The Admiral came to us mysteriously late in the night a few years ago. He’d been living in a 20-gallon tank in Nish’s bedroom for an unknown amount of time. But when they moved out of the apartment diagonal from us they decided it was best that we keep their 3 goldfish, 1 giant placo, dinosaur eel, and of course 1 enormous Pacu. When we got him he couldn’t have been more than 6 inches long. He was really shy at first, hiding behind the back end of the pirate ship. Eventually he even figured out how to turn sideways and get into it. He liked the tank since it was at least 3 times bigger than his old one, but I think he still ate the occasional fish just because they were smaller than him. We called him Admiral Ackbar… after the Star Wars character. He grew a few inches in the time we lived at the apartment probably to about 8-9 by the time we left.

Moving him was a pain because we didn’t have the right size nets, but he survived the 10-minute trip curled up in a bucket. When we set up the tank at the Vienna house we took out one of the sides of the ship to give him more room. He liked it, he took to swimming really fast back and forth in the tank. When not staring at people he enjoyed gnawing on little plastic skulls that were floating around the tank. After deciding that he probably wasn’t getting enough food from the flakes that I was feeding the other fish I started feeding him floating pellets… and baby carrots. It was awesome to see him tearing apart a carrot with his tiny little teeth. But I think that more food and more space gave him some kind of growth spurt. Because he grew about 6 inches last year, he was longer than the tank was wide.

Since he was having trouble turning around I started looking for somebody to give him to, but who would take a giant fish? The Zoo? But then at the softball party I remembered that I’d seen a big tank at Broghan’s house last year. Turns out I was right, a 125 gallon, with plenty of empty space. He only had 3 silver dollars, probably about 2 inches each. He was really excited about it and after confirming that I wasn’t just telling him he could have it because I was drunk we set up a time to capture the beast.

So Sunday came and Broghan showed up with a 10-gallon tank and a giant net. This turned out to be really easy, we just scooped him up in the net and slowly put him down in the tank. He was really calm about the whole thing, it was eerie. But then as soon as he touched the water in the small tank he freaked out and splashed water all over the room. But after he figured out that he was in water again he went back to just sitting there. I hope he has fun the bigger tank and I hope to see him in a few years when he’s doubled in size… cause they grow to 2 feet.

later we set up the tank again and went to the store to get replacement fish. I made sure to get another pacu. So this day marks the arrival of Ensign Ackbar Jr. He’s 1 inch long and hides in the boat, must be a family trait.

Well it’s Wednesday again. Midway through the week a good place to see what we have planned for the weekend. And also since I never wrote anything about it, a good place to talk about last weekend.

We went camping in Shenandoah Nat’l park last weekend, it was a solid camping expierence. All the necissary elements were there.

Camping, check!,

Forgot important item, check!,

Burning sunburned flesh, check!.

Tubing down the river was awesome, not as cool as the James river but still good. there were more people and less cool things to do. There was a cliff to jump off of but it was really hard to get up to so I only did it once. to get up to the top you had to hold on to loose roots and climb up a rope. Not really what I expected, but still cool.

We’re trying to plan a day tubing trip again in a few weeks.

So this weekend we’re trying to have an end of summer-ish bbq and wiffleball game. Lets see how it turns out.

To pay him back for being the DD on Friday night, I told Jesse that I would drive him back from Adam and Amanda’s party in DC. Which turned out to be a really weird time. Have you seen Adventures in Babysitting? It was kind of like that.

Don’t get me wrong I had a really good time while we were there… Even though I did get bit on the arm for hoarding beer. I guess that’s my own fault really. There were the normal party things, beer, people dancing on tables, tequlia, Jesse asking people to slap him. But when we decided it was time to leave that’s when the real fun starts.

I’m going to make this short and leave out some incriminating details, but lets just say the story involves guys playing dice, peeing in the street, Melissa (random nice girl we met at the howard station), Random guy who just found out that his girl was cheating, people having sex on the blue line, thinking we were going to get trapped on the metro at 2am, Jesse puking, seeing a guy I worked with 2 years ago at Ruby’s on the metro at 2:30am… and Finally, Finally making it home at 3am.

A good time was had by all!

Stardate: Friday night. Wolftrap. PLAY!, a Video Game Symphony

We had gathered the nerdiest group of our friends that we could Jesse, Mark, Cristine, Dominique, and I for a night of nerd symphony under the stars. We all put on our dorkiest clothes, well all the guys did anyway. Mark had his “NPC” shirt, I had the Konami code, and Jesse… well he had the caRRRdboard shirt. We got there a little late and it looked like parking was going to be a problem, but suddenly a magical new parking lot opened up right in front. So we parked, got out the blankets and cooler and headed for the law. We arrived just in time, by the time we got all set up the show was just starting.

This is where I realize that there are people here that are much much nerdier than my usual crowd. The kind of people who get excited when they hear the name of the composer for Final Fantasy. Otaku… which means excited american dork in Japanese. I usually try not to look down on people… but they make it so damn hard. I enjoyed the music from Final Fantasy, Battlefield, and Shenmue, but didn’t really recognise it. They played the Mario Brothers music, that was really sweet. Also they apparently played Sonic the Hedgehog, but I couldn’t pick it out. The music from Halo was really the highlight of the night for me. It was cooler because the felinne center looks like something straight out of a video game. The next favorite would have to be Zelda, that really sounds good when played by orchestra.

It was a really fun night! I didn’t realize that Wolftrap was so close to the house, it only took 5 minutes to get there. We’ll definatley have to go again. The lawn seats were perfect… especially with blankets and coolers!

Later!

I love the new Gnarls Barkley album!

You know the one, perhaps you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about but you know the song. It’s the one with the high pitched guy singing “CraaAAAAaaaaAAAAAzy” over a simple beat. It’s freaking genious. It’s one of those songs that gets in your head and lays around for a while, trys on some of your clothes and then watches some tv. When you come home Gnarles Barkley will have a cold one waiting for you and you’ll give him a high five.

The rest of the album is really good too, it has a mix of pop, r&b, soul, and hip hop. Everything flows really well, Really hard to define because it bounces back and forth so much.

I highly recomend it.