Almost a week in....

Well, so far I am enjoying my stay in Tucson.  I am sure I am happier here than I would be if I had stayed at home through the winter.  Don't get me wrong, I'm going to be glad when it's time to come home, I'm sure, but for now, this is a good change for me.  It's nice to be able to go and ride outside.  It's a little rough in the mornings when I wake up and have to strip down to my swimsuit on a pool deck when it's 35-degrees outside and the lifeguards are dressed how I would be if I were going skiing in below-zero temperatures, but of course once I'm in there it's fine.  And since the drive is two minutes, when I'm done I can be home and in a hot shower in no time! 

I really lucked out too with the condo I found to sublet off Craigslist.  Of course, that kind of "shopping" can be risky, but in my case it worked out quite well.  Except for one, minor thing....  the guy left behind his fish.  Ok, not a big deal, right?  This was one of those bullet-proof goldfish that somehow had been thriving for the last 14 years.  I had a goldfish once when I was a kid.  I won it at the school carnival and it died after a few weeks, like most goldfish tend to do.  We gave him a proper burial at sea; and by that I mean we dumped his bowl in a nearby stream rather than your typical flushing him down the toilet burial.  We had a dog and a hamster who fared better, but that was my only experience with goldfish.

I know that sometimes there are freakish ones who do live a long life.  I had a friend in high school who had a goldfish that she had gotten in the same fashion that I did, winning it at the carnival.  Except her fish lived for something like ten years before it finally died.  And for some reason I've yet to figure out, they kept it in the freezer for a while.  So I was told that the fish would be here, but he was only fed once a month and I wouldn't have to do anything to take care of it.  The guy I'm subletting from had a change of plans and wound up not leaving town, but fortunately still honored our agreement and was letting me stay here while he stays somewhere else for the duration, and he would be able to come by once a month and feed the fish.  Good, nothing to worry about there, right?

So maybe a grand total of 36 hours after my arrival, I walked by the fish tank and noticed that Lovie (yes, Lovie) was lying on the bottom in the corner.  I don't know a whole lot about fish, but I am pretty sure that that is not normal fish behavior.... at least not when they're living.  So, great, the freakin' fish is dead, pretty much the minute I moved in.   This was reminding me of the Bubbles the hamster incident in November all over again (though Bubbles would've been a much more appropriate name for the fish, no?) I am apparently the new angel of death.  And come on, even I was wondering if I'd done something based on the fact that the fish died almost immediately upon my arrival, in spite of the fact that all I'd done was walk past it a few times.  The guy I'm renting from thought nothing was wrong when I first e-mailed him, apparently the fish gets pretty inactive once he eats and gets full.  I knew different.

So, finally, after a couple of days and the fish finally floating to the top of the tank the way that most dead fish tend to do, it was finally accepted that after 14 years (how many is that in goldfish years?) Lovie was dead.  I offered to take care of it, because frankly, it's kind of creepy having a 6-inch dead goldfish floating in the aquarium every time I walk in and out of the condo.  So I took care of the memorial services (flushed him down the toilet) and had a brief flash to that episode of the Cosby Show when they had that nice funeral for Rudy's goldfish.  Maybe I should've gotten dressed up? 

So anyway, aside from that little incident, things are good here.  The weather has apparently been unusually cold, but for someone from New Hampshire, when it's in the 50's in January, we consider that a good thing.  But temps have gone up and the mornings aren't below freezing anymore.  Training is slowly picking up, not feeling great yet, but who feels great in January?  It's nice to be able to focus on nothing else. 

So, with no more pets left in the house to die, it should be smooth sailing from here on out, right?