ROOF TEAR-UP

I spent all day ripping up the roof on my rental property so we can replace the roof with metal roofing. DIRTY JOB! Then further-more, I decided to make a "dormer" on the north side. So currently there is a huge hole in the side of the roof. What a mess! I will let you know how it goes. I just hope it doesn't rain before I get it finished. :P

Anna's Birthday!

Today is my daughters birthday, August 17th. It is sure amazing how fast my girls are growing up. I know I don't think I tell her enough, but I love her very much. I Love You Anna, very much. Happy Birthday!! I am glad you are my daughter.

Berghia for aptasia

Okay, for everyone that has those pesky glass anemones, aptasia, in their salt water, coral fish aquariums, I have a story to tell. I only tell this on my blog because I am so dang impressed. A few years back I bought a great coral with some aptasia attached to it. At the time I didn't think much of it. However, six months later, these pesky things were everywhere! I had hundreds of them all over my tank. I wish I never introduced them to my tank in the first place.
I tried everything that I could, peppermint shrimp, fish, injecting them manually etc. The list goes on. Finally I came across the Bergia Nudibranch. I thought I would give them a try as I had tried everything else. So...... I called and requested 10 of them. I have a 240 gallon reef/fish aquarium. The sales woman told me "I wouldn't disagree with that number". She told me that they would die off after/if there were no more aptasia. "Fine by me" I thought to myself, "as long as those pesky anemone’s are gone". When she told me the price..... for 10...... I was stunned. A little over 200 dollars. DANG!! Well, if they work they will be worth it. So I gave her my billing information and waited for them to arrive.
When they arrived in a small 4"X4" box, I opened it and saw what looked like 10 pieces of white rice, they were THAT small. I began to think, "have I been taken or what". What a rip off. So I put them into my tank, but before doing so, I took out crabs and/or other things I thought would make a morsel out of these very small critters (seriously, the size of a piece of rice). I could hardly see them, and with in a half hour, they were gone and I expected I would never see them again. I wrote off the $200 + dollars that I figured I had wasted.
I was looking at my tank about 1.5-2 months later, and I actually saw one of these Bergia eating an aptasia. Only this time, it was the size of a small slug. "Nice!" I thought to my self, one has survived and is actually eating the aptasia (glass anemones). Then I saw another, and another. All of them were grown. I still had hundreds of aptasia in my tank, and so I thought "well at least they will eat some before they all die". However, to my amazement, in the next 2 weeks, I could not believe the diminishing aptasia. Pretty soon, I was having trouble even finding some. I would say within three weeks of spotting my first Berghia again, I couldn't find an aptasia to save my life. I AM AMAZED! Looks like they were worth it after all. I am sure that a lot, if not all of my Berghia have died off, I haven't seen one for a while. However, I have still not seen a single aptasia for over a month. NICE! Anyway, if any of you are wondering about these little guys, and if they work, THEY DO! And in my tank........they ROCKED the house!

Burston's Ponds

This weekend we went to Burston's Ponds (a number of ponds where you can camp). It was just nice to get away from everything, job, kids, city and the only question I had to deal with was "should I go swimming now, or wait until after I finish my soda here in the shade?". I was able to convince my wife into coming even though she initially protested and may have preferred to work on cleaning the house or her writings. I think she even had some fun getting away for a minute. I personally would have liked the trip to last a little longer than the Thursday night through Saturday afternoon, but the world can only survive so long with out me and her in it :P . My two brothers (Jer and Nick) were there with spouses, friends and Mom and Dad. It turned out to be quite fun. We had the traditional fire at night roasting marshmallows and smores as we just talked and joked with each other. It was just nice to have no commitments for a day or two. Then Saturday it was back to the real world (a whole different story...ugh). I enjoyed this time I had under the starry night sky, cool breeze, and refreshing swims while I had the chance. The skies were so blue and clouds so white in the day. There was a calming quietness with only sounds such as dragonfly’s and trees rustling in the breeze that seemed to relax the inner self. That is what I did this weekend.............. wish you had been there!

GHOST IN A DIGITAL WORLD

The other day I was on e-mail and found that everyone, EVERYONE, I knew had some sort of family webpage or webspot such as my-space or facebook or even a full blown webpage on the virtual highway. My wife has a great site, my brothers (Al especially)my aunt, cousins, friends......all websites. The list goes on... I figured that after about 10 years of not working on a web-page, I would make a more recent one and try to be out there in cyber earth again. So..... for fun, this is it. I do not want to become a ghost in a digital world. It took a while for me to play with some html and ideas, but I am starting to get the hang of it back. Hope you like it....... this is my own little place to BLAH BLAH BLAH!!

Photobucket Album

Deer

baby Deer
Originally uploaded by stevencrow