males in the same tank or bowl, and they will fight to the death of one or both of them. That in itself is amazing, because bettas have very small mouths, and as fish, they don't have arms or legs or anything else with which to fight. But the males have long, flowing fins — beautiful fish, really — so they fight by clamping down on those fins with those powerful jaws and ripping and tearing fins until somebody dies. A male betta will do the same thing to a female betta, except for those brief interludes necessary to carry on the species. But you can put as many females together as you want, and they'll all live in harmony. Must be a testosterone thing.
Frank was named after Frank Battle, a real estate developer who builds Wal-Mart SuperCenters for a living. I got Frank about the time Wal-Mart was negotiating with our city officials to build a second SuperCenter here in Edmond. Another interesting factoid about bettas is that they can live in very small amounts of water. In their native environment, many of them live in small puddles, I'm told. I've heard stories that they're shipped from Japan to America in a plastic bag with two or three tablespoons of water in the bag. That's not a lot of water for a two-week trip inside a carboard box, but the fish don't seem to care. Most betta bowls you buy only hold eight to 16 ounces of water, and that's enough to make the betta very happy, they say.
But Frank was special, because when I bought him, I put him in a 2 1/2 gallon tank, which to a fish is kinda like living at Micheal Jackson's place to a kid. He was named after Battle because his tank was to him the size of a Wal-Mart SuperCenter.
Eventually Frank was moved into even better digs — a five-gallon hex tank that I had some goldfish and other critters in. Among the other critters were two African dwarf frogs.
One of those dwarf frogs was an albino named Mayor Saundra Naifeh. I hope the frog was a girl, but I don't know. Naifeh is our mayor here in Edmond, and she's a blonde, like the albino frog. But the name is fitting for other reasons, including the fact that the mayor authorized the city to use public and private funds to buy a sculpture of a toad wearing a golden crown, which is prominently displayed outside our city hall, for some reason. I bet you think I'm making all this up. The mayor thinks the toad is art. Most of the rest of us think the toad makes us look like Six Flags over Edmond.
In reality, Saundra the albino frog was probably a boy, or at least he/she/it ate like a boy. The little girl at the pet store recommended I feed the two dwarf frogs shrimp pellets, which are specifically designed to sink to the bottom for bottom-feeders in your tank. Higher in protein than flake food designed for the fish, she said.
The average shrimp pellet is much too big for a dwarf frog to swallow, and they don't have teeth, so they can't exactly chew those up, either. So I usually have to break the pellets in two so the frogs can eat them. The other frog never took to the pellets, and is still alive and well, but the same size as he was a year ago. But albino Saundra wasted no time the first time I dropped pellets into the tank. She was so small at the time — and the pellets so large in comparison — that you could actually follow the pellet's progress through the digestive tract because of the bulge it created. I'm sure that first pellet had to hurt. But that didn't stop her from eating them whenever they were offered.
But the protien in the pellet made her grow. And grow. And grow. Grow to the point that she was a good 2 1/2 times the size of the other dwarf frog.
Well, as nature would have it, Frank died yesterday. Don't think he was sick, I think it was just his time. He'd lived a good long life in the Taj Mahal of betta worlds. I could tell Frank was dying when I got home from work yesterday. He had that "dying fish" look, which is not only noticeable by humans, but by other fish as well. It's not unusual in a community fish tank for other fish to help the process of dying along a bit when one of their mates is in that process. Nothing like kicking your friends when they're down.
When I came home from supper, I looked for Frank, to see if it was time to fish him out and take him to the big toilet bowl in the sky. When I found Frank after dinner, Saundra was trying to have him for dinner. Forget the shrimp pellets. She was having sushi. Frog had about the first one-third of Frank in her mouth and down her throat. Her poor little mouth was stretched as wide as it could go. I'm not exactly sure how the frog planned to eat this fish, since the betta was at least as long as the frog, and there would be no tearing Frank up into little bite-sized pieces. I didn't think it was gonna be possible, but then I don't think it's possible for a snake to eat a rabbit, either. Happens all the time, though.
By bedtime last night, Saundra still had Frank in her mouth, and didn't seem to be making much progress. But I figured she'd be much farther along by morning.
When I checked this morning before work, Saundra — like Frank — was dead, Frank still firmly entrenched in her mouth, with only his back half outside the frog's mouth. Not sure what happened, but I guess the size of the fish affected the frog's ability to breathe or something, and the frog was either unwilling or unable to spit the betta out.
I'm sure there's a lesson here, but I have no clue what it is. Even though the frog learned a valuable yet fatal lesson about eating sushi, I have to admire the little critter. She saw what she wanted and went for it, undaunted by the enormity of the task at hand.
Thanks for stopping by.
I've kept bettas off an on for several years, and at one point had 23 bettas at one time. If you're not familiar with them, bettas are interesting because they'll live peacefully with other fish, but they don't much care for each other. Put two males in the same tank or bowl, and they will fight to the death of one or both of them. That in itself is amazing, because bettas have very small mouths, and as fish, they don't have arms or legs or anything else with which to fight. But the males have long, flowing fins — beautiful fish, really — so they fight by clamping down on those fins with those powerful jaws and ripping and tearing fins until somebody dies. A male betta will do the same thing to a female betta, except for those brief interludes necessary to carry on the species. But you can put as many females together as you want, and they'll all live in harmony. Must be a testosterone thing.
Frank was named after Frank Battle, a real estate developer who builds Wal-Mart SuperCenters for a living. I got Frank about the time Wal-Mart was negotiating with our city officials to build a second SuperCenter here in Edmond. Another interesting factoid about bettas is that they can live in very small amounts of water. In their native environment, many of them live in small puddles, I'm told. I've heard stories that they're shipped from Japan to America in a plastic bag with two or three tablespoons of water in the bag. That's not a lot of water for a two-week trip inside a carboard box, but the fish don't seem to care. Most betta bowls you buy only hold eight to 16 ounces of water, and that's enough to make the betta very happy, they say.
But Frank was special, because when I bought him, I put him in a 2 1/2 gallon tank, which to a fish is kinda like living at Micheal Jackson's place to a kid. He was named after Battle because his tank was to him the size of a Wal-Mart SuperCenter.
Eventually Frank was moved into even better digs — a five-gallon hex tank that I had some goldfish and other critters in. Among the other critters were two African dwarf frogs.
One of those dwarf frogs was an albino named Mayor Saundra Naifeh. I hope the frog was a girl, but I don't know. Naifeh is our mayor here in Edmond, and she's a blonde, like the albino frog. But the name is fitting for other reasons, including the fact that the mayor authorized the city to use public and private funds to buy a sculpture of a toad wearing a golden crown, which is prominently displayed outside our city hall, for some reason. I bet you think I'm making all this up. The mayor thinks the toad is art. Most of the rest of us think the toad makes us look like Six Flags over Edmond.
In reality, Saundra the albino frog was probably a boy, or at least he/she/it ate like a boy. The little girl at the pet store recommended I feed the two dwarf frogs shrimp pellets, which are specifically designed to sink to the bottom for bottom-feeders in your tank. Higher in protein than flake food designed for the fish, she said.
The average shrimp pellet is much too big for a dwarf frog to swallow, and they don't have teeth, so they can't exactly chew those up, either. So I usually have to break the pellets in two so the frogs can eat them. The other frog never took to the pellets, and is still alive and well, but the same size as he was a year ago. But albino Saundra wasted no time the first time I dropped pellets into the tank. She was so small at the time — and the pellets so large in comparison — that you could actually follow the pellet's progress through the digestive tract because of the bulge it created. I'm sure that first pellet had to hurt. But that didn't stop her from eating them whenever they were offered.
But the protien in the pellet made her grow. And grow. And grow. Grow to the point that she was a good 2 1/2 times the size of the other dwarf frog.
Well, as nature would have it, Frank died yesterday. Don't think he was sick, I think it was just his time. He'd lived a good long life in the Taj Mahal of betta worlds. I could tell Frank was dying when I got home from work yesterday. He had that "dying fish" look, which is not only noticeable by humans, but by other fish as well. It's not unusual in a community fish tank for other fish to help the process of dying along a bit when one of their mates is in that process. Nothing like kicking your friends when they're down.
When I came home from supper, I looked for Frank, to see if it was time to fish him out and take him to the big toilet bowl in the sky. When I found Frank after dinner, Saundra was trying to have him for dinner. Forget the shrimp pellets. She was having sushi. Frog had about the first one-third of Frank in her mouth and down her throat. Her poor little mouth was stretched as wide as it could go. I'm not exactly sure how the frog planned to eat this fish, since the betta was at least as long as the frog, and there would be no tearing Frank up into little bite-sized pieces. I didn't think it was gonna be possible, but then I don't think it's possible for a snake to eat a rabbit, either. Happens all the time, though.
By bedtime last night, Saundra still had Frank in her mouth, and didn't seem to be making much progress. But I figured she'd be much farther along by morning.
When I checked this morning before work, Saundra — like Frank — was dead, Frank still firmly entrenched in her mouth, with only his back half outside the frog's mouth. Not sure what happened, but I guess the size of the fish affected the frog's ability to breathe or something, and the frog was either unwilling or unable to spit the betta out.
I'm sure there's a lesson here, but I have no clue what it is. Even though the frog learned a valuable yet fatal lesson about eating sushi, I have to admire the little critter. She saw what she wanted and went for it, undaunted by the enormity of the task at hand.
Thanks for stopping by.
Sunday, October 02, 2005
It's a marathon, not a sprint
Forgive me, bloggers, for I have sinned. It's been a week since my last entry.
I've thought about it some, but frankly, I've just been too busy catching up from being gone for five days. But now I can relax and post some random thoughts.
Today is the day my fantasy baseball team, the Sons of Thunder of the Fellowship Fantasy League, clinched the 2005 (human drafted) Championship. This comes after spending more than a month in dead last in my league early in the season. We took the human-drafted lead for good on Friday, and cruised from there. In case you're wondering, the team actually finished second, but the guy who won had his team drafted by the computer, because he didn't show up on draft day. So the rest of us don't recognize his championship since the program made his player picks for him. :)
The trip to Wisconsin did me much good. On Saturday night I stayed with Terri and Charley Rydmark in Tomah after I got off the bus. Terri and Charley are two of my favorite people in the world. Terri counsels with me every summer at youth camp, and I admire her heart for that ministry. Her sister, Julie, and her daughters Brandi and Tarra and grandfetus joined us for dinner along with Sue Foster, a friend of the Rydmarks' who worships with them in Tomah.
Julie is the camp nurse during my session, and Brandi and Tarra are former campers. Actually, we've had this long-standing joke about calling ourselves by titles, rather than names. Because I'm a reporter, I'm known as "he who writes for the newspaper." Julie is "nurse." Terri is "the nurse's sister who is also a nurse," because she too, is in fact a nurse, just not at camp. Brandi would be "the nurse's daughter and nurse's niece who is an EMT and wants to be a nurse." Tarra's a bit tricky, because she's also a nurse's daughter and niece, but she has no desire that I'm aware of to be a nurse. But we can still work her in, because she's eight months pregnant. So I guess that makes her the "nurse's daughter and nurse's niece who soon will nurse." Works for me.
Anyway, dinner Saturday was a wonderful time. The food was good, and the company was better. Julie and Terri are typical sisters. And they have some stories to tell, for sure. We laughed even more than we ate. It meant a lot to me to have Julie and the girls come in to see me that night since I didn't get to see them over the summer.
I always enjoy worshipping at the Tomah Church of Christ once a year when I'm up that way. The difference between it and my church here in Oklahoma City is refreshing in a way, but it also makes me appreciate what I have here at home. It's a small church, 50 or so folks including children, which is considerably smaller than Wilshire. They've been between preachers for more than a year now, so the men of the congregation have to step up and get it done until a full-time guy gets there. It's very relaxed there. The preacher du jour used an interesting illustration about dog poo in brownies, which is an illustration I'm not likely to hear here in Oklahoma City. So I remember it. I'm sure you're wondering, unless you've already heard it. Essentially, two siblings wanted to go see a new movie, except that it was rated "R," which they're not allowed to watch. So they try to reason with dad that there's only a little bit of bad language, only a little sex...otherwise, the rest of the movie is good. So the next day dad makes them some brownies. But these aren't your typical brownies. Seems dad went outside to the yard, picked up a little dog poo out of the grass, and mixed it in the batter. The dad tells the kids they can go see the movie -- but only after they eat the poo-laced brownies. "It's only a little bit of poo," he says. At any rate, you get the point. They pass on the brownies and the movie. Ward Cleaver wins again.
Church also was neat because during communion, Terri and Charley hummed Twila Paris' Lamb of God. Where I'm at today, I tend to believe the theory that our observance of the Supper should be celebratory, not a mourning atmosphere. So listening to them hum when otherwise you'd hear only silence was refreshing.
The preacher's retreat itself was pretty good. Probably safe to say I didn't get from it what the preachers got, but I got what I needed. So it was worth the trip. Got to see some longtime friends who are like family to me, and got to spend some time by myself at Hilltops of Glory, one of our devo sites.
Didn't meet anyone like Jessica on the bus ride home. The buses were more empty than on the way up, so I didn't have to share a seat with anyone, except for the stretch from Chicago to St. Louis.
I'll post more down the road. Thanks for stopping by.
I've thought about it some, but frankly, I've just been too busy catching up from being gone for five days. But now I can relax and post some random thoughts.
Today is the day my fantasy baseball team, the Sons of Thunder of the Fellowship Fantasy League, clinched the 2005 (human drafted) Championship. This comes after spending more than a month in dead last in my league early in the season. We took the human-drafted lead for good on Friday, and cruised from there. In case you're wondering, the team actually finished second, but the guy who won had his team drafted by the computer, because he didn't show up on draft day. So the rest of us don't recognize his championship since the program made his player picks for him. :)
The trip to Wisconsin did me much good. On Saturday night I stayed with Terri and Charley Rydmark in Tomah after I got off the bus. Terri and Charley are two of my favorite people in the world. Terri counsels with me every summer at youth camp, and I admire her heart for that ministry. Her sister, Julie, and her daughters Brandi and Tarra and grandfetus joined us for dinner along with Sue Foster, a friend of the Rydmarks' who worships with them in Tomah.
Julie is the camp nurse during my session, and Brandi and Tarra are former campers. Actually, we've had this long-standing joke about calling ourselves by titles, rather than names. Because I'm a reporter, I'm known as "he who writes for the newspaper." Julie is "nurse." Terri is "the nurse's sister who is also a nurse," because she too, is in fact a nurse, just not at camp. Brandi would be "the nurse's daughter and nurse's niece who is an EMT and wants to be a nurse." Tarra's a bit tricky, because she's also a nurse's daughter and niece, but she has no desire that I'm aware of to be a nurse. But we can still work her in, because she's eight months pregnant. So I guess that makes her the "nurse's daughter and nurse's niece who soon will nurse." Works for me.
Anyway, dinner Saturday was a wonderful time. The food was good, and the company was better. Julie and Terri are typical sisters. And they have some stories to tell, for sure. We laughed even more than we ate. It meant a lot to me to have Julie and the girls come in to see me that night since I didn't get to see them over the summer.
I always enjoy worshipping at the Tomah Church of Christ once a year when I'm up that way. The difference between it and my church here in Oklahoma City is refreshing in a way, but it also makes me appreciate what I have here at home. It's a small church, 50 or so folks including children, which is considerably smaller than Wilshire. They've been between preachers for more than a year now, so the men of the congregation have to step up and get it done until a full-time guy gets there. It's very relaxed there. The preacher du jour used an interesting illustration about dog poo in brownies, which is an illustration I'm not likely to hear here in Oklahoma City. So I remember it. I'm sure you're wondering, unless you've already heard it. Essentially, two siblings wanted to go see a new movie, except that it was rated "R," which they're not allowed to watch. So they try to reason with dad that there's only a little bit of bad language, only a little sex...otherwise, the rest of the movie is good. So the next day dad makes them some brownies. But these aren't your typical brownies. Seems dad went outside to the yard, picked up a little dog poo out of the grass, and mixed it in the batter. The dad tells the kids they can go see the movie -- but only after they eat the poo-laced brownies. "It's only a little bit of poo," he says. At any rate, you get the point. They pass on the brownies and the movie. Ward Cleaver wins again.
Church also was neat because during communion, Terri and Charley hummed Twila Paris' Lamb of God. Where I'm at today, I tend to believe the theory that our observance of the Supper should be celebratory, not a mourning atmosphere. So listening to them hum when otherwise you'd hear only silence was refreshing.
The preacher's retreat itself was pretty good. Probably safe to say I didn't get from it what the preachers got, but I got what I needed. So it was worth the trip. Got to see some longtime friends who are like family to me, and got to spend some time by myself at Hilltops of Glory, one of our devo sites.
Didn't meet anyone like Jessica on the bus ride home. The buses were more empty than on the way up, so I didn't have to share a seat with anyone, except for the stretch from Chicago to St. Louis.
I'll post more down the road. Thanks for stopping by.
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