Lost turtle, found turtle, and two new fish

October 10th, 2013

So, the saga has ended, and luckily ended with a happy tilt.

We had an escape from our medium security turtle enclosure, but the fugitive was reacquired before it was too late.

While we were busy looking for him, and worrying that we might not find him, or that we would find him or more precisely his dried out shell, we kept hoping he would be found. Luckily he was, and he’s back in his now near maximum security enclosure.

When one of our friends, Byron, heard the story, he shared his woeful tale of losing and not finding his turtle until it was too late.

Didn’t bring a lot of hope.

His daughter, Ayumi, thought she would help us out be bringing us a couple of their baby gold fish to assist in getting us over the loss.

We found the turtle, and in fact we’re ahead now with 2 more fish 😉

We have several fairly large gold fish outside in our small pond in the garden, but we also have some smaller fish, 4 of them, in a large bowl that sits on the middle landing of the stairwell. Those 4 were the best candidates for getting new roommates, so that’s where they are.

The new fish spent a day or so getting acclimated, and now are swimming along and moving about just like the others, even at feeding time.

That’s good news! 😉

Here are a couple of pictures where maybe you can see them:

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Cool weather is back, and so are classes…

September 26th, 2013

Well, that time of year is here once again and we’re ready to kick things off.

I already had my classes at Chukyo University where there are many students who are away for the semester studying abroad and almost all of the others spent the summer abroad. It will be a very interesting, and I hope fun, semester.

On Wednesday I met my English Interaction 2 classes. There are a lot of new faces in those classes, too.

I feel sorry for the students who wanted to take the second semester of my class but were unable to do that. It seems all students were just put in classes by their numbers and the time slots and not by professor even when they chose that.

Also I met my new discussion classes. This class only meets during the second semester, so it’s not really a new class for me, but all of the students there are new. Most of them have been in some of my other classes before, so it’s good to get to see those students again. There are also plenty of new students who I am sure are wondering what lies ahead for them. I look forward to getting to know them and getting to know the others better.

That discussion class, and my advanced discussion class, are a lot of fun and very interesting for me, too.

Tomorrow it is time to kick off Web English class again.

It looks like there will be many, many new students, and well, many students. Enrollment is supposed to be capped at 25 or so, but I have 2 classes with 40 students. Sadly, again, several students from 1st semester tried to enroll and could not.

Anyway, I look forward to my classes and seeing my students from before and getting to know all of the new ones.

Let’s have a great semester!

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What do you do on a really hot summer night?

August 13th, 2013

You invite over some students and BBQ 😉

Last night was a lot of fun with some of my wife’s seminar students who came over for a little end of the semester get together.

The plan for a while was to BBQ and toast marshmallows, but these days the weather has been brutally hot with several deaths in the area even being related to the heat. So you can understand I was a little reluctant to build a fire and cook.

The other thing about BBQing at my house is that I am the one who usually spends all my time hunkered over the grill cooking and not getting to eat too much. Still, it wasn’t so bad yesterday, and Bynn and Ahn were a big help.

We didn’t break our previous record of 7 kilos of meat either, hehheh. Still, lots of good food, cake, watermelon, and fun.

Here are a few pictures:

 

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Tree trimming again, and the hard way

July 18th, 2013

I have been back at the tree trimming again and trying to stay ahead of all of that dust. This time I really got crazy and climbed the tree and topped out the trimming. I don’t know if it was as much as before in ‘wood’ but it was a lot more cutting.

I spent most of the day in the tree. It was too hard to climb up and couldn’t get down easily, so even though I was really tired and getting cooked, I had to stay up there until I was finished.

I ended up losing about 2 Kilos! Of course, dehydration is not the best way to lose weight! ;-( And I just as surely put that weight back on with a little drinking…

Here are some photos of me up in the tree. I was at times looking down at the top of my 2 story house. I don’t think I’ll be climbing up that high in trees again any time soon, if ever…

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My two little guys get a clean home

July 4th, 2013

I have been taking care of these two guys’ ‘home’ from the beginning, and it hasn’t always been easy.

In fact, I just upgraded their quarters from their low, flat and square tank to a new one that is more of a fish bowl sort of one that we used to use for gold fish.

They really like it, and I like it since I don’t need to use rocks in the bottom. Cleaning those rocks has always been difficult and time consuming, so it’s nice to have this one that doesn’t need them to keep the bottom from being too slippery for them.

It has been a problem that it gets moss a little faster than before and it is hard to get out.

I bought a new brush today and it worked great!

They look happy, don’t they?

See for yourself:

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