C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 14

Rebuilding the marine tank

My main pump stalled—Iwaki pumps decouple when otherwise they might burn out due to a stall: they continue to run (they’re noisy as all getout…) but are pumping nothing. So no oxygen is getting to the dt (display tank). The skimmer (producer of bubbles, injector of oxygen, and remover of spare amino acids through ‘foam fractionation’, aka sea foam) is going just fine. The water level is high because several gallons have drained down to the sump from the dt with nothing going ‘up’ from the pump…but then I was breaking in a new ATO (autotopoff unit that senses a water level lowered by evaporation and supplies fresh water to make up the evaporated liquid) that WAS sounding an overfill alarm, but I’d been fussing with the level–and clueless in Spokane, I ignored it. Unfortunately, I lost all the fish in the dt but one. I found her a home at the fish store, because you can’t move new fish in on a damsel of her size (nearly 5″) because to her, they’re interlopers and possibly lunch.

So—I gave up on keeping a damsel tank and decided to go for the little guys. I’ve got 3 firefish, a pink margin wrasse, a royal gramma, a starry blenny and a tailspot blenny, —and still on order: a couple of yellowheaded pearly jawfish, a mated pair of yellow watchmen, and a mandarin ‘goby’. [The mandy is actually not a goby but a dragonet, but was misidentified early on and the name stuck.) You can get pix of them by google.

The fishes are all eating, equipment is running as it should, and I spent yesterday carefully adjusting salt levels. Just for a weird tag of information, marine fish live at a salinity of about 1.024 up to 1.026, and can live as low as 1.009 (for treatment of parasites)—which corals and invertebrates can’t take. Many fish stores keep fish at 1.019 to save money on salt, and to somewhat discourage parasites. They’re often shipped at that level. My system is 1.025. Now the next piece of trivia—fish can stand a sudden drop in salinity down to 1.009; but a rapid rise will destroy their kidneys and kill them three days later from uremic poisoning. So if you get marine fish that arrive at 1.019, you have to bring the salinity up slowly by injecting higher salinity water into their water until you’re within .002 of the target salinity. To make matters worse, fish are often 24-hour airshipped in plastic bags—and their respiration and body functions charge that water with ammonium. Now, ammonium is harmless. But they also give off co2—carbon dioxide, which also is present as airspace in the bag. If you open the bag, the co2 floats off, thus starting a chemical change—the ph drop converts harmless ammonium to lethal ammonia, also apt to trash the fish’s liver and kidneys if you don’t get the fish out of that water asap. And, remember, your salinity is higher than that of the bag.

If you’re smart, you open only one bag at a time and get that fish safely into your water. Novices rush to open everything and get ‘the poor fish some fresh air’ —lethal.

So, at any rate, I was busy yesterday afternoon, with 7 fish to get into safe water, because these had just arrived at the store by air yesterday morning.

But it was a ‘happy busy’. The tank will live again!

Sweet cardamom chicken

Cardamom Chicken

1 large boneless uncooked chicken breast sliced and diced.

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon turmeric

salt and black pepper to taste

½ tsp red chili flake

½ tsp cumin seed or ground cumin

1 large bell pepper, diced and sliced

large handful green beans (frozen is ok)

most any green vegetable that doesn’t cook fast.

1 heaping tablespoon diced garlic in oil, or equivalent raw garlic

combine all in skillet with lid. Cook with middling heat in olive oil, sesame oil or a combination. Using lid to help steam, cooking time under 15 minutes.

Cook last while without lid to reduce liquid.

Stir in 1 tablespoon crunchy peanut butter (you can skip this if you like: matter of taste)

Stir in 2 tablespoons Ma Ploi (brand) Thai sweet chili sauce.

This dish has very little pepper heat: you can adjust to taste, particularly the red chili flake: remember I’m from the American Southwest. The sweet chili has practically no heat at all. Test a little on your finger and adjust accordingly.

Rare opportunity: total eclipse of the sun Aug 21.

Even tiny motels in the path of the eclipse are getting swamped. If you want to go see it, you need to find a long-range weather assurance of some kind for ‘likely clear skies and go there, but if you do not act soon, you may not have lodging. Just sayin’. This is a world-scale event, and people are coming from all over the globe to some areas not usually visited by strangers. One little motel along the path is charging 500 a room—and getting it, apparently, from the desperate. TO find how far it is from you, look up eclipse path Aug 21.

Some new pix

An azalea this spring:

lilies, through the protective netting [baby fishes]

Sanzo and Maddy

And the best shot I could get of Goku and, possibly, Ari. As a new pond, freshly poured this spring, we do still have a bit of an algae issue, but it’s improving. The fishes are shy, but gaining courage.

Just ‘denied’ about 38 people who’ve been hanging fire on the approval list for weeks

If one of these was one of you who regularly read this blog, remember you’re not ‘in’ and able to ‘comment’ if you don’t a) register here AND b) use your not-a-bot skills to find my e-mail addy up there in the usual place ^^^ and write me a very brief e-mail stating you’re not a robot. Otherwise I assume you’re trying to get me to buy designer watches or the like.

Machigi and his deal with the dowager

I know there is a sea link in the deal, and I know that there is a deal to allow some of the guilds in the Taisigin Marid—but is there mention of a railroad? What IS in the agreement?

The Foreigner maps in the books are just a bit off…you may have noticed.

Jane and I are going to draw up a good big one, and we are asking for help.

Please give us lists of place names and clan names and we will try to do a definitive where-the-rivers are and what are the islands and towns and such sort of map, also including Bretano, which is actually north of Port Jackson…

I have faith the Wavy Navy can help us out! Just post them as lists of names in reply to this message and we will sort them out. I have a good memory, just not an orderly one.

We still have 28 applying to the blog, but no letter to me!!!!

I’ve booted the ones from known bot sources, and I have 28 sign-ups left that have some aura of legitimacy. If you have signed up but have not personally sent me a ‘hi there, I’m not a robot’ letter via my e-mail up there ^^^ (yes, it is: look)…you are not in yet. Please send me that personal letter. “Hi! I’m not a bot!” will do nicely as a text.

Picking out stuff for the kitchen

We have picked the cabinets—kind of redwood stained; we have, after 3 samples, picked the flooring, a charcoal slate with colored bits, like metal stain; black countertop with copper bits; we have our carpenter; and we have saved for this for the last several years, so we hope it will all fit together. We bought our appliances early, because we figured, if we have to put off the kitchen, we can at least get a the range and fridge we want and use those, which we have done, except the microwave. We have yet to contact a roofer to put in a vent up there—this should be up there anyway, a safety thing. And best not do it during spring rains, eh?

It’s going to be interesting, but we are actually hiring this done. We will do the demo on the floor and the install: that’s not hard. But the install on the cabinets and such, no.

The fishes are beginning to figure that our appearance means food, not nets. They are calming down. And they are happy under the water lilies. At times we’ve had 15 blooms, yellow, white, sunset-colors and pink, all at once.

Yesterday…

…was one of those days.

Living on a corner has its moments: we face a cross street and there is a major city arterial running past our west side that never stops: it serves the Maple Street Bridge; and of bridges that cross the river, there is the Monroe Street, the Washington (you really can’t count the Lincoln, which carries little traffic) and that’s pretty well it for the downtown—so we get traffic, it’s a one-way street, and downhill, and people speed like fiends.

I was out feeding the fishes and noticed a very heavy engine parked near our fence, in the most-used lane. Fire truck. This deserved a look—and opening the gate showed not just the fire truck but a police b&w, an ambulance, a badly wrecked black car—front left turned to tinfoil—facing diagonally the wrong way on the one-way; another black car facing the opposite, correct-way diagonal—if he hadn’t been 10 feet off the road and up in a thick growth of juniper on the side of the house across the street. There was besides, a white car parked diagonally at the point of our corner, going the wrong lane onto our street, and two other cars stopped on our street going the right way. There were people all over talking to the officer in charge, while the monster fire engine and ambulance served as barriers. I don’t know if anybody was taken in the ambulance: the officer was talking to everybody, and did open the back door of the ambulance to talk to someone, but if it had been serious, I’m sure the ambulance would have moved on.

Anyway it was a warm day in the 80’s, and about 8 people were camped on a brick retaining wall waiting. A wrecker showed up to move the black car, there’d have to be another to fish the second car out of the bushes, and over all, it was a wild day on our street. Hard to figure who was at fault, but the energy that sent the car into the bushes was considerable: Jane thinks, and I concur, that that car was rear-ended, and that speed likely played a major part in it. A car trying to pull out from our street’s stop sign is another possibility. The physics of it all posed quite a challenge.

Then half our kitchen floor samples arrived, and they’re exactly what both of us wanted. Grey mottling like weathered old limestone. And waterproof. The catch is—somebody didn’t pack the box right, somebody else dropped it, and every single piece has a corner too damaged to use. So that has to go back to Home Depot as unusable. But I think we do have our floor color and pattern. It’s really pretty and does not show the ‘repeats’ that can drive you visually crazy.

We got Jane’s car to the repair shop—it’s got some problem that’s not the battery. Won’t start. This means we have half the garage free to put junk in and we have called for a dumpster to be set in our drive so we can do a major house and yard cleanout. Yay! Jane found our city will rent you one and pick it up. And this is what, after a move inside OKC, then a move up here to one apartment, then to another apartment, then to this house—all inside eleven years—we desperately need.

The blood pressure is now in the normal zone on both numbers thanks to that new med. And I got to the eye doc to order a pair of distance glasses. I tried all the frilly pretty frames the assistant showed me, wanting larger lenses for general viewing, and all of them were a no-go down to ridiculous. I finally said, y’know, what I look best in is aviator glasses, never mind they’re always in the ‘men’s’ section. Put them on, and the assistant looked highly surprised, and said, “You’re right!” Yep. Those look right on my face. The Harry Potter look makes me look like an owl, the cat-eye makes me look like I need high heels, leopard tights, and a bun with a pencil stuck in it, and some of the others defy any description but awful. So aviators it is.

And out of the blue last evening, thunder, a lot of it, driving sideways rain (unusual in the PNW, where rain usually mists down over several days) and then the sky lit up vivid orange shading to pink. Sunsets are very unusual in the Inland Empire. But the lowering sunlight managed to push through those storm clouds in a way I’ve never seen in ten years up here. And ours are generally ‘sea’ clouds, filmy and silky and not the clumpy ridged sort you get from horizon to horizon in Oklahoma that make the sky look like a bed of coals. Ours looked on one horizon like a forest fire, intense orange, and overhead it was cotton candy pink billows. Really unusual. We don’t get the violent weather up here as a rule, so we don’t get the sunsets that go with them. But last night we did.