A pair of old fools

Standing in line last night waiting to buy tickets to The Hobbit we tried to remember the last time either of us saw a movie in a theatre.  We concluded it was likely a James Bond flick that Al Pinkney convinced us to see at the theatre in Nipawin but neither of us could really remember anything to fix a date for that viewing.  The only other possibility we could come up with was the first of the Lord of the Rings movies and for that one we could clearly remember three little heads lined up in front of us. So that has to be close to 15 years ago.

Regardless of how long ago it was, there we were lined up with the teenagers and mothers with kids, waiting to see an animated picture about imaginary creatures.  We spent many happy evenings cuddled up on the kids’ beds listening to Marilyn reading first The Hobbit and then The Lord of the Rings.  And when we got into the theatre it turned out we were by no means the oldest ones in attendance.  In fact there was a tremendous range of ages represented and I’m sure the 20-40 year old crowd outnumbered the 16 and under crowd.  It was a 2 hour and 45 minute movie and both of us were surprised when the credits started to roll so I guess it was a good show. 

And now for something completely different …..

I don’t get fish.  I like to catch them.  I like to eat them.  But I absolutely don’t get why anybody would ever consider them as a pet.  And particularly so the ones that came with this house.  They’re bland, non-descript, completely ordinary, rather small pet fishes.  They don’t do anything exciting.  They don’t look pretty.  They just swim haphazardly around a tank that slowly turns green.  I don’t get the appeal.

Today Marilyn is devoting 2 or 3 hours of her life to cleaning the tank for the stupid creatures.  Its a major performance.  She has to scrub the sides of the tank, vacuum out the gravel, wash all the plastic crap that sits on the bottom for the stupid critters to swim around and replace about 1/3 of the water.  And not with just any old replacement tap water either.  It has to be the right temperature and it has to have sat for a week to let the chlorine escape.

I say dump a gallon of bleach in the tank, fish the critters out when they float to the surface and two days before the owner returns pop into a pet shop and replace them.  They’re such completely ordinary fish that the only possible problem would be finding 4 equally bland fish in a small enough size.  I can’t see what possible problems could arise and she’s going to piss away a couple days of her life looking after the stupid things over the next 3 months.   She could even go so far as to fish them out before dumping in the bleach and George could have fish for dinner.