1. Bought three neon tetras to share 10-gallon aquarium with Finley
2. Finley consumes all three neon tetras
3. Finley is exiled to the old aquarium sans air pump, fake plants or affection

4. Bought three neon tetras, two black tetras, three glo-light tetras
5. One neon tetra and one black tetra croak

6. Bought two neon tetras and one silver colored fish whose name I can’t recall
7. One silver colored fish whose name I can’t recall croak on the way home

8. Bought another Pristella (silver colored fish) and two little orange fishes

9. Neon tetra dies
10. Another fish dies and was removed floating on the surface (gross).

Aquarium worse. Got the old 2.5 gallon aquarium out of the garage and captured Finley and transferred him. Letting the 10 gallon aquarium run to see what happens.

Went to visit Mom over the weekend. Aquarium was cloudy when we got back. Drained and refilled about half the water. Just as cloudy.

Bought some stuff @ Petco which I’m hoping will make the water clear again within an hour or so.

Friday. Go visit Mom tomorrow. Stop and see the air museum. That sounds like fun. Take Mom out for brunch on Sunday morning.

You just don't need a bunch of stuff. Finally parted with those shells that were a mobile in Carnation House. After 25 years maybe I'm not going to get around to putting them back together. Just let them go. The Grateful Dead cassettes are looking like they may be next. Maybe I'll digitize them. Or not. Need to reformat the 18Gb drive out in the garage for scratch disk space.

Hook up the CD burner to move files.

Got rid of the 76, the 65... bought a new little white car. Cleared out a big mountain of clutter from where the computer desk is. Some progress. Cleaned out the big bedroom closet. No mounds of clutter in there any longer. It's so much nicer when it's NEAT and CLEAN.

Attempted to drop off Cassidy's kindergarten forms today, she needs a new set of shots. FUCK. Why wasn't that done previously??? We took her to the doctor...

That was annoying. Flynn is annoying. Cassidy is moderately annoying. Time to turn on the air conditioning.

Hand me
My old guitar
Pass the whiskey round --

Won't you tell
everybody you meet
That the candy man's in town --

Transferred money to pay off the second mortgage, which was credit card bills from the beginning of time... I mean like Dargatz era bills. I am sooo glad to have that debt retired at last.

I just can't believe that debt is finally gone, I've been paying it off for so long. I didn't think I would EVER pay it off. Thank God. What a relief.

What a relief. Now save to pay off the car loan, save for Flynn and Cassidy's college, save for Cassidy's wedding (!) off in the future sometime. The future seems to arrive faster and faster these days. Anticipate and cover future expenses. Cassidy's little front teeth will absorb some money beginning next year.

Take care of the mice. Save up a nice chunk of money to get them going in life. Save up lots of money.

I guess when I deleted my old web site I managed to delete the previous entries about Dyanne's death. Well. That was a loss. Writing at the time helped.

***

Wow, no, the old posts are still there. Gotta copy those and back them up. Some things are worth keeping. "This is meaningful."

* * *

No, some older items are missing. A few initial posts. Too bad.

Try and make a web page that reflects pretty much everything. Some central location for important things.

The kids and Diane and the dog are running around outside. I'm tired. Walked on the treadmill this morning, swam with the kids after their swim lessons, went to the pool again in the afternoon and swam more.

Have to exercise again and eat healthy food. I went to the doctor for some weird skin on my foot and they wanted to talk about blood pressure and lab tests.

A mouse with cheese is a happy mouse.

Wednesday morning. 6:22. Early. Rain yesterday, which was very nice. No rain today. Too bad. Never enough rain.

Another day. Yup. Wake up the mice, get Flynn ready to go to school, get him to school. Amuse Cassidy until it's time to go to preschool. Take her to preschool. Wait for Flynn to get out of school. Then wait for Cassidy to get out of preschool.

Flynn and I have Cub Scouts tonight. I need to find the pocketknives and the gourds for birdhouses. Go over Flynn's Bear book and see what he can complete. Keep checking things off.

Sunday evening. Sunny today, a little on the cool side.

Flynn had spent the night at his friend Nikolas' house. Diane and I slept in very late. Puttered in the garage, tried to clean things up, removed some of the ancient, crumbling insulation from the ceiling of the '65. Miserable work. You just know that fine, black foam-dust is carcinogenic. Yuck. Scraped off virtually all of it. A real mess. Have a bit more to do.

Eventually cleaned off the top of the workbench, which was some progress. I hadn't seen the top of it since December, I think. Now it's March.

Still very sad to think that Frizzy is dead. That will stay with me for a while. Colors everything.

Flynn's first Little League game was yesterday. Had the banner done, along with Rene Shepard's team banner. She gave us a check which was for more than the cost of materials. But no where near what we'd charge if we actually billed our time. So that was a funny situation.

Let's see if I can Post&Publish this. I can't bring up the home.san.rr..com/pookburg/ web page. Not impressive.

More rain. Thank God.

I have to cut out the logotype for Rene Shepard's banner. And get Cassidy in the bathtub. And get her to preschool.

And I need to get some iron-on printer material to finish up the Rangers banner.

This Saturday is the Cub Scout Powwow Training. I hope it doesn't go all day. Flynn has a baseball game at 4p if they get to play due to the rain. Rain. Thank God. Several days of rain. Thank God.

Finish Flynn's team's banner. Find some "approved" workers to cover the snack bar duty this Saturday.

Still utterly blown away that Frizzy died last year. I feel now like I ought to have contacted her more than I did, and I pretty much left everything behind when we moved to San Diego with 1-year-old Flynn. Then Cassidy in 1998. I'm busy.

I feel badly that we grew apart. I was living in San Clemente. I think that Frizzy was put off by my relationship with Susan. Susan was interested in a passionate be-with-me relationship. Frizzy was too cool for her own good.

I do miss her, though. I'm surprised that it had been so long since we were good friends when she was around.

When she was gone, she was gone. When she was back in town we'd get together. This is (hopefully!) a longer-frequency version of the same situation. Maybe I'll see her again sometime, someway. Or maybe our electricity will mingle somewhere along the way. Frizzy is in the rain. Watering all my new flowers and the rose plant outside. The poppies are about to begin opening.

What else do I have to do? Go back to Home Depot and get those little carbiners to fasten the banners onto the fences at Little Leage. Opening Ceremonies are on Friday night. God, I'm sick of Little League already. I was burnt out on Little League last year and I never got over being burnt out on it. And it's JUST STARTING. ARRGH. I'd really like a day off.

Sunlight thorough the window. At least a little sunbeam. Make your way through dead dreams to another land.

As time passes I am grasping more what happened. I miss Frizzy, but my choices were made some time ago and I don't have time to hang out any more. I was happy to see her and her friend at Issay's in 98. That was a fun evening.

I did a LOT of things with Frizzy. I'd forgotten how many different things we did. A good friend. And I was much younger at the time, maybe that's the biggest thing -- I was young back then, and life was open and fun. I had time to hang out. Things were new. Now things are more narrow, it's all pretty much cut and dried.

Would I have liked to have had Dyanne more interested in me? You bet. But that didn't seem to be in her makeup or in the cards or stars or whatever. Many times over the years Frizzy would go off to Arizona or up north and I wouldn't see her for a while and I'd have to get over it. This feels like the same thing, but on a longer term. Maybe I'll see her again sometime, more or less, but it won't be for a while.

I was fortunate to be with her. We had a lot of fun together. She was a special person. I'm sorry that she's gone.

The rain continues and is most welcome. Rain is beautiful. Rain makes me happy. Rain makes things grow. Refreshing, renewing. Glad to see it. It can't rain enough to suit me. I love rain.