ok so the month of august came and went... and I never came back to tell you all why I was feeling better.
the big thing is my dog is back with me, he is my best friend and the months without him sucked immensely. Also my psychotic family situation is starting to settle down, my brother is getting the treatment he needs for the surgical wound his back that still hasn't healed right nearly 8 months post op, and my father is seeing a specialist for his melanoma... and he's got a good chance at coming out of it in one piece if he follows through with his therapy. My mother is still batshit crazy, but that's not going to change.
Had a little bit of drama at work... I admit being at fault, but I refuse to let it get under my skin, I've apologized to the people I pissed off, and time will tell if any grudges are held... I have a feeling there's a lot more bad feelings coming my way since the girls I ticked off got 2/3 of their hours cut and mine tripled.. I understand that they're starting classes again and I'm not, but that's a big cut... I'm not going to complain though, not in the least, I just need to brace for bitchiness.
Speaking of work... I've been learning more about species I was less familiar with, and have really taken a keen interest in the Hippocampus genus, seahorses. I started learning because they're a popular item among a sizable cult of our customers, and I was sick of knowing less than they did, but once I learned more about them, their social behaviors and biology I was hooked. Shortly after I educated myself we got in a shipment of 4" wild caught horses that were supposed to be captive raised... that's a whole other issue I'll get into in a minute, but these horses came in horrible, emaciated, and everyone was pretty sure they were going to die slowly of starvation. I made a personal goal of it to save as many of them as I could and actually managed to get the whole group trained to take frozen mysis... In plain english that's just fucking amazing. Unfortunately in the process of training them I made the same mistake I made when I trained my puffer to hand feed, I got attached, I think that all of my paternal instinct is geared towards animals.
So I took them home... I have a bunch of pictures of them in a new gallery in my pics tab, but I'll put a few on here for you types who need instant gratification.
for those interested, the yellow smoother skinned ones are H. reidi, and the black/grey spiky one is a H. erectus
It probably doesn't mean much to people who haven't witnessed how strong the social bonds that develop between these creatures, but both of these species are endangered in the wild, primarily because of traditional Chinese "pharmaceutical" companies harvesting them by the million to be slaughtered, ground into paste, and used as a cure for whatever nonsense their ancestors decided "dragon" parts could be used to invoke. The ecological double standard here really pisses me off, because both of these species are so heavily threatened by illegal harvest for this industry they may be wiped out in the wild, yet they've stopped killing pandas for their gall bladders. The aquarium trade is damaging in and of itself, and I am part of that industry so I'm passing judgment carefully here, but aquarium specimens can be responsibly bred in captivity, but there is simply no way in hell every man in china with a few extra bucks in his pocket can consume a seahorse to fix whatever his medicine man thinks is wrong with his chi every time he feels like it in a sustainable manner... but enough ranting about the chinese eating the wild populations of everything they can catch.. I don't want to get started on their turtle consumption...
so yeah, hell of an update, my dog is back, some things are better, drama at work, and I'm angry about seahorses.
the big thing is my dog is back with me, he is my best friend and the months without him sucked immensely. Also my psychotic family situation is starting to settle down, my brother is getting the treatment he needs for the surgical wound his back that still hasn't healed right nearly 8 months post op, and my father is seeing a specialist for his melanoma... and he's got a good chance at coming out of it in one piece if he follows through with his therapy. My mother is still batshit crazy, but that's not going to change.
Had a little bit of drama at work... I admit being at fault, but I refuse to let it get under my skin, I've apologized to the people I pissed off, and time will tell if any grudges are held... I have a feeling there's a lot more bad feelings coming my way since the girls I ticked off got 2/3 of their hours cut and mine tripled.. I understand that they're starting classes again and I'm not, but that's a big cut... I'm not going to complain though, not in the least, I just need to brace for bitchiness.
Speaking of work... I've been learning more about species I was less familiar with, and have really taken a keen interest in the Hippocampus genus, seahorses. I started learning because they're a popular item among a sizable cult of our customers, and I was sick of knowing less than they did, but once I learned more about them, their social behaviors and biology I was hooked. Shortly after I educated myself we got in a shipment of 4" wild caught horses that were supposed to be captive raised... that's a whole other issue I'll get into in a minute, but these horses came in horrible, emaciated, and everyone was pretty sure they were going to die slowly of starvation. I made a personal goal of it to save as many of them as I could and actually managed to get the whole group trained to take frozen mysis... In plain english that's just fucking amazing. Unfortunately in the process of training them I made the same mistake I made when I trained my puffer to hand feed, I got attached, I think that all of my paternal instinct is geared towards animals.
So I took them home... I have a bunch of pictures of them in a new gallery in my pics tab, but I'll put a few on here for you types who need instant gratification.
for those interested, the yellow smoother skinned ones are H. reidi, and the black/grey spiky one is a H. erectus
It probably doesn't mean much to people who haven't witnessed how strong the social bonds that develop between these creatures, but both of these species are endangered in the wild, primarily because of traditional Chinese "pharmaceutical" companies harvesting them by the million to be slaughtered, ground into paste, and used as a cure for whatever nonsense their ancestors decided "dragon" parts could be used to invoke. The ecological double standard here really pisses me off, because both of these species are so heavily threatened by illegal harvest for this industry they may be wiped out in the wild, yet they've stopped killing pandas for their gall bladders. The aquarium trade is damaging in and of itself, and I am part of that industry so I'm passing judgment carefully here, but aquarium specimens can be responsibly bred in captivity, but there is simply no way in hell every man in china with a few extra bucks in his pocket can consume a seahorse to fix whatever his medicine man thinks is wrong with his chi every time he feels like it in a sustainable manner... but enough ranting about the chinese eating the wild populations of everything they can catch.. I don't want to get started on their turtle consumption...
so yeah, hell of an update, my dog is back, some things are better, drama at work, and I'm angry about seahorses.