October In The Chair

If someone has to know only one thing about me, it's usually the fact that I love sharks. I'm ridiculous about it and if someone is even remotely my friend, then they are well-equipped with this knowledge.

I extend this love of sharks to love of shark movies, and thus- love of BAD shark movies. At an exceptionally young and tender age, I was scarred by Jaws the movie (and the hand-me-down Jaws toy I had inherited from my brothers that I carried around with me everywhere I went). *

I'll give most shark movies a fighting chance, though I am frequently disappointed.
Raging Sharks was pitifully weak on actual sharks,
Shark Swarm is over two and a half hours long of Darryl Hannah, Armand Assante, and the guys from Dukes of Hazzard over-emoting, and
Shark Attack 3: Megalodon is overrated because it's turned into fangirl stroke material because the guy from Torchwood is in it.

That being said, there a number of movies that have not disappointed me. Jaws itself, obviously. And:

( DEEP BLUE SEA )

Next up? Possibly Return of the Living Dead, because that's another of our go-to movies to watch when we're bored. We can't decide and it's always so spur of the moment when we decide to play. tony_s is coming over this weekend coming up, so maybe we'll get him to pick a movie, since he's the whole reason why we started doing this.

Well. That, and the fact that we are both nine-year-old nerdy kids at heart.

Charlie shed for the first time this weekend. :D

The past few days, I've been an absolute maniac because while I was almost positive she was going into her first shed with me, I am just loony enough to think something is drastically wrong. Especially because it was taking her so goddamn long to really look like a shed was coming.

All in all, it was a bad shed and was coming off of her in bits and pieces. So, last night I decided to give her a good soak and then rub her down, hoping that this would help her wiggle out.

I'm still a little skittish about picking her up directly, so I used tongs to kind of airlift her out of the tank, then put her in the soaking container (which she hates like nothing else). Let her soak for about twenty minutes, then sat with her at my vanity and rubbed her back and belly. It really helped a lot; she immediately started to poke through her nose shed and pieces of skin were splitting all down the length of her body. Unfortunately, because it was already a bad shed, it didn't come off in one piece. We sat for a long time together, her wound all around my wrist and squeezing and dragging the side of her head against my arm and me slowly rubbing my finger in circles on the spots that seemed to need it. At one point, I really thought she was just going to slide out of her skin while I was holding her because I could see her body moving underneath of it. How awesome would that have been? But, it didn't happen. I helped work off quite a bit of the shed, then put her away for the night because I didn't want to stress her out too badly.

Today when I checked in on her, the only skin that was left was on her head. Part of it was sticking straight up, just above her snout, and looked like she was wearing a goofy mask. I gave her another, much shorter soak, then held her in a damp washcloth and kind of dabbed at her head when she would let me, which wasn't often. She managed to get most of it off her head, but she's still left with a wee bit on the left side of her skull, with an eyecap. When I put her back in her tank, she immediately started to rub her head against her new log, so hopefully, it'll be completely off by tomorrow. In a couple of days then, I'll try to get her to eat.

<3 for my girl.

This weekend has been vastly tiring. Friday, I took the day off from work because I had a slew of things I needed to accomplish; one of which was taking the train to the city and meeting with the recruiter for that non-profit job I wrote about a few days ago. That didn't go particularly well, as she feels the company wouldn't want me because I'm going to college and wouldn't be staying with them forever and the rest of my life. The company is apparently incredibly and ungodly picky, she says. I was peeved because I took a day off from work and tooled through the city in professional clothes on an enormously humid and gross day. Ick.

On top of that, I had also wanted to go to the college and get a few things taken care of: officially changing my current major to Human Services instead of Business Administration, renewing my student loan with Financial Aid, and selling my used textbooks to the bookstore. One out of three isn't bad, I reckon. The bookstore is apparently closed on Fridays during the summer and the Financial Aid office was also closed for some reason. Irritating.

I also needed to go to Haddonfield and get a copy of my marriage certificate so I could get my license renewed, but I was so peeved with the day's events and incredibly worn out from the heat, that I didn't feel up for it. I need to get that done stat because my license expires tomorrow.

Friday night was Joanna's going away party because her last day of work is the 31st. A slew of us headed to a local bar and sat out on the deck for a much-needed night of carousing. It started to rain fairly heavy at one point, but our table had an umbrella and we largely stayed dry. Of course, I sat near the end of the umbrella that leaked, so my entire back and butt got completely soaked.

We were fairly rowdy, which happens whenever you get the group of us together. Former abortionists and current abortionists, we all had a massive amount of shit-talking that needed to be done. After the bar, we (me, Angel and Joanna) drove to the grocery store and bought an enormous amount of junk food, then went back to my apartment for more drinking and junk-food eating until five in the morning.

Today has been quiet, overall. It's the beginning of Shark Week (hooray!) and they've been playing old shark shows all day long on the Discovery Channel, leading up to tonight's new show (which was boring). I laid on the living room floor with every blanket and pillow known to man, smoking cigarettes and brandishing my giant stuffed Great White, David Byrne, at the cats. I dozed and snored and ate chocolate-covered pretzels. The Engineer threw things at me and talked about how the hammerhead shark's special talent is perfect pitch.

I may go to bed early, but I haven't decided yet.

It is 52 days, 5 hours and 9 minutes until Shark Week.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

As I was lying in bed last night, I kept thinking about an old friend of mine named Shannon who I haven't seen since I was about seventeen or so. Then I get to work and I discover that the T-Rex was thinking the same thing.

I somehow doubt the T-Rex's friend's father was also a gay, alcoholic magician.

It's good to know that I'm not the only blithering idiot person who thinks sharks are smiley.

I think it's time for me to go back to the Camden aquarium, so I can stand in the shark room and press my hands against the glass again.

(btw: that's a big fucking great white in that article. seriously.)

Nothing like a shark attack off the coast of New Jersey to brighten up my morning.

Excuse me, alledged shark attack.

It's amusing how NJ officials are refusing to state what happened. I saw the photos of the bite and it certainly looked like a shark attack to me.

The teenager who was bitten got off easy, as well. They're saying that it was possibly a small great white and he came out of this with fifty or sixty stitches. Psshaw. Child's play. He's lucky to be alive, let alone still have all his limbs.

We haven't had an attack off our coast since 1975, which has always astounded me. There's a lot of sharks in these waters. Mako and great whites, even. And it's always been a point of interest for me, that they never attacked anyone. Until now, that is.

At least there hasn't been any huge outcry of Let's go kill 'em! Far too often that is the reaction of locals when a shark does what it is meant to do: hunt and eat.

In my reading about this incident, I came across some information that an aquarium in California recently had a great white being held in capitivity. For 198 days, I believe, which is a record. Before that, I think they were only able to keep one for about sixty days before it went tits up. This one, a female, ate heartily while there, grew about a foot and gained something like a hundred pounds. They released it, with a transmitter attached, after she killed two other sharks in the aquarium and began exhibiting hunting behaviour towards the other fish.

God bless her. I hope she lives for many more decades, safe from human meddling.

I love sharks, in case that isn't obvious. The great whites, most of all. One of my biggest dreams is to go on one of those great white watches off the coast of Africa or Australia, in a diving cage with those big beasts so close I could touch them.

I dream of it, frequently. Silent underwater, sharks all around. I always wake up with my heart pounding and my breath caught in my throat, fear bubbling up through my lungs. But it's exhilarating on a primordial level, to dream of the flash of teeth.

Last year, Miss Robin and Saint Rick took me to the Camden aquarium. And I spent the bulk of our trip with my hands pressed up against the glass of this one enormous exhibit full of sharks (I forget which kind, they were big son of a bitches, though). My face so close to the cool, dim glass that what's inside was all I could see. Eyes wide and entire body trembling as they swam up close before turning away.

There's nothing quite like the feeling of watching one of them slowly come right at you and completely forgetting there's a barrier of safety.

A couple of weeks ago, The Engineer and I ventured to a store called Warehouse Liquidators or some such nonsense. He was looking for a new television and I was just tagging along (actually, I drove. So I reckon I was doing more then just tagging along).

He didn't have any luck, but I found myself a new friend.

This is ( Wheezy. )