Well, Boy #1 is now officially 12, and as a birthday gift, we bought him a larger fish tank. The size has doubled, from 10 gallons to 20, and it has upgraded fluorescent lights, so he can have aquatic plants – something he’s been agitating for. The fish seem to have come through spending a night or so in a big red bowl, and with the clean rocks and the nice gravel, the tank looks great. The filter is very quiet, and the only noise comes from the bubbles of the air stone. All in all, a good idea for a nice birthday gift. I expect he’ll be buying some more fish (and those much wanted plants) with his allowance.

I’ve been trying to work on Overtures a little, but have had other things to work on, like moving the Archives at IR:TNP back to messageboard form. We did this because of space concerns, and also because the last chapter archived was missing a good deal of material. I’ve started rewriting what I remember from the sequence that was missing; some of the individual post files have been recovered and Hobbeth and I are both working on trying to figure out the sequence of events so we can rebuild as much of it as possible.

Hubby had Monday off since it was President’s Day, and he wasn’t scheduled on Tuesday – his day off – either. It was nice to have him home for a few days. He’s taken a personal day for Thursday, too, and plans on fixing the bathroom floor. We had the Niece over for the weekend, and celebrated the birthday boy’s special day on Sunday. Unfortunately, both sets of grandparents forgot his birthday. I’m sure they’ll be sending belated cards, though. My dad is feeling really overwhelmed right now; Mom refuses to do any exercise other than water aerobics, and she makes every excuse in the book to keep from going to that. It seems that she’d rather be dependent on a walker, and Dad is afraid she’ll end up in the nursing home long before her time. There’s not much I can do to help, unfortunately, not with 1000 miles between us. I’m sure my sister is doing what she can, but the care of her mother-in-law may soon fall to her, too. Good news is that my MIL is feeling better since they discovered what was giving her that non-stop diarrhea. Now we just have to get my BIL in China over his ruptured diaphragm (how do you rupture that?).

Growing old is not for wimps.