Personal narrative at its most insipid, jazzed up by profligate inter-text:

Whew, it’s Sunday night and I have been lax in my blogging efforts. There are several narratives running through my head right now. The question is which thread to pull on. I am in the phase of my life where I am very into fish. This began some years ago when I won a twenty-five gallon tank with a black cast iron stand in a poker game. Jonathon and Anna were moving to Florida and they had taken down the tank in order to give it to a coworker, they had two small sharks (which died when the coworker changed her mind about the tank, she pretended not to be home when they showed up with it at the prearranged time – they heard her say, “tell them I’m not here”- very odd). Anyway the tank and equipment was thrown into the pool for our regular game and I came out with the pot - so from soon thereafter I began learning the ins and outs of freshwater fish.

When I only had a few fish I listed the contents of my tank on a website, which still comes up when I google myself – I have many, many more fish than that now. Fish dork walking – we prefer the term aquarists. I will graduate to saltwater tanks someday, but it’s about three to four times as expensive to run salt tanks, and we’re not at that financial stage of life. When I first got my ten gallon going the fish guy offered me a salt start up for $110 – that was just for the chemicals and special high wattage lights that corrals need – when you do salt the whole tank is alive.

There are two new things on the fish front. One is that I have been playing with a ten-gallon tank that I have two South American Convict Cichlids in. The more dramatic new thing was the arrival Thursday of a new thirty-five gallon tank, with all equipment and a wooden stand. A friend of Angela’s overheard her talking about my fish obsession at work and he offered me the tank for the low, low price of nothing. He was just happy it was going to someone who would enjoy it. I got the tank Thursday on my lunch hour and rearranged the living room to accommodate it early on Friday night, before we went out to Tangerine for Beth’s birthday.

I was partially motivated to rearrange the living room as I came home Friday night to a power outage from the large thunderstorms that came through earlier that day. When nothing works, move objects for fun (Beth and Brad had had a three pm tee time, which was tanked by the arrival of said storms). Even though I rationally knew the power was out, every time I walked into a different room my hand went reflexively for the light switch, interesting the way some behaviors become unconscious as we integrate with technology. Walter Ong’s thesis about language as a technology is quite interesting, the way writing changes the nature of consciousness, if you ever have the time to read The Technologizing of The Word you should check it out.

So by seven it was still light out, I went and got Angela and we came back to meet Brad and Beth here at my place. The power was still out at seven thirty so I called Union Electric, “There are 200 homes in your area without power. We anticipate that your power will be restored by 1:30 a.m. If you have any knowledge about the reason for the power outage please press four,” not very comforting or promising given that Beth’s party was to commence here after diner. We made our eight p.m. reservations at Tangerine, which I had never been to in its current incarnation. I had been there last when I was in high school. My friend Nathan was a DJ there, only he had to bring all his own equipment. I think it was called The Galaxy Club, but I could be wrong, the memory has faded a bit on those years.

Tangerine was a good time, they have a great selection of Martinis, Vanessa met us there so we increased our number by one and proceeded to get silly. The drink menu is broken down into categories, beginning with the Rat Pack drinks, followed by the Beat writer drinks, margaritas, the astronaut drinks, the tiki drinks, and a few other sundries. Drink # 1 – the Sinatra – was a Bombay sapphire Gibson, a gin martini with pearl onions, in all circumstances my Martini of choice – easy. Brad, Angela, and Vanessa were on dirty martinis – heavy on the olive juice, though Brad’s was gin and the girls prefer vodka. Beth had a Sammy Davis – chocolate flavored vodka – far from pc, but very tasty. They bring you your martini and a shaker with the makings of another two – very civilized. We opted to share their tapas menu rather than have entrées, we ordered every appetizer sans ravioli and feasted well.

After diner and drinks we were back to mine for a fight the darkness party. I lit some cans of Sterno on the front porch to let the stragglers know we were in and Angela and Vanessa picked up tea lights. Hannah brought tapered candles and I produced a candelabra and a battery-powered radio for the local jazz station. Mary arrived with more gin and the usual smoke and story fest devolved into inevitable slumber around two am. It was a memorable night for a power outage thirtieth birthday. Beth wore black all day and made mention of it in her work day story of paper streamered office levity - which surprised me in that I was relieved to leave my twenties behind me, not that these ages matter, but I’ll never wear black to a birthday, each one is a victory of sorts, is it not? We accomplish the continuance of breath when so many do not.

On the morrow it was early to work, I had to work all weekend for complicated reasons relating to staff conflicts – it doesn’t happen often but it happens. I opened the center Saturday and worked all Sunday afternoon. After I worked on Saturday I went with Mary to Fairmont Park for my first exposure to horse racing and the 130th running of the Kentucky derby, but that’s another story, which I’ll get to later this week. I also got the new tank up and running Saturday morning with a water transfer from my twenty-five gallon (this helps speed the development of waste eating critters). The twenty-five gallon tank, which always looked big, now looks ridiculously small. My plan is to transfer all the fish in that tank to the larger one and move my Cichlids into the twenty-five gallon post snail-ectomy. We will then put the ten-gallon in the basement and raise fish food for the predators. Sea monkeys (brine shrimp) make for healthy freshwater carnivores.