My Little World…

OK, it’s been a pretty interesting week around our house! First off all we had a bit of a sewer drainage issue - ugh!! It seems our washing mashine decided to dump all of it’s water into the basement floor instead of the drain. We tried Drano and am auger and thought we had it fixed, only to find more water in the basement the next day - and a washing machine full of water! At first we couldn’t figure out how the water got into the washer. We got all of the water out of the washer with a siphon and a bucket and just hung the hose back in the washer.

Well, later that night I was taking a bath and kept hearing funny noises. So I pushed down the drain in the tub, and wrapped a towel around me. As soon as I opened the bathroom door, I could hear the water hitting the basement floor! I ran back and stopped the tub from draining. I woke DH up, and we went down to the basement. There was almost an inch water in our laundry room, and it had run under the door into a storage room! Apparently was it not on my bath water that had run out, but also the water from where he had taken a shower earlier! He got out the shop-vac, and sucked up as much of the water as he could. We have a 12 gallon shop-vac and he had to empty it twice! We got Roto-Rooter out here the next day, and we had roots from a tree in our front yard blocking the main drain from the house. It’s all fixed now though!

The next saga of the week also involves water - a LOT of water! We have been talking about getting a saltwater aquarium for about three months now. We’ve been shopping around, and we’ve even gone a looked at a couple that we’ve found for sale in the paper, but so far we hadn’t found what we were looking for size-wise. We kind of had a specific spot picked out for it in the living room, and the ones we looked at were too long.

So DH is talking with one of the guys he works with about wanting an aquarium, the guys tells him he needs to go to a pet shop about 45 minutes from us because this guys has several used aquariums for sale at a really great price. So DH drives over there when he gets off work that day to take a look. Apparently the shop owner had a very well off customer that was really big into aquariums, and he was diagnosed with cancer. Once he started his treatments, he just couldn’t take care of them anymore, and he just wanted to sell them for whatever he could get out of them. Well, the one that they had left was a 300 gallon tank, with a stand, hood, filter and pump for $500! Even I knew that was an amazing deal! The tank itself is worth $2000 dollars, not counting the custom made stand, and filter system.This was easily a $3500 system!

Needless to say this was a little bigger than we were planning on - OK a LOT bigger! We were thinking more 125-150 gallons! But how can you pass up a deal like that? And everyone that we have talked to has said that the bigger the tank, the less maintenance you have to do. Plus we were planning on setting up a totally biological filter system anyway. So DH has to have some help to get this thing home, needless to say. We repainted the stand and the hood, because it was a little scuffed in places.

We have a pretty big living room - it’s about 18 x 24 feet, but we also have some pretty big furnture and a big screen TV. Let’s just say we had to rearrange both the living room and Jordan’s playroom to find a place to put this damn thing, which invloved having to run new cable, because we moved the TV to the opposite side of the room. Not only that but DH is at Lowe’s right now picking up jacks to go under the house to support this montrosity! I think with, the stand, the tank, and water this thing is going to be close to 3000 pounds! That’s like having a small car in our living room! We are probably also going to have to run a dedicated eletrical outlet to our breaker box to support all of the equipment that will be running the aquarium. Now you know where my title for this post comes from - What were you thinking??

Don’t get me wrong, I think this thing is going to be amazing once we get it up and running! This is definitely going to be the focal point of the room! I love saltwater fish - the colors are just amazing! Anyone else out there have a saltwater tank? If so, I would love to hear any advice or tips! So, that’s been my week in a not so small nutshell! We’re having a family Easter dinner tomorrow and of course an Easter egg hunt. I still haven’t gotten Jordan a basket yet - it’s not like she needs the candy! We still have candy from Halloween! I hope you all have a very Happy Easter, and don’t eat too much candy!