Shopping Adventure

My friends own a salt water fish tank. They have a few snails and a hermit crab or two, two clown fish, a bunch of awesome coral, and when I arrived they had a shrimp. Their tank is lacking a bit of upkeep; there is a lot of algae living in it. They got a slug once, a sea hare, when they had two shrimps. One of the shrimps, and they never knew which one, murdered the sea hare, so they were going to wait for both shrimps to die before they tried to get another sea hare. Last night, we noticed Archimedes had died. We toasted, and they began plotting the purchase of another sea hare.

What does this have to do with shopping?

We didn't get out until late in the day. They had a ton of products to be shipped and it was well after noon before we were ready to head out. That's ok, I finished a project I had wanted to finish before I left, but never got the chance. It was a beaded pendant of their business logo, if you want to know. I had planned to make one for everyone who came for Goddessfest, but since that was only me, I only had to make three.

Anyway, late in the day we went to lunch, the bank, the post office, and to Michael's where I got some beads that are not available in my area and embroidery floss to occupy myself when my friends have to get back to work. See, some people may not understand this, but I understand that my friends have a business to run, and there is a limited amount of time they can spend with me. I am and will always be fully supportive of their business, and I am more than happy to do other things while their work gets done. They still have to pay rent and buy food and all that whether I'm here visiting or not. We also went by the gem store that sells the Idaho Star Garnets (that I really really want!) too late in the day. But it wasn't a wasted trip, we now know what time they close and can head back there again.

We stopped by a few other stores and then headed to a store called Fish, Aquariums, and Stuff. Only in Idaho! We spent a lot of time there, picking out the desired sea hare and eyeing the blue tang. I drooled over the bettas and the cute guppies and the beautiful anemones. After some time, someone appeared to help us, and pointed out another sea hare we were not even looking at. This one was green and looked and moved very much like an elaborate rock. They, with a little input from me, decided they liked the green guy (the shopkeeper said he'd been there for a really long time), made their purchase, and back to the house we went to acclimatize the new creature. They were going to name it Shrek II, after Shrek, the first sea hare that got mutilated by the shrimp. I was busy thinking about the thing that was still behaving like a moss covered rock and thought that it needed a better name. He needed something that reflected on his unbelievable slowness (in fact, I hadn't seen him move at all!) and the only creature I can think of that is considered comparably slow is a sloth. SLOTH!! Perfect! We're all fans of the movie Goonies, so I said "I think you should call him Sloth." As I thought; perfect.

And here's Sloth on his new rock (I'm sorry if the image is a little grainy, I can't tell on this laptop to adjust it).


We went back out to Walmart to do the real shopping; food, ingredients for the dishes I will be making later this week, and a few supplies (and food) for tomorrow's outing. We came home (to their home, of course), had dinner, and watched Kindergarten Cop, while Sloth made the rounds in his new home.

Now, if you never thought shopping could not be so fun, you might want to ask Sloth!

Tomorrow, we're taking a trip to Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, which my friends say is not that far away. And it also seems like a Sabbat-appropriate thing to do!