WE have acquired scads of tiny snails, a brittle starfish, scazillions of crabs ranging from 1/8 inch to 1/2 inch, and they are crawling all over. There was also a fuzzy chiton and several limpets, larger variety, about 1/2 inch. And 2 of what was billed as a ‘small’ fighting conch. Ha. One goes in the sump, one above: they’re the size of a baby’s fist. I’m used to 1″. But they’re fun: their eyes are on stalks, and they have an elephant trunk, at the end of which they have their mouth.
The rock isn’t here. We have 28 more pounds arriving. And of course now the tank is lousy with crabs, which we will have to watch out for while arranging the new rock: I’ve already had to turn a stupid snail rightside up, a chopstick operation. Some species can die if they get flipped, and apparently nerites are one of those. Ceriths can right themselves. You wonder if evolution works for snails…
And — the a/c is now fixed. Turned out when the guys installed the thermostat for the heater, in the winter, so they couldn’t test the a/c, the wire loop that connects the a/c to the thermostat post, broke. They didn’t see it, just slapped the cover on. So they were apologetic, and it was fixed in 5 minutes.
Other problems should only be that easy to fix.
(We had box turtles. Some of them had an easier time righting themselves than others. We tended to keep an eye out for flipped reptiles.)
How long are your chopsticks? Or put another way, could you use some truly extra long ones? I saw some very long ones the last time I visited the local Asian food market. You wouldn’t actually have to submerge your head to reach the bottom of the tank with these 🙂
If you are interested I can check them out for you, possibly on Sunday.
When greeting the Molluscan ambassador, it is probably *not* a good idea to sing “Clam Bake” from that Elvis Presley movie…. 😉
Somehow, I’m reminded of the crew of the Pride, getting one cabin ready with grass-cloth on the walls, and another painted white-on-white for the stsho. It must be time to reread the Chanur saga. 🙂
I’m *still* trying to master using chopsticks. I still feel like I must look uncivilized trying to use them. Every time I think I get better, I haven’t quite got there yet. LOL, but it’s fun trying!
I have. Once while at a Chinese restaurant I notices a lady having considerable trouble at the next table. As she left I offered the advice, “You must keep your tips together.” She must have misheard because her response was, “I can’t very well separate them.”
Nevertheless, “Keep your tips together!”
NOTICED! 🙁
Hold one like a pencil, and balance the other in the remainder of the hand. I’m good enough to pick up oiled noodles, or a grain of rice. 🙂
Actually now that we have the sand in I don’t have to go deep-diving the reach a snail! But thank you for the offer! Those ones are usually for cooking!
We got through the interview downtown—we were doing an interview to promote Spokane for the Worldcon Bid—cameras and all…
And went out for a steak dinner, no wine, just salad. We earned it.
I have seen some funny ways of holding a pencil…
TwentyThirty-some years ago I worked in a group that was all Chinese except for myself and our section leader. Needless to say we often had Chinese lunches. I noticed that almost everybody held their chopsticks differntly, and not as you describe. So I asked one of them about that. He replied “Your(CJ) (and my) way is the ‘Society Way’, but usually everybody figures out some way of using chopsticks by the time they are 4 or 5, and that’s how they do it the rest of their life.” And they all pick up the bowl and bring it to their mouth.So as long as you are getting fed, don’t fret it.
This linguistics item came by on a tweet: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/linguists-identify-15000-year-old-ultraconserved-words/2013/05/06/a02e3a14-b427-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story.html
A new theory about a Eurasiatic proto-language older than, and containing, Indo-European and six other ancient families. I wish I was awake enough to read the Journal artical.
Neato! Now if they could just find a way to make parents and children truly understand one another…
Interesting—I was hoping they would give some transliterated examples beyond the classic ‘pater/father’… There’s a study governing how accents ‘travel’ and mutate in the mouth over centuries or millennia, from back to front, and I’d like to know the sounds involved…
There’s (somebody’s) Law that sounds evolve from “harder” to “softer”, not the other way around. Hence Portugese is evolved from Spanish, Frankish (French) from German. Compare the soft French “g”, which we often render with “j”, and that hard “g” common in German. “Geography” and “garage”, have both, which is a little strange orthographically.
Thanks, all, for the chopsticks advice. I’ve found when I *don’t* try to *think* about it, I do better. The darn things tend to “travel” between positions, or I get a death-grip on them. Neither makes for elegant, civilized eating, lol! But I’m determined. I can hold a calligraphy pen fine. I can do the Vulcan salute with both hands. I should be able to master a skill that nearly an entire continent of people manage from early childhood. 🙂 — Hmm, I’ll get some long chopsticks for cooking. I’ve found chopsticks are really handy for some cooking skills.
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I’ll read that article next. Fascinating subject. Even our most basic words, like mommy / mama and daddy / papa vary from language to language. The ideas behind the words vary in significant ways. Grammar varies more than we’d think. — If they can come up with something that links further back, European, Asian, and maybe Middle Eastern languages … it’s a recurrence, maybe, of that “Ursprache” (Urspräche?) idea, without the religious overtones.
I’ve never seen much on Etruscan or Minoan. Apparently, so little is really known that it’s a “big stumper” of a problem. Strange that the Latins and Etruscans didn’t leave more bilingual texts, or that we haven’t found them, rather. It makes one wonder what else was there before the Indo-Europeans took over Europe.
Basque!
Errrm… Maybe I should have said, “Euskara”.