The problem with the marine tank: first of all, Jane hasn’t been sleeping well—I heard her up and about at 4 am and got up to find out if she was ok; we got to talking editing, and I was half awake and feeling like crap…when we noticed the fish tank: most of the topmost corals were tucked in.
I ran downstairs to do more tests. The salinity read a proper 1.024. But I was suspicious. Real suspicious. My refractometer is from 2004, has a rusted pin that means I have to hold the top plate on by hand while I read it…
We had breakfast, and I tried to get a nap, no luck. The minute the local pet store would be open I was on its doorstep to get a hydrometer, a floating weighted wand that measures specific gravity and tells you salinity; and a swing-arm to do the same in its own way. Both instruments are notorious for bad readings, but I figure one can check the other. And I can make a swing-arm read. I was scut-help in a genetics experiment, a bigtime one, where we had to make a swing-arm perform…
Now, mind, .001 is a ‘safe’ rise or fall in salinity, for tank purposes. Sure, torrential rain dumps the top layer of the real ocean full of fresh water, but, y’know, the fish MOVE to get out of that.
I check the water that my refractometer says is 1.024. The hydrometer reads 1.020. The swingarm reads 1.030.
Crap. After several tests and the recall how much salt I’ve dumped in there over the last 2 days, I’m going to trust the notoriously inaccurate swingarm. Jane’s alarmed to see me banging the thing on the counter—but I’m being sure I’ve gotten all the bubbles off the arm I can locate. That’s how we did it in the bigtime lab. And I’m now willing to bet that we had a minor problem two days ago and corrected it in the wrong direction. It’s safer to rush a correction downward than upward. WE draw off four gallons of tank water and toss them, replacing them with hyper-filtered (ro/di) water.
By now the fish store is open, some 30 miles away, in Idaho. They say they have a refractometer. We head out—with a sample of our ‘corrected’ water…which tests, now, with THEIR refractometer, at 1.025, exactly where I like to keep it. (The safe range is 1.024-1.026) We get same, and we head home. And of course as we get there—the corals are beginning to open out and the tank is already much happier. We hit the perfect mark, blind. And now with a refractometer that isn’t falling apart, we can confirm it.
Meanwhile we’re just chugging along, each editing the other’s book.
I was still shaking come supper, but we’d ordered some chips back when we were not dieting: they arrived. Terra Krinkle-cut Sweet Potato chips. I decided we were too carb short, and we agreed to open one bag and measure what we took. One ounce is under 30 carbs. And that would be a good thing. It worked. We had supper, worked on Jane’s cover, and went to bed.
This morning started with a spoon falling and breaking one of our bowls from our main dish set as Jane was loading the dishwasher, but hey, it wasn’t our newest bowls. We’re both feeling better this morning. And we think we are now to a stage in this diet we could either switch over to South Beach or just incorporate a few of those chips. Or both.
Oooooooooooo love Terra’s sweet potato chips! Part of my regular wander-for-exercise around the local bigbox is past the Terra chips to see if they’re on sale. My favorite is the ‘Sweets and Beets’
We got a big box shipped in from Amazon: can’t get the krinkle locally any more. The straights are too thin and cooked too hard. The krinkles are perfecto!
Have you ever tried taro chips? Heavenly! (although I might not say that about poi, if you aren’t accustomed to it.)
Taro is a goitrogen and cooking/processing doesn’t neutralize those goitrogens 100%. Something to consider if you have any thyroid issues. I wish those Terra chips were organic or certified non-GMO….they do look interesting but are probably something I better stay away from. Chips are a weakness of mine (sigh). Besides, they are way too starchy for me to consider eating during anti-inflammatory ‘purge mode’. I stick with leafy greens, cucumbers, snow peas, onions and whatever other lovely veggies at Central Market yell my name when shopping and are on the ‘eat’ list. They have the nicest organic fruits and veggies (yumminess!).
Also, not that I’d ever consider adding a marine tank to the home tank array, but your trials and tribulations have reinforced that decision. At home, freshwater is my mode. This weekend I’m hoping to get a female Dario dario (scarlet Badis at the LFS) from a local fish club member. That fish has been a nemisis fish for ages….females are like GOLD (extremely hard to find). Here’s hoping for babies!
Have tried taro–not bad at all. 😉 but I still want sweet potato.
Freshwater is soooooo much harder than marine. Freshwater chemistry is a pita to me. WIth marine tanks you use ro/di, strip ALL minerals out, and use a salt mix as ‘dry ocean’ to restore what the fish/corals know in the wild. It’s very stable: I only have to intervene in the system normally once a month, to add more water, or every 2 months, to add more kalk (lime) powder, which at the right ph (alkalinity) and in the presence of magnesium (another additive which depletes over many months) supplies calcium in solution, which, with light and fish poo, is what the corals eat. Piece of cake.
WE have a little freshwater tank, for baikurs, who will eat anything else, except the big pleco they live with. 😉 I thoroughly root for you in your quest for the dario! They are pretty fish.
It’s funny to hear that….I just use tap water and conditioner for the most part for my freshwater tanks, unless I’m playing with finicky fish from places with either very low pH or African rift lakes. Right now I’m doing lots of guppies where the hardest part is the culling to maintain a strain. As long as I use the proper substrate when I set up the tank to buffer things, that’s MY piece of cake (grin). I did marine tanks when I was in grad school. Never again.
I have 4 male Dario darios right now. Fingers crossed the female I’m supposed to get tomorrow likes at least one of the guys. I have lots of little copepods right now for fry live food and the daphnia cultures are blooming (more teeny babies for food).
Do you frequent Aquarium Solutions in Spokane? I’ve not been there but the owner has come to speak at our local fish club. She’s apparently the regional go-to person for plecos. I just looked at their website and it looks like they do both fresh and salt-water….but not sure how well (wink).
I admit I’m more of a vertebrate fancier and am not that into inverts. That said, I do include red cherry shrimp in lots of my tanks. They breed readily in freshwater and provide live food for some of my ‘special’ fish. When I dabbled in marine tanks, I was primarily interested in fish although I did attempt some inverts and other stuff that was basically fish furniture to keep the fishies happier. It’s just that I find freshwater infinitely easier even though I pay my mortgage by studying dead marine fish parts.
Never have been there. For freshwater, it’s NW Seed and Pet—they’re an old fashioned feed store gone suburban. My whole watery career started at a feed store, when I was 6. Dad would always find me by the bowl where they had spotted cats and a ceramic grass hut. I’d stand there for hours, if permitted. So next birthday Dad got me a 5 gal Metaframe, a ceramic grass hut, a spotted cat and 5 zebra danios with cabomba…mine to take care of. Totally. And they all had a long career.
I hope you can replace your broken bowl. It drives me nuts not to have the “full count” of all the pieces in the set– like service for 8 but only having 7 bowls. If your dishes pattern is discontinued, you might be able to replace your bowl at Replacements, Ltd. They’re a bit pricy, but they have an astonishing array of discontinued patterns. When I die, I’d like to come back as one of your fish — LOL! It’d be the fishy equivalent of hog heaven. Or one of your kittehs. . .
Pattern? [lol]—I think it’s early Fred Meyers, our local discount house. I’ve given up on ‘nice’ china: you have to love it too long. I pick something that pleases me, and figure ultimately, something else will please me. So it’s an inconvenience, but not a tragedy. I WOULD mourn if we broke a saucer, which have the funny-kitty design. 😉
At one time, my local Kroger’s carried the Terra chips, two flavors, but I haven’t seen them in a long time. I might resort to mail order online. I enjoyed the mix of sweet potatoes, beets, and other unusual chips.
I have solved the whole bowl and mug problem by not having any of them match. Mine are all individual items made by other potters or my rejects. There is something very nice about drinking and eating from a vessel when you know the maker. The reject mugs in particular are great for wandering around the house and garden. I don’t care if they get lost or break!
I used to do that for Christmas presents, when I was an undergrad in the art department; individual ceramic cups of a generous size were always welcomed by my friends. When I went on vacation, I always made a point to look up local art galleries and see what was being produced. Once in Brisbane, I was nosing about a shop and picked up a mug I thought I’d like, and spilled tea all over myself. Turned out it belonged to one of the artists who was setting up a ceramics show. We had a laugh, and I ended up buying a set.
I had a nice (Japanese?) tankard shaped mug for 15 years or so, but made the mistake of taking it out of the house to a meeting because I wasn’t finished. It never came home. (I suppose when I left and was getting into the PU, I put it on the roof while getting out my keys.) Several years later I went to a potters show in Portland with the intent of getting a replacement (made, if necessary). Found Mark Hebing from Mill City was willing to throw a few to my specification–he was already very close in what he had on display. It’s tankard shaped stoneware, and large enough I can get my hand inside to clean out the accumulated tea stains from time to time. After I had done my own decoration based on an original haiku (Shakespeare meets the “Eight Oxherding Pictures”) and it had been fired (cone 6) I measured it. 20oz!!! Still, it’s there, so it gets filled to the brim every morning! 😉
Lol—for the first 10 years of my life solo, I got my china from the supermarket and my glasses were all from filling station giveaways: Bugs Bunny and the like. Now we’re a shade classier. I’ve moved up to the discount stores package sets. I started out with the notion of having an elegant table with fine silver and crystal, even bought a little—but then the cold hard truth dawned on me, that writers can’t socialize enough to cultivate friends who do dinner parties. We’re sporadic, erratic, and solitary creatures who don’t have much social life, by the nature of the beast—and my cooking is too spicy for most everybody we know closely, who have stomach issues. So we end up going out to the local pub when we do socialize. I fear an elegantly set table, despite all the teaching by my home ec teacher (required, alas, a complete waste of time: not one of the better classes I ever had) is just not in the cards for us.
Matching plates? Oh, you mean like having four salad bowls that all say Cool Whip on the side? 😛
I’ve owned very few “nice dishes” – I have hopes of inheriting the lone survivor of my mother’s wedding china someday (not TOO soon thank you). The rest of the set was pawned, stolen, broken by an overactive three year old…but one cup has survived for thirty years. Far outlasting the marriage, but still.
If I even had “nice china” I wouldn’t use it. I have a 13 year old son who can out-do Cajeiri for clumsy moments; and I don’t do dinner parties except once a year. Each year I give my tribe the choice: Octoberfest*, Thanksgiving, or Christmas. Only **one** of those is getting any special treatment as far as place settings and a fancy table. I might cook a huge feast on all those days but I’m not setting a table for all of ’em. Too lazy!
*We started celebrating “Octoberfest” a few years ago, deciding to have one day in the month for appreciating our family’s German roots. I’m aware that it isn’t actually a one day event! I’m winning a battle as it is, to get all these people to try new foods! 😛 (My tribe as I call it, the group that convenes for these big feasts, is about 12 people, none of whom are adventurous about their taste buds.)
If I were totally sensible, I’d get the all white, totally replaceable china from Ikea, always available, not too pricey—
But—I’m a sucker for ethnic, dishwasher safe, microwave safe, safe-color patterns —or humor. WE have the fat-cat pattern, sort of like the French-chefs motif, but with cats. WE have one pretty pastel Imari that sort of answers to good pottery, but it’s getting dinged with chips. Our bane is spoons falling off the counter into the dishwasher, and such accidents: it’s what got this bowl.
But I look on a broken dish as maybe an excuse to find some new brightly colored ones. Someday. When Freddy Myers gets in a pattern I like.
My kitchen has room for 5 sets of four bowls: can’t stack ’em higher than 4: we added extra shelves to get that much; 2 stacks of 4 saucers, 2 stacks of four plates. If we had to serve 8 we’d dragoon both sets into action and serve spaghetti. 😉 I have 3 saucepans, 4 skillets counting the 6″, the 10″ iron, and the huge T-fal and a grocery-store 10″ that came with the omelet pan. I have a stockpot, a breadmaker, and a rice cooker, and a blender. That pretty well fills the active shelves: we also have some random dessert plates and a raft of random coffee cups, stemware that doesn’t match, and some big steins from Budweiser—we don’t drink beer, but we love the Christmas steins, which do great for soft drinks. THat’s the kitchen. There’s about 5″ between long counters, food/cooking supplies and pots on one side, dishes and towels and such on the other. OTOH, it’s real fast to clean up or cook: I pivot from one counter to the other and a spider-reach lands anything from the dishwasher into its proper shelf above or on the other side. I rather like this travel-trailer style kitchen: it’s really efficient. It just doesn’t give me room for a lot of dishes. 😉
Totally off topic from pots and pans… You may be interested in this article: http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/orbis-the-stanford-geospatial-network-model-of-the-roman-world-models-actual-travel-in-the-empire/ —
which links to this longer article: http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/how-across-the-roman-empire-in-real-time-with-orbis/ —
and to the actual site: http://orbis.stanford.edu/#
Since you aren’t one of Orion’s Children (are you?) this may be the closest you can get to travel in the Roman Empire…
Interesting. I lived with those maps for many years. And the Rome city map. It was so strange when I finally did get to Rome for the first time, I exited the plane, took a deep breath, and instantly had my bearings. It was Fumecino Airport, it’s considerably removed from the city, but it was there. And after I got into the city, staying a block removed from the Pizza Navona, and with the bridge to the Palace of Justice visible down the street—I knew I wasn’t going to get lost. I walked to the Forum, to the Palatine and under it; to the Colosseum; to Hadrian’s tomb, and Augustus’; to the Vatican, etc, even the lesser sites, and always had this sense of not only absolutely knowing where I was, I could see the ancient city around me. It wasn’t a case of being in love with the city; it was a case of feeling perfectly at home…but not in the right century.
I hope they will show a recent BBC series for you guys in the US on the Romans presented by Mary Beard. she is quite eccentric, and great! all about ordinary Romans … 😀
I have a beautiful set of cream Mikasa with green and gold accents. Never use it. Well, that’s not strictly true. The shallow soup bowls are perfect for rolling cookie dough balls in sugar. They’re pretty good for dipping bread in eggs for French Toast too. But eat soup out of them? No way. That’s reserved for the black bowls from Japan, or the big blue fish mug, which can be drunk out of without spilling half of the soup right down your shirt (never mind getting your lace in it). Another point against fine china…when they designed those beautiful patterns with metals, they were clearly not planning on having anyone ever need to MICROWAVE anything. Luckily I haven’t been quite ditzy enough to put the Mikasa in there. The shiny turquoise foil-paint mug, alas, wasn’t so lucky…
We have a gaming group (RPG) that has been meeting weekly for years. Although one of our members has enough china and silver to actually do a matching set for all of us, in most cases, it’s either paper plates or completely mismatched. My personal preference is whatever Fiestaware I can find cheap. If I could find it inexpensively, I wouldn’t turn up my nose at the old sturdy white institutional/diner china either. I inherited my grandmother’s formal Corningware glass dishes, but it’s staying safely packed away.
About 12 years ago, we decided to set aside one weekend a year for total immersion — all RPG, all the time. We usually eat very well that weekend, although it is paper plates. The food and the company is more important anyway, as a rule 🙂
I too drink from mugs and bowls made by potter friends, it is very special, they are mostly wood-fired, some anagama too …. plates, nah, although I would love to be able to afford a set of wood fired plates by one of them … glass is all non matching antiques from my friend’s shop – bumbled into them filming BBC’s Antiques Road Trip there yesterday …. shop full of old ceramics and glass (we call it the chip shop) a lot very inexpensive, and very beautiful … (I don’t have a dish-washing machine)
LOL I have to laugh, as a pottery weekend warrior for the past 15 years (three hours, twice a week- cheap therapy!), I have items from many different phases I went through. The cat has her own hand made food dish, the bunny rabbits had their own hand made food dishes, the dog had hers, I have bowls and mugs and more bowls and oh, MORE mugs… Not to mention the gazzillion decorative doodads, bonsai pots, flower pots, tiles and coasters. Every relative I have has had pottery for gifts to the point where they just look at me when I hand them a heavy box… AND there are… (mumblemumblemumble) umm, a few (dozen)boxes of stuff stashed in the spare room. NONE of it matches. I even have a few pieces by other potters, but at least the canister set matches!
OK, have to ask this. I’ve been away from of your blog for awhile, family things, etc., but I see you’re started on your next book “Peacemaker”. As much as I’ve enjoyed Bren and crew, I’m starting to wonder if you’re ever going to write about anything else. Would love it if you’d go back to the world of the Merchanters. “Finity’s End” was published in 1997 and other than “Regenesis”, there hasn’t been anything in that particular genre since. Or how about Hilfy Chanur? In “Chanur’s Legacy” you pretty much left it open to a future continuation. Any chance you’ll do that?
If I do another Chanur, it will be for Closed Circle: DAW like every other publisher is under the gun from the shift to e-books that’s going on in the industry, and it’ll be a question how the market shakes out. I’ve done total rewrites on four of the fantasy works, for Closed Circle. Did not rewrite Heavy Time and Hellburner, just a tidy-up edit. And if Lynn and Jane and I can get the free time, there’s the ongoing 3-way planetary we’re giving away…so far…Seeking North. I’m far from idle. Right now Foreigner is the stability in the budget for both me and my publisher, but there is a possibility of other things once things settle down.
Thank you! I really appreciate your taking the time to reply and explain the situation, and I understand much better now. My budget, too, is beyond tight right now – learning to live on less than $1200 monthly in California is stressful, to put it mildly. So thanks… would love to read Seeking North if and when. Have read the first two of Jane’s “Harmonies of the Net” and really enjoyed them! Haven’t read “Intruder” yet, but that’s from budgetary demands not lack of desire.
Well, Seeking North is a free download on the Closed Circle site: we have a few. And…if you haven’t found http://www.gutenberg.org/ yet—give it a look: it’s not a pirate—they do copies of books out of print and apt to be lost. I love browsing there: it’s like one of the old Carnegie libraries, which had mysterious old books and very little in the way of magazines.
Wow, you just made my whole week! Checked out Gutenberg and loved it, book-grazing for days! Years, even! Many, many thanks for that link and the info on Seeking North.
having listened to and really enjoyed Cyteen the audio-book (of course I had read it at least 3 times before) am now in the middle of Regenesis (third time of reading) – I think we are eventually promised a third book of Ari, aren’t we CJ??? (wheedling tone)
actually if one just keeps re-reading CJ’s back catalogue, it is so vast and varied (Cuckoo’s Egg, Serpent’s reach, the Paladin, the Faded Sun Trilogy, the Gene Wars … some of my favourites, which always merit a re-read … (sorry I am a bit exclusively sci-fi :D) one hardly needs a new book!!! except the author does need to earn a living of course, which endeavour one totally supports …
Likely there will be another Cyteen: DAW does want that.
hooray! 😀