Tuesday, April 20 2021
feed videos, breakfast burritos, and sister snuggles
Dear Journal,
Happy Tuesday. How are you feeling today? Did you go to bed early last night? Maybe you had a healthy vegetable snack out of the fridge with a big glass of water on the way up the stairs? That's OK, neither did I. Being my first night off of ticket duty, I went a little crazy with the off-call celebration. Marissa and I had just finished a pretty boring movie and, wanting to end the night on a good note, we gave ourselves a late night extension. I buttered some of that roasted garlic sourdough. We snacked on dry cereal and goldfish. It was a good time, and I knew the price. I'm slowly warming up for the day thanks to a shower and coffee.
This week at work is conference week. My company is throwing an internal tech conference. All the sessions are over Zoom of course, but it still feels kind of like a special week. Instead of meetings, my calendar is chock-full of conference talks, and the prospect of just sitting and listening quietly while pushing the coffee sounds pretty lovely right now. Heck, I bet I could even watch some of the sessions all throughout the house while doing dishes or folding laundry or something.
Sip. Yesterday was Monday, right? How did that all work out for you? I had a perfect Monday - the kind where there's only one measly little meeting on the calendar. I had the entire day to sort out my own work and plan the next phase of the intern project, punctuated by lots of mental breaks walking around the house. Most of these "mental breaks" were just taking Minnie outside to go potty. Marissa and I forgot how frequent the potty breaks are with puppies. If she's not sleeping or in her crate, she needs to be in the backyard every twenty minutes. Still, that's a small price to pay for enjoying a puppy. The puppy phase is so brief, even now I feel like Minnie is a little bigger in size every time I look at her.
It was Marissa's turn to cook dinner last night. Arranging sliced fruit and other ingredients around the kitchen, it was pretty clear she was jazzed about the breakfast burrito recipe she had found. And while the sweet smells of breakfast-for-dinner leaked out of the kitchen, Rodney and I got to hang out on the couch. Together we went down the YouTube rabbit hole of "feeding" videos.
From what I can tell, "feeding videos" are a very popular genre on YouTube, and they're exactly what they sound like - just videos of people feeding their exotic pets with live food. They range in animals, as they also range in quality - anywhere between a high production nature documentary to a 13 year old kid in a dark room with a GoPro.
There were many feeding videos to choose from, but we finally found the diamond in the rough that is the Exotics Lair YouTube channel. It's just one guy filming himself doing regular things for his vast collection of spiders, like adding water to their dishes, cleaning the enclosures, and tong feeding them worms. But something about the way he's caught off guard by sudden moves and how he chastises his spiders makes it hilarious. Rodney and I were practically rolling around on the living room floor with laughter.
Marissa watched a sample in horror. As we had just barely won her over to our side of getting a tarantula, it was a risky video to play, so I clarified.
"He said a lot of these are the old world tarantulas. The ones that are really aggressive," I said trying to quell her uneasiness.
Marissa shivered nervously and cringed. "Why does he have to keep them in such shallow containers?" she asked.
That's a good question. Who knows why this guy is keeping very aggressive spiders in two inch deep tupperware? Maybe he knows that the jump scare makes for better content.
Marissa served dinner. As we set the table, she called me into the kitchen to watch her flip the last burrito. After searing one side of the tortilla, the whole mass of hot cheese, egg, bacon, and vegetables needs to be quickly flipped in the pan. After four burritos she had already mastered the deft motion. Needless to say it tasted incredible.
We watched a Hawks game. In our first of three games against the Predators, our boys got obliterated. The loss stung extra severely because the coach swapped out Marissa's favorite goalie, Kevin Lankinen, well before the game ended.
"I think my jersey is cursed," commiserated Marissa, looking dejected in her crisp jersey that read LANKINEN across the back.
"There might be something to that," I laughed. "I'm pretty sure that Akiem Hicks got injured the first game I wore my HICKS jersey."
I caught up on chores while the dogs napped in the living room. I placed Minnie in the cozy spot in our living room armchair. Ziggy was visibly annoyed.
Realizing I had created some strife between the two, I wanted to reconcile them and encourage some sister snuggles. I plunked Ziggy in the chair beside Minnie. I'll tell the story of what happened after in photos that I took over the course of an hour.
It turns out that chair is big enough for the both of them. Thanks for stopping by today. Have a great Tuesday everyone.
