(diaryland) July 27, 2009 - 10:22 a.m.

For a dangerously mopey, grumpy person, I had a magical kind of weekend.

First of all, we impulse bought some new pets. When you own a fish tank, you can sort of do that. We went to the fish shop strictly for fish food, but then we accidentally fell in love with tiny red shrimp in a tank out the back. The lady said that they should be OK in our tank, especially if we bought a little ball of aquatic moss for them to stand around in. And boy, she was right. They sure do love to stand around in the moss. We got two child shrimp. A boy and a girl. One day, they will grow to nearly 4cm, but right now they are kind of 1cm with long, spindly antennae. Their eyes are the smallest black dots.

Sometimes, the shrimp are not in the moss. When they're not there, I have no idea what they're doing. But then, two hours later, there they are again, in the moss.

The guy, who is small and pale, is really hard to see except for one time when he was standing majestically on the highest small leaf on a plant right at the front of the tank. He waved his arms around and looked so, so cute. His name is Bernini. He seemed to be saying, "I have scaled this plant. It was no match for me."

Later on, after being used to owning shrimp, I slept a lot. Then, I walked to the city with Daniel from my house. That's probably a bit over 15km. After vowing never to do such a thing again after doing it with Diane and having it feel like an epic tale of survival, this time, it was really easy, except for the hour and a half at the end when I had to walk around, severely chafed, adjusting my groin every thirty seconds. With Diane, the walk took 5.5 hours. With Daniel, it took 3.75 hours. I guess the price you have to pay for speed is chafing.

When we were walking through Ashburton, the suburb I was a baby in, there was one street where there was snow. Just one street. There were people taking photos of each other, cars skidding around the corner, and nothing else around. Later on, Daniel figured out it was probably a 'Christmas in July' thing, but at the time, it was baffling, yet cool. We did the photo thing too.

On Sunday, a baby lay on me. It was the funs. Then I ate soup with ham in it. I hate ham. A day of extremes.