FISH MYSTERY SOLVED
I figured it out, and my suspicions were confirmed by the nice fish person I finally found at PetsMart: the water was too cold. I watched the last danio succumb on Tuesday night. He just kept sinking. So now I have a heater. This aquarium thing is very complicated, but now I have a community tank. Well, I like to think of it as a community. I'd like to have one more fish but I'll wait to see how this goes for a while. I have 2 zebra danios and one coral platy who is bright orange but who will grow some yellow as it matures. They are pretty happy but not as perky as the others were. But now we know why: the others were swimming quickly, trying to stay warm. The water needs to be 78-82 degrees. It was 67 when I put the heater in yesterday, not it is a toasty 79 degrees. The platy hides in the plastic plants too much to suit me and the danios aren't as zippy as I'd like them to be but at least they're alive!

It was really cold this morning, and very dark when I got up. I awoke, glanced at the clock, which said 6:30, normal rising time. Very dark, I thought, must be extremely cloudy. I sniffed one quiet sniff. Tess came tearing out from under the covers and Chances attacked my head. They're light sleepers in the early morning hours. And it was early morning, 5:30 instead of 6:30. How do people fill the hours before work when they have more than 20 minutes to get ready? I took a very long shower, did the dishes, ate yogurt, fed and watched the fish, watched CNN and still left for work almost half an hour early.

It was so cold that the deck steps had a thin coating of ice on them. Unsuspecting me slid down them, twisting my arms backward and bruising my back and butt badly. But I didn't break anything, just suffered a lot. There was a coating of ice on my windshield for the first time this fall. Inevitable. This weekend it's supposed to be 65-75 both days. YESSS!

Tonight I'm having dinner at Linda's camp with a friend of hers/ours who has been staying there all week with her son. Tomorrow night I'm having dinner in Plattsburgh at the home of Bill's good friend (the head of the Health Center at the college) for the first of 3 celebrations of Bill's 60th birthday. Sunday I'm cooking Sunday dinner at camp. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes with apple crisp for dessert. I'll see if Duncan (I'm crazy about Duncan) and Sue (this time he brought his wife), who are in camp just below my house want to join us.

I have many errands to run before I can get to dinner tonight. I've had errands to run every night this week. Last night I got my hair cut. Every time she cuts my hair now she darkens my eyebrows (I have such blonde eyebrows that they are virtually invisible). As she was rinsing them out she said "Want me to shape them? Yes, yes I think you do." So she did, with hot wax. What an experience. Sure, women start doing this in their teens and twenties, but I'm almost 53 and slow to develop in these ways. Now my eyes look bigger (she says) and I'm none the worse for the wear. I like her, she's very nice. Older woman, been cutting my hair for quite a few years now, understands exactly how much time I'm willing to spend fixing my hair in the morning. None. She lives way out of town too, at Chazy Lake, which has a higher elevation than Silver Lake does and a shorter growing season. She knows just enough about my life without knowing too much. She was really sweet when I was getting ready for my ex-husband's wedding, making sure that she did all she could to make my hair look its best.

Today is Old Boss' last day ever. Although I can't believe my good fortune, I'm still unsure. New Boss is joining the staff for lunch today, New Boss is buying it for us. We're having a staff-prepared potluck for N.B. on Monday, her first day. We left the sign-up sheet in the kitchen, and my theory is that O.B. saw it and decided she would beat us to Lunch With N.B. by buying us all lunch and inviting N.B. today. That would be so much like her.