7 posts tagged “shark”

Garage sale finds:

1.  Grocery sack full of yarn, not more than 2 skeins the same color. Some will be used at school and my mom scabbed some.  $4.

2.  33 Star Wars pencils and one random Happy Halloween pencil, $0.50

3.  One 8'ft long inflatable shark, $3:
He's not as stripey as he looks.  The black thing is a handle to hold onto while you sit on him in the pool.  We dont' have a pool (although most of the neighbors do) so he will go to school and hang from the classroom ceiling :-)
Having decided that the ear thingees Apple sells with iPods are devices of torture, I went to Circuit City to replace them and found these little gems:
Then at Costco, I was perusing some book on wellness and decided that instead of just reading more of this stuff, I should DO something.  (I'm inspired by Travis :-)  SO I put the book down and proceeded to go to the checkout.  On the way out of the book aisle, I saw a lady wearing a T-shirt with a Bible verse on it.  Ezekiel something, I couldn't quite read it.  Now this is nice, except the bible verse was printed across her butt.  And let's just say there weren't many carriage returns in the verse, either, if you get my drift.  This just seemed so WRONG, but then of course maybe it's just me.

I later went for a run with the new headphones and yes they DO stay in place and yes they DO sound lovely and my left ear still hurts from the stupid iPod ear buds that came with. 
 

My new twitter name will be Stardiverr1, if they ever get it working.  My phone is verified there now, anyway. THe links on this page:

http://twitter.com/Stardiverr1

all point back here:

http://twitter.com/Stardiverr

Sigh.

The teacher from hell at school has managed to get a lovely article about herself in the teeny local newspaper for attending a workshop at NASA, to collect data and teach a class that she doesn't teach.  The article made her sound like superteacher, and pretty much implied that it was a wonder that NASA had actually been able to launch anything into space for the last few decades without her presence.  The entire staff is in hysterics.

Int he meantime, the aquarium was awesome last night.  I got 95 minutes in the shark tank and it was excellent.  Got a pile more sand tiger teeth, too. 

What a hell week, timewise.  I wonder if this will ever end?

Two weeks ago, we began a feeding program in the North Pacific.  I got to feed fish chunks to the large club anemones and to the wolf eels.  What a hoot.

Last night I was back in the South Pacific, to move sand.  The dang sharks shove it all off the upper exhibit display floor and down onto the back area of their We hook up a huge hose to a compressor that allows us to suck sand up on one end and blow it out the other.  So, we position the blower-end output where we want the sand to go and swim around with the sucker-end.  It sounds much easier than it is....... the suction is quite strong and you have to keep your gloved fingers in front of it to keep out the larger chunks - shells, (where did those come from?) and fish bones, etc.  We couldn't see anything, and neither could the sharks who kept bumping into us.  That was fun.  The usually-amicable white-tip was all over me as usual, bumping my legs and at one point laying across them.  Then he apparently wanted something in the pile of sand I was rooting through and head-butted right into it, moving my hands out of the way by shaking his head.  Okay, the vacumming job is a bit tense......  I sucked up more huge shark teeth than I want to think about, but I did manage to snag a few.  I have a photo, but Vox isn't letting me upload them and that pisses me off.....

Photos of myself (pink fins) and a buddy (black fins) are here:
http://s93.photobucket.com/albums/l42/Stardiver/PDZA_SouthPacific_10-06/

if for some reason the link doesn't work, go to www.photobucket.com and search for username Stardiver.  The album is South Pacific.

I just got back from the aquarium.  Tonight I got to move sand in the shark tank, which we do with a huge vaccuum hose.  We suck sand up in one place and it is transported to another place.  As it blows out where we want it, of course the viz goes to nothing, and the sharks bump us because they can't see us. 

The lack of viz in the tank was *nothing* compared to the blizzard I got to drive home in.  Of course now its tapering off...... Tacoma had at least 3 inches as I was leaving and I'm sure its much deeper now.  There's just a dusting here, but already schools are closing. We were closed today.  Several of us are to go to Seattle tomorrow for a conference.  We'll see.

So I'm cuddled in front of the fireplace with tea and the doggies. 

Stay warm :-)

This is a pitiful photo of our white tip shark. Note white tips on tail fin.

She is about 8 ft long, but seems much much longer when she decides to lay on your head while you are cleaning coral. She only did that twice last night. We think it's just that she likes bubbles.  Last night though,  she mostly just wriggled her way under my fins while I was kneeling in the sand to work on the coral. Then I couldn't move for fear that I would kick her.  I wasn't worried that she would snap if I did; I just did not want to be rude to her.