This last week SUUUUUUUUUUUUU…*pause for breath*…UUUUUUUUUUcked. Work just happened all up in my grill. Lotta fires to put out. I had to translate two ads into Hindi. Hey, guess what language I don’t know? If you guessed “Hindi” (or, frankly, “anything other than English, a bit of French and a smattering of Hebrew”), you would be correct. So a co-worker of mine who is Indian wrote it out for me and I built it letter by letter. Then, right before the meeting, they cut the Hindi ads because the people in the ads were Caucasian and OOPS no one had cared about the ads they provided me so all my work was for naught. And that was only one of a myriad – nay, a plethora of craptasks I was to accomplish. It’s been that kind of week.
Anyway, previous to this work hoohah, I went to visit Neenernator in New Jersey. I had bought her birthday and Christmas presents (I swear) but I couldn’t find them for the life of me, so when I arrived at Chateau Neenernator, I immediately took her out fish-shopping. I’ve talked about Neenernator’s fishtank before. To recap, Neenernator has a 110-gallon fish tank with a lovely collection of freshwater fishies, but lately it was a little bit sparce, being that the wee vibrant fish tend to die after a year or so and it had been a year or so, and I aimed to rectify the situation. I bought a whole bunch of neat fishies. I shall introduce them to you now.
There’s the two angelfish. They are clearly not the smartest fish, but they are very shiny so whenever I narrate their activities, I do it with a California-girl voice. “Omigosh, hiiii, yeah, we’re new here, I’m Caelyn, this is Alyssa…sorry, I didn’t hear you, I saw my own reflection in the glass…I’m sooooo pretty!” etc. Here’s a picture of one.
There’s the stripey fish. I call him Mr. Kissyface. I have no idea what breed of fish he is, but he is brownish and he has iridescent stripes on his very flat sides. And smootchy lips, hence the name choice. (By the way, I have no idea what Neenernator has named these guys. These are just the names I came up with that I call them.)
Now we get to the more-gooder fish. This guy has the best breed name ever. He is a short body flowerhorn. I am convinced that is a name from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, when they’re picking the names of the dragon they were going to do battle with. He’s a grumpy grumplepuss and would normally start drama with the other fish (the aquarium guy referred to him as “aggressive”) but he’s on the smaller side, and I think he is smart enough to realize that if he brings the ruckus, one of the fish that is double his size with bite off his already diminutive snoot.
Neenernator has blue lights in the tank that highlight the iridescent qualities of the fish, but this is what a short body flowerhorn looks like in regular light.
And finally, the piece de resistance, the teacup stingray. Yeah, you heard right, a teeny tiny stingray. There are ones that can live in freshwater, which I did not know. This guy is crazy precious, like a little doily that goes under your coffee cup, but also who likes to eat algae build-up off the walls of the tank.
And here’s a bunch of her fish hanging out in the same spot at the same time, which Neenernator managed to capture. That’s exciting, because normally they don’t do that.
