March 15 - Chinese Food, American Girls, African Bugs

I came home from school and had time to kill before work, as did Hair. Aly always had time to kill. She was in between high school and college, so road trips weren't only fun, but mandatory.
We went to China Dragon (as usual) then went to the Pet Store (as usual).
But, after entering the pet store today, the purpose of the journey turned quickly. Susceptible to young brown-eyed girls, I was taken aback by one of the salesclerks. She was very plain-Jane, but very attractive in her own right. Her name was Michelle and Michelle became the sudden sense of purpose for this adventure.
As Hair and Aly strolled through the fish section, I lingered back by the dog cages. That's where Michelle was lingering, too. I made small talk about dogs and how long she had been working there, and if she liked her job and other nonesuch. I think she was on to my plan, but continued to play along, at least for the time being.
Hair came around the corner and saw the two of us talking, and broke it up immediately, also aware of my intent.
"Hey, let's get an aquarium for the apartment," he suggested, "I've always wanted some fish."
"Sure," I answered, then followed him to the wall lined with aquariums and fish.
We looked at tetras and goldfish. Neither the tetras nor the goldfish were very appealing though. Then we saw some Japanese Koi and some balloon fish. The Koi were large fish of many differing varieties, spotted in orange black, silver and white.
Aly had taken a liking to the Koi almost instantly. The balloon fish were also beautiful. They were goldfish with large cheeks, sort of like Dizzy Gillespie. We loved them. Unfortunately, the Koi liked the balloon fish, too. So much so that the balloon fish was in the Koi's diet, so that, too, seemed to be a bad choice of pet.
After that, we went to the back room where the big fish lurked. We saw a beautiful Sand Shark. Again, there was a problem here. The Sand Shark was only 50 dollars, but we would have to get a 20-gallon tank, as well as the appropriate accessories.
This left us spending our next two paychecks.
When we finally agreed on the combination of fish we thought we wanted, I quickly did the math in my head, and started to think this was more trouble than it was worth.
About that time, Michelle appeared again, and the small talk picked up where we left off and I kind of liked that. The small group wandered around the store until I saw something that had caught my eye.
It was a rose-haired tarantula.
"A tarantula?" asked Hair.
"Yeah," I replied. In all actuality, I've always wanted one. Well, ever since I found out my last roommate had a fear of spiders and she had begun to get on my nerves. I think that was the actual starting point in my love affair with big creepy insects.

"What would we do with him?" asked Aly.
I didn't know. I actually wanted a dog, but wasn't sure of my ability to commit to caring for a dog. I knew that was a big responsibility, so to bridge my pet gap, I felt a spider would do just fine.
My indecision on buying a pet may have been a subliminal message originally instilled in me when my father decided that selling the "GRIT" newspaper would be a good warm-up for delivering the local paper. He reassured me that if I sell just thirty issues of GRIT a week, he would match the 24 cents per paper offered by the publishers of "America's Family Newspaper".
That was a safe bet on his part. Though the average kid delivered about 35-40 papers a day, and was only paid two or three cents per delivery, they didn't have to sell anything. Local news is inherently more interesting than features about twelve uses for Pumpkin in the house other than Pie.
Well, this would be different, I thought to myself as I looked at the bug sitting still in his small plastic cage.
"How much is he?" I asked.
Michelle picked up a clipboard and flipped through it.
"Sixteen ninety-nine."
"Well, that's a lot cheaper than a dozen fish," said Hair.
"Okay, we'll take it,"
Michelle quickly ran to the back of the store and retrieved the other sales clerk, who came out with a small box. He lowered a cupped hand into the cage, scooped up the spider, then dumped him into the box. Five sets of eyes peered down on the tiny tarantula. He cowered in the corner of his box, not knowing what we would do next.
As soon as we arrived home, it was time to make a place for our new conversation piece. Hair went to the attic and emptied out a large cardboard storage box. He folded it closed and turned it on its side. It rested uneasily as we set the aquarium upon it. We dumped some old encyclopedias inside, and it felt at least a little more stable than it had before.
Hair emptied the first bag of sand into the aquarium while I steadied the sides of the box, just in case. The aquarium rested easily on the box as he shook out the first bag, He added the second bag and began stirring the sand around, trying to arrange a good nest for our fuzzy little pet. The cardboard box wobbled a slight bit, but settled down as we propped it between the wall and loveseat
I grabbed the hollow log, sandstone and decorative skull and arranged them in the bottom of the aquarium for best effect.
"Move the skull to the back corner," he suggested as he pointed out where he wanted it to go.
"I like it better here," I said.
"Well, the skull was my idea. You can put the stone and log wherever you want, but I get the skull," replied Hair.
I relented and the skull was moved to the rear left corner of the terrarium, half-buried in sand. We were all more impressed with the skull than the spider, especially when the spider did weird things in conjunction with the skull, like squeezing through the eye sockets, the effect was pretty awesome, at least as far as we were concerned.