A Meeting and A Christmas Party

     So the Ocean State Reef Aquarium Society is underway. Rich and Brenda call a meeting of the BoD at our home to discuss the nature of of affairs with the club and what direction it should go in. Rich, Brenda and Charleen all attend. It's been decided after a conversation Rich had with Jeff, the prior president of CTARS, that a conference will be put on next year by OSRAS. Okay. Good idea? Maybe, if they can come up with some money because the club only has a few paying members. They have made me Facebook Coordinator. I can handle this no problem. Go on Facebook a couple of times a day to see if there is anyone trying to contact me, upload pictures taken at meetings, update status whenever requested. Brenda seems adamant that she doesn't want to really open all the books to the the club members and dammit! One of these people broke my toilet seat while they were in my home and didn't have the decency to tell either me or Chris!! 

     I'll look past the toilet seat for the time being and just try to have some fun with new club members and see how this Facebook thing goes. There is a Christmas party coming up for the club and a Secret Santa. I plan on making my famous pumpkin pie for the event and Chris plans on giving away one of his frags as a secret santa gift. But, our phones ring constantly and our Reef Central inboxes are getting full with requests and questions on how to do things....these are very needy people! They really want Chris and his father to go set up tanks again to sell their frags as well as donate some of them for their raffles and they are very insistent on this. Chris says he'll see what he can do. He prefers to offer, not be asked...Smile, Missie, smile! You love this hobby!!!

Yes, they gave in and brought their corals, their setting up here.

Emery showing his coral

(Picture Courtesy of George Atkins)

Frags

(Picture Courtesy of George Atkins)

     The day of the meeting comes. 

Filling out name tags

(Picture Courtesy of George Atkins)

Secret Santa table

(Picture Courtesy of George Atkins)

     There is a woman named Deb there. I know her. She's very nice. She looks pissed. I ask her what the problem is. She's upset because she made all the food for the party and Rich is ignoring her. Oh, for crying out loud! Are you kidding me?! Drama, really? Does it seriously have to find me here too? 

(Picture Courtesy of George Atkins)

(Picture Courtesy of George Atkins)

     I spend a majority of the party in the hallway listening to the life story of how she has been there for Rich when him and Brenda split up and how dare he treat her like this, she paid for their oil when they had none last year and blah, blah, blah....I run to Chris when I see him and tell him I think there is some sort of crazy fucked up love triangle going on that I just got myself in the middle of and to help me get the fuck out of it! 

     He laughs, makes fun of me for always finding drama and asks for my help with something. Eventually we make our way over to the party area. (By the way, the food was wonderful and eventually I did talk Rich into thanking her and she came into the party...by the door if I do remember correctly.) 

    Then we went on to the Secret Santa part of the party which was actually a lot of fun. 

(Picture Courtesy of George Atkins)

      All in all the party was actually a good time. We had some great reef discussions with other members of the club. Afterwards, Rich and Brenda needed a ride home and wanted Chris' advice on how to bring their tank back to life anyway. We figured why not. That was an adventure all in itself. The tank they had set up was...dead. There was no living organism in it what-so-ever. The coral that was in it was skeleton that they were 'hoping' would somehow return from the dead. The live rock was white, no coralline, no algae, nothing. It was basically as if they has simply poured bleach in their tank...months ago. They had been adding so many different types of additives that they never needed to add for a tank that wasn't even close to being alive, it was purely insane. Chris gave them a few quick tips to get the tank started and we had to get out of there. (If you want a further explanation to that statement, ask me personally). 

     On a really good note, the BoD for CTARS is completely new and after the Christmas party that they had this month as well, Ego and his minions are gone! 

Sifting through the sand...

     Wednesday morning...Chris is up bright and early and begins working immediately on the tank. He gets the pipes out of the overflow (remember, I said he found out that they didn't need to be in there) and begins the tedious task of cleaning all of the coralline algae out of the tank.

Two different kinds of scrubbers, I'd have to say I'm impressed because I'd give up after the long hours it took him to get the years of coralline off of this tank! 

     Once he's done with that he calls me down from my blogging and we take a trip down to the local paint store to find some paint for the back and side of 'The Monster'. 

    Chris had already called and spoke to a woman and explained what he was looking for. Being a painter by trade, he basically knew what kind of chemicals he needed in the paint, he just didn't know which kind of paint he needed. Of course, anyone in the hobby knows that usually when it comes to our requests, no ones really knows anything when it comes to our requests anyway. We have a long conversation with the guy at the shop who began by saying he thought we needed to use spray paint but, Chris insisted that our 90 looked rolled so he wanted something to roll. We go on to finally find a gallon of some paint only to find out it can only be tinted to a pastel blue. We end up leaving with two cans of spray paint. It did have all the proper chemicals we needed and stated it would hold to glass. All of these a plus. We're thinking that it's possible the people who painted the 90 possibly sprayed it on too thick and had to roll it to fix the mistake but, we'll never know. The color does look the same however...

     To get back to the point at hand...we get back home, Chris masks off the tank and then proceeds to spray the back and one of the sides. We decided on the side as well because we are never going to see anything but the wall otherwise and we happen to be quite fond of the blue. 

     Then he sands the stand. The toughest part about the stand is that it's pine (we love pine...we keep re-doing everything in our house in pine) and we had our hood made out of oak because of the heat from the lights so it's going to be hard to match the two when it comes time to stain and poly them. We thought about maybe in the future just covering the stand to match the hood but, we will see...

You ever try to get a photo of someone and every time you go to shoot they stop doing what they were doing? That was Chris every time I went to take a picture of him sanding this damned stand! So, this is it!! :)

     When the kids get home they are immediately put to work sifting through the buckets of sand...not little buckets, these buckets...

     When I come back from my doctors appointment, Chris and Emily are warming their hands up in the house and Brian and Amy are taking their turn in the bin. There is a total of about 30 gallons of sand that they sift through to wash out the ditris and pull out things like snail shells, old plugs and the sort. In the meantime, the patio looks like a bomb has gone off on it. We already had a bunch of shit on it from when we recently re-did our kitchen (anyone need a stove?) and now we have all this stuff for a larger tank to go into the house...Geesh! The neighbors must think we are hoarders, I swear! 

     Chris and the kids also managed to empty out my living room of the television and end table while I was gone. Chris and Emily bring in the tank stand and put it into position and Chris finishes off the area of the living room by taking down my shelves. Of course they leave marks on the wall so, I have to at some point go find the paint in the basement and touch up the wall now. Gotta mark that one on the growing list of things to do...

     Hopefully we will get the doors on the stand soon. Of course it's a tad easier to plumb pipes without doors in the way! 

     After freezing her hands a bit more while Amy relaxed on the tire swing and Chris re-braced the center again we waited for our friends to arrive to help bring the tank in. We didn't wait long...it was already late in the day. We ordered take-out (again) and had dinner with Eric while we waited for Kyle and his son. 

     Once again, a huge thank you goes out to Eric, Kyle and Kyle for taking time out of your schedules to stop by to just pick up a heavy ass fishtank to put it on a stand for us!! You guys are the best! 

     

     That's it for this blog...stay posted though, it's going to get interesting :)