Nacho!!!

My little fishy has a name!!

I decided to call him Inigo Montoya, because he's quite the little fighter.

"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

But since Inigo Montoya is a long name, and "Nacho" is the nickname for "Inigo" (go figure) I usually end up calling him Nacho.

And Nacho Libre is awesome.

"Chanco! I need to borrow some sweats!"

I've got him trained now where I shake the food in front of his bowl and he goes into a frenzy until I drop the food in to eat.

That little booger can eat a lot! The guy at the fish store told me they should eat 3-6 little pellets a day, and I would just need to experiment to see how much Nacho eats.

I'll put in 5 pellets and he eats them all up and for as long as I'm standing there he's swimming up and down, right and left, staring at me begging for more.

So I put in one more.

He devours it, and then does his little dance again.

But I don't want to overfeed him so I've made 6 the limit.

Also, if I put in more, then he just plays with it and it ends up disintegrating and making the water dirty.

Then I have to change the water.

Changing the water is a hassle, so I don't like to do it more than once a week.

Thus, I refuse to give him more food.

And now I shall go and make food for myself.

Quesadillas...yum.

Run for Breast Cancer

This Sunday a friend and I ran in a run/walk/skate/whatever for breast cancer. We got these awesome pink shirts and pink balloons, however we ended up tying our balloons to her daughter's stroller and leaving them with her husband, because we were going to run and the balloons would just get in the way.


Before it started, we had to pee, so we looked around for the port-a-potty...

None in sight.

So we asked a volunteer. "Where's the bathroom?"

"There is none" was the reply.

No bathroom!?!? So we ran to a bar and waited in a ridiculous line (because every other one of the thousand ladies there had to pee too) and barely made it back in time for it to start.

What were they thinking holding an event for a thousand WOMEN and not having a few port-a-potties? Everybody knows that women have to pee a lot, and it's not like we can just go behind a tree like men can (and men here DO all the time. Ick).

So when the run/walk/skate/whatever did start, they shot off all this confetti and a lot of people let go of their balloons. It was quite an impressive sight, all that pink. I must say, I do like pink:


Since there were so many people and we almost didn't make it back in time, we couldn't get at the front (where the runners were supposed to be) so we got trapped in the crowd. We ended up getting on the sidewalk and cutting around the crowd as soon as we could, or else we would have been stuck walking the whole time. Here we are pretending to run amidst the masses:


Before signing up, I thought it was going to be a 10k.

I was wrong.

According to the website, the race was "approximately 4k." That's 2.5 miles. That's also less than what I run on an average day.

AND it only took me about 17 minutes to do the race, so apparently their approximation was either a bit off or I'm a Superstar Speedster because it should have taken me 23-25 minutes to run 4k, because I run SSLLLOOOOWWWW.

When I turned the last corner and saw the finish line I thought, "what? I'm not even tired yet."

Here I am getting ready to cross the finish line:


There's nobody else around me because most people walked, and my friend is a faster runner than I am so she finished a minute or two before me. My friend and I were concerned we'd be the only people running, but thankfully there were a good handful of other runners.

Even though the "race" wasn't much of a challenge, I was still quite thirsty afterwards. So what did they have for us to drink? A nice, cool bottle of water? A refreshing Fruit Punch or Blue Ice Powerade?

What else, but a never ending table of Coca-Cola products!?!?!

Regular Coke, Coke Light (they don't have Diet here. Coke Light uses an artificial sweetener that tastes better, but gives you more cancer), Coke Zero, Caffeine Free Coke, Fanta Lemon, Fanta Orange, Fanta Zero Lemon, Fanta Zero Orange, and Aquarius, a Coca-Cola carbonated free product.

Not a single bottle of water in sight.

And despite the ginormous Powerade inflatable start and finish line, not a single bottle of Powerade in sight.

What??

And then after the race half the crowd lit up cigarettes. The other half had already smoked theirs before it started.

Does anybody else see the irony in the murky billows of second hand smoke wafting into our lungs after the race against CANCER? Or the Diabetes-In-A-Can drinks? Or the CANCER causing artificial sweeteners in the non-Diabetes-In-A-Can drinks? Or the releasing of a thousand non-biodegradable balloons into the air, just waiting to land somewhere and poison the earth and give us all CANCER??

Oh the irony.



In other news, tonight I was eating a scoop of ice cream in the city center while people watching when a short, chubby old man walked up to me, stared at my ice cream and started to lick his lips and lean forward. I wasn't quite sure how to respond (was he playing with me or going to steal my ice cream? I've learned not to trust little old men, no matter how cute and innocent they may look), but then he broke out into a chuckle, patted my arm, and went on his way, leaving me to enjoy my scoop of Ben&Jerry's Cheesecake Brownie.

It's the little things that make life fun. :)

YOU Vote!!

I have a new roommate!

And it's a BOY!!

Now, before you get the wrong idea, let's see a picture of this new roommate...



One of my friends here has a new obsession with fish, and while she has gone so far as to install a real fish tank, I only allowed her to convince me to invest in this handsome beta.

But he needs a name!!

That's where YOU come in! YOU get to vote (by way of leaving a comment) and tell me what you think I should name him. Keep in mind, it is a boy. So no names like Susan or LuAnn. And keep in mind that I am SO beyond Disney/Pixar names, so if anybody suggests Nemo or Marlin or Flounder or Sebastian I won't even consider it. However if you should happen to show the picture to your 4 year old son or daughter and HE/SHE suggests Nemo, I won't hold it against him/her.

Be creative. Be original. You can even be ethnic (keep in mind I am living in a foreign country). If no suitable name is submitted in the next week, I'll name him after my grumpy neighbor, because so far this fish seems pretty ornery. Just check out this face he made at me: