I'm back! (Take that Mei!)

Well it's been a couple of weeks and I have finally returned to the homestead. Fortunately the desert gods have graced me with some rain recently so the house water duties have been put on hiatus.

The phlog has suffered a distinct lack of updates in my absence but fortunately I have been photoing up a storm in Canada and a recent trip to Washington DC for brickfest 2006 so there should be lots of new lego-y and canadia-y images in the months ahead.

On the down side, while I was away, some ants discovered some tasty goodies in my garage and a partially eaten bowl of cereal inadvertantly left sitting on the kitchen counter (yuk). It would seem that the bug inspector I hired has done a poor job of noticing that my place has been overrun. I would be really sad except I have had a soft spot for ants ever since I did a project to study them in high school. Said project was a complete farce of science as best as I can recall but in the end I at least came to appreciate them as cool macro-organisms instead of gross creepy crawlies. Regardless I'm working to remove the many mandibled pillagers from my kitchen with great gusto.

Jumping back to great news, I was overjoyed to discover that my new 30 gallon fish tank is thriving with a great big school of tetras, some guppies, a frog, a plycostimus(?) and a big guy with red and blue stripes whose fancy science name is eluding me even more so than the previously listed algae muncher. Maya has already named him "King" however he doesn't quite seem to be living up to his new found status as ruler of the tank as every time I approach he quickly darts into the foliage and cowers until I leave.

Are you supposed to call underwater plants foliage? Probably not.