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i washed the bike before bringing it into the basement in preparation for the oncoming storm. the forecast calls for mostly rain in these here parts, but since i won't be riding, might as well put the bicycle away.

i finally disassembled my backup 10 gallon fish tank, which normally sits below my regular 10 gallon guppy aquarium. i had it running on empty for at least a few years even though i never used it. it uses a biowheel filter and i basically had it set up so i could keep the biowheel "alive" if i ever needed to use the filter. but it's pretty much a waste of electricity at this point, and when the water level gets too low, it can get a bit noisy with the dribbles from the filter.

while siphoning out the water from the tank i was preoccupied with cleaning out the filter in the sink and completely forgot about the siphon until it was too late and i had an overflowing bucket of water in the kitchen. fortunately i caught it in time and the water was clean anyway, so all i had to do was soak up as much water from the carpet before rolling up one corner to let it dry out overnight.

the other big job with disassembling the aquarium was dumping out all the gravel. this is special gravel i bought, specifically suited for growing aquatic plants. the clean-up took a while and involved a lot of careful pouring and panning in the bathtub. at least a 10 gallon tank i can lift up; anything bigger than that and i'm not sure how i'd empty it out thoroughly. i dumped the gravel onto 2 cafeteria trays so it can dry properly before i put it away in storage.

inspired by the exotic coins i saw yesterday, i went through my own collection. i'll post some cool examples when i have the chance. a lot of canadian coins, which i normally just toss in with my usual american change, but ever once in a while i'll find an interesting one and keep it. i also have a lot of coinage from central america, from parts of europe, and from asia. nothing from africa though, and nothing from australia (the closest is one from new zealand).

for dinner i made some pasta salad. i basically followed a recipe i'd done from 2007. instead of half a box of rotini pasta though, i used the whole box, and adjusted my ingredients accordingly. what i thought was cilantro turned out to be parsley instead. i think that led to the downfall of the recipe. even with the addition of the prosciutto, the flavor still fell flat. what i really want is a hot meal, not something cold. good news i have enough pasta salad to last me through the rest of the week. that unfortunately is also the bad news.