The Rankin Zoo 

Coral has a fish tank. In her tank she has a bunch of inbred guppies all descendant from the same 3-4 original fish. She also has a now fairly large pleco. The other resident of her tank is a loach. I guess it’s a weather loach - although it’s of the golden variety. His name is Squirmy.

The other evening I went to feed the fish before bedtime. We have a small canvas box next to the tank and in that box we keep various fish foods and other tank supplies. As I reached for the food I noticed something odd in a plastic cup in the box. It was Squirmy! Ahhhh! I had no idea how long he had been there but my first thought was that he was dead.

But, as a kid I once had a similar loach and I think on more than one case he jumped out of the tank and was returned later and survived. So, I quickly dipped the cup in the water. Squirmy didn’t move. I let the cup of water sit there in the tank for a minute and slowly squirmy started to move. We put him back in the tank and Coral went to bed not knowing if Squirmy would be okay or not.

Well, several days later Squirmy seems to be back to normal so I guess he’s fine. I’ve covered up the small holes in the tank cover (I’m amazed that he got out in the first place).

I didn’t get a ton of good pictures from Coral’s birthday party but here are a few. We probably went a little overboard this year, but I think it was fun. We had a bubble machine and a smoke machine going out front for most of the party. We did the customary pinata (which I could personally do without) - a princess crown. We had some confetti. A birthday cake. A scavenger hunt for paper flowers. And we wrapped it up with a small fireworks show (of course).

Other than the oppressive humidity I thought it was a great success. Thanks to everyone who came to the party - we hope you all had fun!

I know I’m biased but I’d like someone to try and argue that these two kids aren’t cute.

Thanks to Kirstin for taking the photos!

Click on the slideshow for bigger versions of the pictures.

She’s #1

So my mom doesn’t kill me, here are some recent pictures. Click through to get bigger versions.

Here are some photos for you. Last Saturday we went into the city for the Cherry Blossom Parade. The weather was great and we had a good time. Coral really likes parades.

Then on Sunday we went to the circus. I thought this version of the circus wasn’t as good as the last one we saw. It had a fairly weak story line (I suggest no story line) and a very weak finale. I think a good circus is like a good fireworks show - you have no doubt when it is over. But Coral seemed to enjoy the circus so that’s what really matters.

I’ve thrown in some other random photos. Coral got hold of the camera for a while and snapped a few shots - not half bad!

Click on the thing to jump into the album with the full-sized pictures.