So I was thinking about renaming this site: “The stories Austin sends Stephanie”, because they are so freaking funny. I have to post what he has recently written me.
First, some background:
Austin has a fish. One fish. He a blue fish, who has a bit of a temper if you ask me. His first tank was a 2 1/2 gallon tank, which if anyone doesn’t know how small that is, it’s the size of a piece of paper turned sideways. For fishtanks it was small. The next size austin moved up to was a 10 gallon, because his fish outgrew his other tank. This is the most common fish tank people buy. It is not too big, and not too small. Well it was far to small for Austin’s fish. He wanted bigger. He went and bought a 20 gallon. Another fact: fish grow only as big as their environment allows. If you get a fish and keep it in a small tank, it will remain that small, once you get him a bigger tank, the fish will grow to how big the tank is. It’s actually a remarkable thing in nature if you ask me. It makes sense. Well a year later (now), Austin has decided that his fish needs something bigger once again. I suggested to him a 30 gallon, which he took into consideration, and then put down as soon as he saw his “Ultimate Fishtank”. The one he bought was a 55 gallon tank complete with wooden stand. The kind you see in the fish stores, but never think of buying. It is HUGE. Keep in mind that his fish is only 2 inches big right now. We joke around about what he is going to next, the fish will grow big, and then what will Austin do next? The hot tub? Then the pool? The zoo? When will it end?? So when I left for school yesterday morning, the tank was set up in his room, without the water in it yet. The following is a story that Austin emailed me yesterday:
After I dropped Becky off at school, I went home. It was like 10. I can’t go back to bed after I get up. So I had like 3 hours to kill. I was going to until I got back from work to fill up Socrates’ new tank, because I figured I would need Joey’s help. But since I had so much time to kill I decided to do it myself. Mom said yesterday the best way to do it was to hook up the hose. So I brought a hose to the upstairs bathroom and tried to hook it up to the sink. That didn’t work. The hose was a pretty long one so I threw it out the bathroom window and hooked it up to the faucet outside.
Then I went downstairs and outside and hooked it up. My first worry was that, when I turned the water on, the hose would fly out of the tank. So I turned the water on very slowly and ran as fast as I could upstairs. The hose was fine, but hardly any water was coming out. So I ran back downstairs and turned the water up a little higher, then ran back upstairs to make sure it didn’t fall out again. It was fine. While the tank was filling I was going to set up the filter but guess what? THE FILTERS DON”T FIT!!!! It is very hard to describe why they don’t “fit” in writing. I probably already showed you the problem by now, because I’m kind of mad about this. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, ask me when you get home.
So while I was groaning about the filters, the tank was getting close to full. It was time to turn off the hose so I ran downstairs and turned off the water. Then, for some stupid reason, I thought it best to unscrew the hose. When I started to do it, water started shooting out on me. I thought I turned the valve the wrong way, so I started to turn it the other way. I could hear water rushing through the pipes, so I knew that i had it right the first time. So I turned it off again and tried to take the hose of again. Water spit out at me again. I figured it was just the extra water left in the pipes. I kept unscrewing it until it was completely off. Then I saw that the water wasn’t coming out of the faucet. It was coming out of the hose. My first guess was that this was the water left in the hose, that made it half way up to the bathroom window and was now being pulled back down by the force of gravity. So I threw the hose on the ground and wanted to wait for the water to stop coming out of the hose. But the water was exactly trickling out, it was gushing out. Something was wrong. Finally, 5 seconds later, stupid me realized that the other end of the hose was still in the fishtank and I was now syphoning out the water that I had just put in. So I ran upstairs and pulled the hose out of the tank. I didn’t lose that much water, probably 3 or 4 gallons.
The dogs were going crazy, because they tried to follow me and I was always running them over. The first time I had to run downstairs Lucy was looking out the back door. I ran towards the door and she freaked out and ran into the basement. Then I had to run upstairs again and Lucy was just coming out of the basement when she saw me running right at her again and she went back into the basement. It was kind of funny.
The tank water was freezing cold. I filled up the rest of the tank (remember because I lost some water) with really hot water, hoping that would even it out. It didn’t. Then tank was freezing cold. I put in some plants and the giant Parthenon, which looks pretty small now. My arm was freezing when I pulled it out of the water. It was like Lake Superior. The tank looks awesome though. I guess I’ll buy a bigger filter. It would be better to have one big filter instead of two small filters or, rather, one small filter and one medium filter.