Backdated: exhausted last night for reasons

[howeird]

Monday-Tuesday night Spook stayed in bed with me till I was done in the bathroom in the morning. She stayed through all the usual pit stops.

Fish tank was clear. So after breakfast I went to Trop to buy a water test kit and - if they had one - a regular size gourami. But they did not have one. Against my better judgment I bought:
5 large-ish black neons
2 little golden algae eaters
1 male and 2 female lyretails
and planned purchase
2 small cups of Java moss

Home, put the fish bags in the tank to acclimate, then opened the test kit and ran all the tests on my tap water. And felt a little gypped because the kit did not include the two water hardness tests. Ordered that kit online. Turns out my tap water is better than expected. pH 7.3 which is neutral. Low ammonia, nitrates and nitrites. But the hardness is what I really need to compare with the tank, so TBC.

I ran only the pH tests on the tank, and they were higher than the tap water by a little bit. But well within safe range, which was not the case last week (too acid last week).

Lunch was most of the last fruit bowl.

After lunch Plan A was Costco for trout and stuffed cabbage, then the nearby PetSmart for a big gourami. But that Costco is ginormous, must be 3x the size of the fairly old ones in Mountain View and Sunnyvale. One thing though, I do not miss the lines for gasoline.

The fish section is all the way at the back of the store, I think I may have passed a Conestoga wagon on the way. People drive their carts like they drive their cars - like they are on meth and late for their next dealer hookup. Not just passing me, but cutting me off. And of course there were the usual ones who park their cart in the middle while man is getting things from the left and woman/kids are getting things from the right, and debating about it, totally blocking these very wide aisles.

No stuffed cabbage, no trout. Did get:
*2 sleeves of bagels
a 3-pack of spreadable cheese (Philly cream cheese was in HUGE amounts, too much for me)
*Pre-cooked bacon
Frozen shrimp tempura (30-count)
*American Singles
*Bananas
3 lb fruit bowl
8-pack of lamb loin chops
*Babybel cheese
4 whole tilapia

*items I usually buy there

About $100 total. Definitely more expensive than Bay Area

It took way too long, so no PetSmart on account of my bladder.

Home, it was a struggle to put everything away. Not enough freezer space. I had a separate freezer in Sunnyvale, but there's no room here except maybe in the front room. The shed doesn't have electricity and I don't want to have to go out there for loading, unloading food. Looking around, actually I do have room in the "office" which used to be the dining room. Hmmm.

Spent too much time looking for the final episodes of the show I was watching yesterday. Discovered it is on Prime, is called Are You The One? and I was watching season 1, last viewed episode 9. Log ago I watched it live/Tivo and the MC was much smoother and black. First season it's some very white guy named Ryan who would be annoying if he had been given all the screen time an MC usually gets. I had to scroll through all 6 available seasons to know it was season 1 I wanted. Turns out there was only one more episode to watch, the group won the game an episode early, despite the psychologists totally blowing it on two of the "perfect matches". The second confirmed match was obviously chosen only on physical attributes, and there was one guy who shouldn't have been there at all, a total predator, and the match they said was perfect for him is batshit crazy. Someone has probably murdered both of them by now, unless he's in jail.

I ate dinner while watching, after streaming to nobody for 45 minutes. And making dinner is what made me late and exhausted.

Dinner salad was topped with bacon crumbles from the Costco bacon. No avocado left, no red onion either. But after salad was the major cooking spree.

Took out the lamp chops, and my griddle pan. Poured mint extract on the chops. Covered the bottom of the pan with olive oil and heated it on the front burner. Seared each of the chops, flipped them over and added thyme, oregano and Thai basil. Covered and cooked for 7 minutes. Flipped them, added Hungarian sweet paprika, covered and cooked for another 7 minutes. And they were all done.

Put three on a plate with some KFC mashed potatoes, but only could finish two and maybe half the mashed. Yummy! Bagged the chops in pairs and tossed them in the freezer. 

Plans for Wednesday:
Write this
PetSmart
Buy a small freezer for the dining room