it's harder to wake up on winter mornings specifically for the fact that it's much nicer being under the covers and warm instead of out about the house and cold. plus, today was a monday, so it's even harder to get out of bed. nevertheless, i woke up at a respectable time (10am) and started my day. that entailed going on a walk through the freshly fallen snow with bruce. we made it as far as the radcliffe quad before returning. back at home i shoveled my sidewalk along with my neighbor renee's sidewalk as well (if the tables were turned i don't think she would ever do the same for me, but i don't mind, it was just more exercise).

i'm worried about my guppies: the females appear listless while the males seem anxious and chase each other around the tank. i noticed one of the male guppies got his dorsal fin nipped. deciding that maybe the gender separation was causing too much stress, i took out the tank divider. the presence of the females seemed to calm the males down to an extent: instead of fighting with each other, they spent most of their time trying to impregnate the females. no wonder one of the female is sick.

the teenage male guppy is doing quite well in the minibow. safe from the dangers of the other adult males, he spends most of the time seemingly strutting around the aquarium like a rockstar. he's quite beautiful, and his dorsal fin is starting to get bigger and more colorful. once he becomes an adult i don't know what i'm going to do with him; he'll have to go into the guppy tank, otherwise i'm afraid he'll eat his smaller sisters and brothers.

the sick female is really not doing well and i'm starting to think whether or not she should be euthanized. it's a morbid subject but one that has plenty of suggested ideas online, anywhere from feeding to larger fish, putting in the freezer, or drugging to death with a special solution of cloves and vodka. she has no appetite at this point and her eyes have started to become dull. i decided to set up a hospital tank with my water change bucket and a spare heater (a hospice perhaps, but also to prevent my other guppies from contracting what she's got if it's contagious). it was taking too long to heat so i added some boiling water to give the bucket a headstart. once the temperature got to 74 degrees i added the sick guppy along with some fish antibiotics. i don't know if this is going to do anything. if she dies i'll be sad but one of the reasons why i decided to keep fish is because i won't get too attached to them. at least she will be survived by some of the baby guppies currently residing in the minibow.

a smattering of work from 2 clients, including a conference call where it was me against 4 other faceless voices. it might be another slow week again which is fine with me but things will pick back up in the month of march so i should enjoy the lull while it lasts. no paychecks in the mail today so it looks like plan b. a while back, when i still had money, my mother borrowed some from me. i didn't mind at the time, but now my bank account is about to be zeroed out so i need that money back. she wrote me a check for it last week but i didn't want to cash it until i absolutely had to.

with his boss away in paris for the next few days, an tao came home early tonight. we watched prison break and then 24, both of us preoccupied: he was reading an astronomy book while i was surfing the web. after he went to bed, i caught the pilot episode of the black donnellys on NBC. it's actually pretty good, something you'd find on HBO, about four irish brothers who embark on a life of crime. they're repeating it again thursday night for those interested in catching it.