A Few Noteworthy Headlines...

-Bulldogs FC won their first league game on Wednesday, Jan. 14th, 5-4 over Calvary Christian Eagles! (First soccer win in SGCS history!)

-I got the Cory Chisel and the Wandering Sons ep (Cabin Ghosts) at the recommendation of my sister (-in-law). It's pretty great.

-I finally received Horton Hears a Who! dvd in the mail. It's been a long time coming. It's a great, great film.

-I'm currently listening to Ella Fitzgerald.

-I visited my old school, The Master's College, last night with my former roommate of 3 years, Matt Nalamlieng. I got a free carabiner and coffee mug from the Alumni desk (Thanks Holly!), and got to see a few old friends. We had planned on going to the main session, then staying for the Chapel Band concert, but it didn't exactly pan out that way.....

I had planned to meet Matt at his house at 6 p.m. As I approached his street, he called me on the telephone to say, "I don't think I can go." I said, "What?! Come on!" He proceeded to say something along the lines of, "My fish tank broke, so I need to take care of everything..." At first, I thought it was no big deal, we could fix it in 15 minutes, and still make it to the conference.

I went into his house, and he said, "you might want to take off your shoes and socks, and roll up your pants." I began to think that there was more damage than I had anticipated.

He began to tell me the story of this traumatic event, which happened while trying to make a somewhat routine alteration by drilling a small hole in his tank. As he had pushed the drill in, a large crack brought itself into existence, and the water began pushing, as if trying to escape the grasps of the tank. Matt was stuck, like one of those cartoons who has to keep his finger in the hole of the leaking wall, but can't remedy the situation without taking his finger off the hole, which would lead to certain water flow onto the ground. As he held his finger in the hole, pressing against the crack as not to let the force of the 40 gallons of water take over, he had to make a decision: either stay there holding the hole until someone came home, or make a move to transfer the fish to a smaller tank he previously had.

He knew he had to attempt to save his fish community, which consisted of two clown fish, a shrimp, a little crab, and two other ones I forget right now. As a he let go, water rushed against the wall the tank was against, and he frantically grabbed the fish to transfer them. The first clown, he grabbed and heroically tossed to the other tank, only to see that he had overshot the small tank! The clown twitched a few times on the ground before Matt rescued him, again, and placed him in the small tank. He systematically grabbed the others, leaving only this yellow one to save. But this fish was kind of weird, as he kept playing and evading Matt's grasps, not realizing the situation. In frustration, Matt yelled, "I'm trying to save you!" and was finally able to save the fish. Keep in mind, in all this time, Matt is home alone, as I did not arrive on the scene for another 20-30 minutes.

Matt was able to get all the fish to the small tank, and proceeded to try and keep some of the spilling water from going absolutely everywhere.

When I walked up his stairs, I saw a soaked carpet (in some areas), and a large, cracked, 40-gallon fish tank in the bathroom tub.

"It felt like a bad dream," Matt said, as we assessed the situation. I laughed, a lot. Luckily, he did too, and we started drying up the wet spots, and throwing away the broken parts. A fish tank exploding is a very traumatic thing, I learned, and we googled the situation to see if any others had experienced anything similar. They had. Some people had their tanks explode in the middle of the night for, what appears to be, no reason. Wow.

It was definitely memorable, and I got to hang out with Matt the whole evening, so I had a great time.



Big gulps, huh?