First, let me (and Jen, nyah) say, THANK GOD.

Second, Calvin and Marie and I went to Kona Grill last night in celebration of Marie's birthday. Much food was eaten, and a good time was had by all. (I was going to write this entry yesterday but I promised Marie I would leave her "Happy Birthday" message up as the uppermost entry for the WHOLE DAY in her honor.)

Third, I got four inches cut off the length of my hair last Friday, and as a result I have the Best Hair In All The World.

Fourth, today is National Talk Like a Pirate day. Avast!

And now, the weekend.

So, Friday Lucy was tearing around her tank like a crazy person lizard, running back and forth and scrabbling up on the sides and digging digging digging. So I took her out of her tank and into the living room, where I set her on the floor so she could run around. The cat was fascinated, and she kept running at him to check him out, at which point he would squint at her and flinch like he expected her to spit in his face or something, and then run off to the nearest hiding spot. Calvin and I were mightily amused by this.

Then suddenly Lucy squatted as if she was going to take a poo on the rug. Calvin warned me and I scooted her off the rug and onto the tile, the easier to clean up the impending mess. Except that instead of poo, out plooped... an egg!

We must have stared at it for a full minute before I exclaimed, "Hey! It's an egg!" Commence with the scrambling around as Calvin went off to Home Depot to secure some soil (for a laying box) while I called Pets Inc. to see if they knew where to purchase an incubator in a hurry. Calvin came back and we used a giant Rubbermaid storage container to put the soil in. I moistened it and packed it down so Lucy could dig a little cave to lay in. We put Lucy in and put a couple of screens over the top and rested a heat lamp on the screens. We watched expectantly.

She stared back up at us.

We stared back down at her.

She just sat there and didn't seem interested in digging a nest. So I dug what is called a "starter hole" to see if that would get her instincts to kick in. Nuthin. She totally had no idea what to do. She layed a half-dozen eggs (non-viable, which is common for a first clutch) on the surface, then spent a lot of time scrabbling up the sides of the box trying to get out.

Throughout the entire weekend she would lay an egg here, an egg there, an egg in the tub when I soaked her, an egg in her and Cheeto's tank after I put her back in it because I thought she was finally done with all of this nonsense (we have since separated them into their own individual tanks)... here it is Wednesday and I'm not entirely sure that she's done with the egg laying yet.

So! That was fun.

Friday night Calvin and I met a friend up at Iguana Mack's for some beer (and some more beer) and conversation. The weather, at least at night, is finally to the point where riding places on the motorcycle is comfortable again. I'm back to being a lightweight because I haven't been drinking very much at all, really, since we came back from the beer festival. So I got loopy and silly, as is my nature, and suffered a mild hangover the next morning. Phooey.

Saturday morning we watched "Invincible" on TV, and I drooled over Mark Wahlberg.

(pic courtesy of mark-wahlberg.org)
Being in a football frame of mind, Calvin secured tickets to the Arizona State/San Diego State college football game at Sun Devil Stadium. We left a couple of hours early in order to putter around Mill Avenue and the college district before the game. We ended up at House of Tricks (I once wrote an entry about it here). We sat at the bar and ordered drinks (whiskey and beer for Calvin, iced tea for me... stoopid hangover) and an appetizer, and just sat conversing and laughing and enjoying the cool-ish weather. We brought the camera with us and Calvin shot a few pics, then a nice man from across the bar came over and offered to take a picture of us together.









We left Tricks about a half-hour before the game started, and walked and walked and WALKED because we parked closer to the stadium than to the action-side of Mill. Now, I LOVE Sun Devil Stadium. I love the crowd, I love the college students, I love the atmosphere. I love the tributes to Pat Tillman, whom I was fortunate enough to see play when he was an ASU Sun Devil AND when he was a Cardinal.

I think I like being at a college game better than being at a pro game. There just seems to be more energy - the chants, the band playing, the students bouncing a blow-up doll among the crowd:



Some more pics:












The Devils beat up San Diego with a final score of 34-13. We left at halftime, though, to go back down to Mill (walky walky walky) and hang out at a bar for an hour or so. We watched the culmination of the game from a place called Coconuts.

We rode home. We wrestled. We went to sleep.

The phone rang at 2:00 in the morning. Calvin rolled over and grunted into the receiver - it was Marie's boyfriend saying they had a fight and Marie said she was going to our house, and was Marie there? Calvin got up and checked... no Marie. The boyfriend was informed, we knew Marie would head to a friend's house first, and we went back to sleep.

The phone rang at 3:00 in the morning. Calvin rolled over and grunted into the receiver - it was Marie asking if we had called her. Calvin said no. Marie said she'd gotten a call from our home number. Calvin said it wasn't us. He got up and checked the house to see if maybe it had been Michael who had called. Michael was at his girlfriends. We deduced that Marie's boyfriend called from our house to see if he could get Marie to pick up, having let himself in.

That caused some consternation. Not a lot, because we know this kid and know he wouldn't do anything wrong or rash or mean. But still. We shared an "Oh no he DI-INT" moment with Marie, and went back to sleep.

(Later) Sunday morning we woke up and discovered Marie asleep on the couch. The rest of the day was spent talking with her, talking with Marie's boyfriend when he showed up, watching TV, and napping. Currently, the boyfriend has moved out of Marie's apartment, and Michael is considering moving in with her.

(Snoopy dance!)

So! That was the drama of last weekend. This weekend is shaping up to deliver some NICE weather (supposed to be 88 on Saturday), so I'll probably have more pics to share of whatever trouble Calvin and I can find to get ourselves into.

Labels: booze, journal, kids, lizards, photography

Posted by Laura at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments

This has been quite the week for the non-human inhabitants of Animal Planet. I already described in (way too much) detail about the moving and the rearranging and the cleaning. We've spent the last week amused by Kali's antics in the vivarium as she climbs around and explores. She fell off the top ledge on a couple of occasions, and the resulting THUMP sounded painful - she's really quite big - but it didn't seem to phase her a bit. She's kind of cat-like in her ability to climb up and her inability to climb down, but I'm sure she'll improve with practice.

This entry, however, is not about Kali.



We got Cheeto (our male bearded dragon) on March 19th of '06, and he was about 18 months old when we got him. We got Lucy (our female bearded dragon) on August 13th of '06, and she was about eight months old at the time. So, they're about three, and a year and eight months, respectively. They've lived in the same tank since after Lucy's quarantine period was over, which was about a month after we brought her home.

There are two different schools of thought about letting beardies live together in a single tank. Most say to keep them separate until you're going to try to mate them. Our vet said that Cheeto could probably use some company and to see if he would accept a room mate. We would separate them if they weren't thriving together, but they've gotten along fairly well, for the most part. About once a day Cheeto beards and stomps and bobs at her, and she waves her little arms and does a submissive gesture with her head. Every now and then Cheeto tackles Lucy and tries to mate, and she waves her arms at him and doesn't respond the "right" way, so Cheeto lets go (the horney little sucker) and peace resumes.

Here comes the news.

Last night I heard Calvin yell at Cheeto, and I came into the bedroom to see him (Cheeto, not Calvin) pinning Lucy and biting the fleshy skin at the back of her neck, which is what males do to put females in the right position for mating. Usually Lucy indicates to him that she doesn't want any of that business, and he gives up after a moment. Except last night, he wasn't letting go. He was bearding a lot harder and darker than usual, and turning a bright caramel color. We moved to separate them - usually just the act of reaching in to pick Cheeto up gets him to let go. But he wasn't letting go at all. Each time I picked him up, he picked Lucy up along with him. So I let them go again.

Which is when Calvin noticed the ::bow chicka bow wow:: action going on under Cheeto's belly. And we noticed the fact that Lucy was holding still for his attentions. They both turned BRIGHT - her orange, him a caramel milky vanilla. They held like that for a moment, and (I kid you not) Cheeto's eyes rolled back into his head. He just lay there on his side behind Lucy's tail, um, glowing. And Lucy just looked back at him as if to say, "That's what the fuss is all about?"

Calvin and I were all, "Wow!"

And then we were like, "Ewww..."

And then we were all, "Huh!"

We're pretty sure that was the first time (if not one of the first times) that they've had a successful mating. Over the past two days we've noticed that Lucy was acting differently; eating more, being much more active, and doing slow head bobs (her "come hither" look) at Cheeto when he was doing his mating dance at her. Basically, she's been acting much more receptive to his advances. To his delight, I'm sure.

And then they did the deed.

So! I read up on breeding bearded dragons last night...

Laura: "'The male dragon inserts his penis... called a hemipenis...'"
Calvin: "You mean he's got a HEMI???"
Laura: "Yes, dear. '...called a hemipenis, into the female's...'"
Calvin: "He's got a HEMI!"
Laura: Sigh.

Now I have to watch out for signs if she's "with egg", and set up a nesting box for her, and get an incubator, and... and... and...

If this mating was successful, she should lay eggs in about 6 weeks, then 50-70 days after that they should hatch. Just in time for the holidays!

Um, and then we'll have to figure out what to do with them all... but they'll look like this, so I'll bet they'll go fast.



Heh. Dude, my lizards totally had the sex.

Labels: lizards

Posted by Laura at 1:41 PM | Permalink | Comments

There is a definite feeling of satisfaction that I get when I'm caring for my animals. However, I have had MORE than enough of cleaning/rearranging/messing with the lizards tanks and vivarium. Last Monday I completely changed out the bedding (rabbit pellets) in the beardies' tank and cleaned all of their "furnishings", and wiped it off inside and out. Marie helped me to move the tank into the bedroom from the dining room where it's been residing since Calvin and I went to Maine. And then there was the messing with the lights and heat sources since I had to unplug them all and plug them in again. While I was doing this I stuck Cheeto and Lucy in the bathtub to hang out.

I also cleaned out the water dragon's vivarium (who also hung out in the bathtub... not at the same time as the beardies), which includes dragging the shop vac out of the garage, sucking all of the water out of the pond, filling the pond back up, sucking out the water again, filling it up again... seven or eight times until the water runs clear, then filling it up to the top. I usually have to empty out the shop vac once or twice in the process. I also vacuum out all of the misplaced bedding and poo, and wipe off the three-sided plexiglass walls of the enclosure - inside and out. Finally, I refill the water in the humidifier used to keep the environment tropical inside the vivarium. All in all, cleaning the vivarium takes me over an hour - both of them combined was a good two hours.

Today we are preparing to move Marie's ball python, Kali, into the vivarium. We have decided we want to keep Kali ourselves and have therefore snake-napped her, in a manner of speaking, in that Marie didn't take her with her when she moved out. So now she is ours, and she's getting a more spacious home. Meanwhile the water dragon, who is tiny, is trading spaces with her into a much more size-appropriate tank. This tank will sit on the stand underneath the tank holding the beardies.

This tank swapping business means that I have to completely sterilize the vivarium and Kali's tank, because the detritus of different reptile species do not mix well with one another. Kali and the water dragon could get sick from one another's cooties if I just put them in each other's tanks without cleaning them first. Today I shop-vac'ed much of the bedding out of the vivarium, sucked out all of the water and removed the rocks from the pond, scrubbed the pond basin with soap and water, rinsed and cleaned the rocks and replaced them, vacuumed out the nooks and crannies of the bark lining the back of the vivarium, scrubbed off the three "rock" shelves, and wiped down the interior and exterior plexiglass.

Finally I sprayed the interior down with disinfectant. This of course means that the tank has to sit open for a while to air out. Which, in turn, means that I had to deal with some logistics in order to make the water dragon comfy. He (she? we still don't know) couldn't very well stay in the bathtub all day. SO! I had to set up an interim tank in the bedroom. This involved dragging the tank that was hanging around out back into the bedroom, cleaning it inside and out, dumping some bark in the bottom, finding a pan and filling it with water and putting it in the bottom, arranging various furnishings and silk plants, finding covers, a UV lamp, and a heat lamp and arranging those, then soaking everything down in order to create enough humidity before finally putting the water dragon in it.

This evening Calvin and I are going to the pet store to buy a few more things that we need, then we'll put Kali in her new home. THEN I get to remove all of the bedding in Kali's tank, clean and disinfect it, put the water dragon in the bathtub, move all of the stuff from the temporary tank to the permanent one, set the wrought-iron stand up in the bedroom with the water dragon's new tank on bottom and the beardies' tank on top, and FINALLY put the water dragon back in her (his?) new home.

At which point all of the animals in this house had BETTER be damned happy.

Labels: home, lizards, pets

Posted by Laura at 2:04 PM | Permalink | Comments

I'm at home (drinking a beer - Michelob Ultra Amber, which isn't too bad but certainly not my favorite, that happens to be Fat Tire at the moment), waiting for Calvin to get here so we can head out on the motor to hit a sports bar and watch the Suns game. The deep freeze FINALLY lifted (in January, who woulda thunk it??) and it's riding weather once again.

Speaking of which (sort of), I was driving on the freeway this afternoon headed to the pet store to get some critters for the critters (rat for the snake, worms for the beardies, crickets for the water dragon, cricket feed for the crickets - reptile husbandry is a complicated and rather ookey business), and at one point hit a dead stop in traffic. It was stop-and-go for about four miles, and then wouldn't you know? The "disturbance" came into view - a patrol car parked in the median with its lights going, and nary a road blockage in sight. There was NO impediment to the flow of traffic, and yet it slowed to a crawl for miles (in both directions, I observed while passing the traffic piled up on the other side) just because this cop was sitting on the median.

But that didn't tick me off. Even though I was in traffic for an extra 20 minutes. I had my iPod and the windows rolled down to the 65 degree weather, so not much was wrong with my world.

HOWEVER. When I pulled into the parking lot at the pet store, I angled through the isles so that I could pull straight-on into a parking spot I spotted up front. Except that just as I pulled up another truck coming in a different direction squeaked into it just in front of me. Seriously, I had to stop short. And then, cursing, I had to circle around again and park somewhat further away.

Now THAT ticked me off. There's just no telling, with me.

Heh. Before I left home I was sitting in the truck in the driveway, hooking up my iPod to the FM adaptor and stereo, and finding a good song before starting out. I glanced down and to my left, and saw a teeny clear colored spider hanging from the thread of a web. I squeaked, and rolled down the window. Apparently, the web was hooked to the window, because as it descended, the spider descended. Eep. Now it was on the arm rest on the door. So I grabbed the pack of Trident that was on the console, hoping to coax it onto the paper and then flick it out the window. Except that as soon as I approach it, it LEAPED INTO THE AIR and landed on my leg. At which point I flopped in my seat (getitoffgetitoffgetitoff) and brushed at it, and it landed somewhere on the lower seat or floor.

I think.

I jumped out of the truck and jumped up and down on the driveway (getitoffgetitoffgetitoff), brushing at my pants. I didn't see it, on me or in the truck. Which means it's probably, like, in my bra right now or something.

I wonder if the neighbors saw me.

It makes no sense whatsoever that I handle worms and crickets and reptiles on a daily basis, and still beat myself to death when a little spider crawls on me.

(Song: "Luv 2 Luv U" - Timbaland & Magoo)

Labels: boredom, home, journal, lizards

Posted by Laura at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments

Sadness. I had to put one of the Water Dragons to sleep this morning. He wasn't using his hind end, going to the bathroom, eating or drinking. I feared it may be Metabolic Bone Disease, but it turned out to be something genetic. That offered at least a little comfort, knowing that my husbandry skills are just fine and I didn't contribute to his illness.

I know I'm not as attached to the lizards as I am to, say, Oz and the dogs. But I'm still quite fond of them, and I ended up blubbering away at the vet's as the doctor offered me tissues and a euthanasia consent form. Bleh, I hate this part of owning pets.

So, goodbye, big kid. You were a good little guy.

I took the other Water Dragon as well, just to make sure she was healthy. She's "a fine specimen" according to the vet, in good health and raising hell trying to get out of the carrying bag and explore. I think the vivarium is going to seem big to her for a while - it seems she's looking for her brother. We'll get her another friend when we can find another Water Dragon of similar age/size.

I'm sad today.

Labels: lizards, pets

Posted by Laura at 1:48 PM | Permalink | Comments

I'm so not in the holiday spirit this year. Had I been, the house would be decorated by now (sans tree, which is always about 10 days before Christmas). The decor is still snugly stored in the garage. Maybe it would be different if Lilly and the babies were still here - Christmas stuff is so much more fun when there are little ones around.

Christmas shopping is DONE, though. I heart Amazon. The gifts will be delivered within the next week, and all I'll have to do is wrap. We're going low-profile on the loot this year. I found a couple of cool gifts for Marie and Michael, but money goes over much better than anything else I might wrap and put under the tree. Why wrack my brain trying to find THE perfect gift when they'll just say, "Oh, gee, thanks," and stick it in the corner of their closet?

I'm looking forward to Calvin's reaction to his gifts, though. One of them in particular I feel is pretty cool and will garner the, "Oh, SWEET!" reaction I always look for. I like to find unique things that no one asked for and no one would think of, but when they receive it they really, really like it.

For myself, Santa has come early this year. I have instructed Calvin to purchase me NO gifts this year, as he has already been generous (and tolerant). On top of the motorcycle, which I continue to love, I have also purchased a guitar. A very pretty guitar.

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Ibanez-AW40-Acoustic-Guitar-with-Solid-Sitka-Spruce-Top?sku=512465

I plan to try to teach myself, though if I prove to be particularly dense about it, I'll take a half a dozen lessons. Ah, if only I had decided to do this (counting) fifteen (!?!) years ago. I would've wow-ed 'em at the high school talent show.

I'm cooking a turkey dinner today, as we had the turkey for Thanksgiving already purchased before we knew we were going to the Grandparent's. It's an excellent way to occupy one's time, while watching Sunday afternoon football in HD. Oh, man, speaking of which. We almost didn't make it. We almost DIED. Swear. Last weekend the lamp in the TV died, so we put in a service call. The repair man wasn't able to get to us until last night, which meant that we were stuck watching TV in the bedroom on a regular old tube TV. Man, it was like living in the stone age. But we're all happy now. We watched "Superman - The Return" (right?) last night to celebrate. Which I thought was decent, though when did Lois and Superman have sex??? Kevin Spacey makes an excellent Lex Luthor. And I continue to hate Parker Posey. I just don't like her, never did. I don't know why.

One of the water dragons is very ill, and it looks like we'll have to put him down. I think he developed the muscle and bone disease that they're known for - he's not using his hind limbs at all. Such is the downside of owning critters - sometimes they break, and sometimes you have to say goodbye. Sigh.

And on that happy note, back to basting the turkey, which is an every-twenty-minute requirement. Have a good one!

Labels: food, guitar, journal, lizards

Posted by Laura at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments