Freak Magnet Dave

Thank God!
It's two days before Christmas and my last day at work until after the New Year. Everything is done here that needs to be done for Christmas, so I have time to kick back, relax a bit and wait for customers to come in to pick up their orders. There are a couple of pieces I could work on that are due in the new year, but I could really use the time to decompress. I'm sure I'll get bored in a bit and start working, but it's the thought that counts.

Which brings me to gifts (good segue, n'est pas?). Last night my buddy Xena came to the shop before we headed out for dinner as we always do on Thursday nights. She brought a couple of little packages for my business partner and me. She insisted we open them right away, so we did. Well, it was the funniest damned thing I ever saw. For Christmas, Xena gave me the Clap. That's right, she gave me the Clap. Gonorrhea. And she gave my business partner Syphilis.
See for yourself.

My business partner and I have always exchanged a little gift as well, and we did so again last night. He's an avid reader, and he loves all of the Gregory Maguire books which deal in strange twists to popular children's tales. He's the guy who wrote "Wicked". He also wrote "Mirror, Mirror", "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister", and a few others. Last year the BP got me "Wicked", as a group of us had tickets to see the show. He insisted I read the book first. Well, Maguire recently released the sequel to "Wicked" called "Son of a Witch", so I got that for the BP this year. I hadn't heard him talk of it at all, so I figured he must not have it yet or perhaps not even know it exists.

So we exchanged gifts last night, he unwrapped his and looked at the title with a chuckle.
"You don't have it already, do you?" I asked.
"No, I don't," he replied with a strange hesitation to his voice.
"Cool, because I was thinking you might have already picked it up."
I unwrapped the large box he gave me, and inside that was another wrapped package. I unwrapped that package, and there it was. "Son of a Witch".
We got each other the exact same thing for Christmas! I guess he actually did already pick it up. But he picked it up for me. How bizarre. We have known each other way too long. Xena thought it was absolutely hilarious. Well I guess it is actually. Of all the things out there we could have bought one another we both decided on a book. Out of all of the millions of books out there, we get the same one. And neither of us have ever mentioned it. It's a small, freaky world.

Tonight I can finally bring The Squeeze's gifts home. I've been hiding them here at the shop until I got them all wrapped yesterday, but I didn't want to leave them in the car last night while we were out for dinner in case someone broke into the car and swiped them. Holiday paranoia. Sadly, they are all wrapped in the same paper. Very nice paper, mind you, but we did have a few different rolls here. I guess BP took the others home to wrap his gifts.

So I heard from Weezie (the baby momma) on Wednesday night. Everything is going along fine with the little peanut. It will be ten weeks on the 24th since Weezie was injected with the junk, and the little baby in progress is doing quite nicely. She's been getting ultrasounds every two weeks. Because she lost the baby she was carrying last year, the doctors just want to keep a close eye on her to make sure everying is ok. She said that you can see arms & legs developing. From the top of his/her head to his/her bum, it's about two inches. Add on the legs and you've probably got a good three inches or more going on in there. When I told The Squeeze, he got all verklempt and teary-eyed. He's so cute :o)

I mentioned the aquarium ordeal recently. Things are coming along nicely. Or going out of control...depends on who you talk to. I started out with 6 fish. A male & female Gourami, a gold barb, a sunset platy, a red wag platy and a red wag sword. Well about a week after getting them, the red wag platy wasn't looking so hot. A few fish were acting weird. That night, the red wag platy was dead. The next day the red wag sword was dead, the day after that the sunset platy was dead. I was running a death tank. Something that nobody ever mentioned was that it would be a good idea to test the water parameters. The what? Exactly. So I got a test kit. The ammonia was just a titch high, the nitrites were brutally high, the nitrates were a bit high, pH was fine. I guess I kinda jumped the gun and added the fish before the tank biologically cycled. Oops. I've learned my lesson. I'm becoming quite adept at fish husbandry. All the parameters are where they should be now. I have added a few other species. A couple of plecos to eat algae, a cory cat to scavenge the gravel, a couple of cardinal tetras and a gold ram. Aside from a bit of agression between a couple of the inhabitants, things are coming along swimmingly. :o)

I've dealt with a case of ick, and have come to the realization that I should really have a seperate quarantine tank. So off I went to buy a ten gallon tank to set up to keep empty for the most part. Then I had to buy a stand for it. So now I'm feeding an empty tank to get the ammonia going, so it can in turn produce nitrites, which in turn produces nitrates to keep the biological filter going. It's quite a process to set up an aquarium so it looks after itself! Who knew?! Hard to believe that just a month ago I wanted a bowl and a goldfish or two. Now I have a quarantine tank that is much bigger than that original bowl I intended to buy. Sheesh. So far I've got two aquariums side by side. I'd love to one day have a marine aquarium so I can see the bright colours of the salt-water fish I admire in the shop every time I go in. I've heard that aquariums can be addictive. Some people I've talked to have over 60 tanks in their house. That's just crazy. Of course, I say that now...

Tonight the craziness of the holidays really begins. Right after work I have to hit the grocery store to pick up all the things I need for Christmas dinner at our place on the 25th, then I have to return some DVDs to Blockbuster and head home to make butter tarts if time permits, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't. We have a party to go to tonight, but I really wanted to get these tarts done to take to my parent's place on Boxing Day (the 26th). Saturday morning I have something to attend to, and that night we're going to a Christmas Eve party at the parents-of-a-friend-of-mine's house as he is home from Vancouver for the holidays. Maybe I can make them Saturday afternoon.

Sunday we spend at our house with The Squeeze's brothers and two nephews. Not sure if I've posted this before, but the brother who lives with us who was dating the Psycho-chicky is no longer seeing her. THANK GOD! She was nuttier than the much maligned fruitcake. She was a bit (and by that I mean completely) co-dependent, paranoid and well, just crazy. She sabotaged her own relationship with her strange fantasy life she played out in her head. Everything finally blew up at a church function she and the Bro-in-law were attending. Psycho-chicky had this idea in her mind that Bro-in-law was messing around with this old female friend of his that he has been nothing more than friends with for a long time. So this friend wanted to assure PC that nothing was going on with her and BIL. Well PC wanted none of it. Old Female Friend gently touched PC on the arm and said that she would really like to work this problem out. PC freaked! She told OFF to get her hands off of her, said that she was going to call 911 on her, started screaming and making a big scene. PC said that she has had it with the two of them carrying on behind her back. She's done with the relationship and she said that BIL and OFF can carry on and plan their wedding and enjoy their life together. Can you say FUCKED IN THE HEAD??? All of this took place in front of a room full of other church-goers. There's a lot to be said for psychotic medications. It just cracks me up that BIL has mentioned to PC in the past that she should probably see a therapist about her trust issues, her co-dependency, etc. but she insists that there is nothing wrong with her and that anything he thinks she may have is his problem to deal with. So.....her calling our house 15 or 20 times a day was him? She would always come up with these bizarre stories as well. She told him that someone came into her business to tell her to stay away from BIL, saying he was bad news. She told him that someone else came in and told her that they saw BIL at a certain mall walking hand-in-hand with another woman (OFF?). BIL just shakes his head at all of this because none of it is true. She just comes up with this stuff so BIL will do something to try to prove to her that he loves her alone. PC is basically trying to make him beg for her love. Well, that backfired big time. BIL is a really nice, gentle guy who deserves a nice sane woman in his life. All I can say is thank God PC won't be with us for Christmas! However, BIL said that PC has been sending him lots of e-mails, and I noticed her number on my call display yesterday. Please don't let this start up again.

Hopefully, all I need to contend with is The Squeeze's OTHER brother. He's a bit of a pill. His hygiene is pretty much non-existent. He breathes through his mouth....loudly. There are some odour issues. And he tells the most long-winded, yawn-inducing, go-nowhere stories about people we don't know that nobody cares about. Can you tell he lived with us for some time a while back? My patience for that guy wore pretty thin.

The next day we spend with my family. There's normally 25 to 30 people for dinner. My mother does it all. Martyr complex / control freak. I come by it honestly. As they say, the nut doesn't fall far from the tree. I'm trying to build up my nerve to tell the folks that they will be grandparents again. This might be the day. We'll see. I hope my parents won't make me marry her. The Squeeze would be pissed.

Happy Holidays Everyone!
or as we used to be allowed to say
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Be safe!