A Milestone

I taught MaxieC how to ride his bike without training wheels today. I'm such a fabulous teacher that it took all of 5 minutes. I think that 12" bikes are pretty easy to learn on, as you're very low to the ground. HannahC learned on a 16", and it took a lot longer despite my powerful teaching skills.

Of course she, like her mother, is quite obstinate and just always has to do the exact opposite of what I say to do. That might have something to do with it.

JackieC the rat is quite sick again. A few months back, she had surgery to remove all her breast cancer tumors (very common in rats. Mostly females.), and she's been doing very well until just recently. The Mrs. had noticed her losing her balance on occasion the past couple weeks, and then yesterday she went all limp. The Mrs. and HannahC nursed her back from the brink by feeding her lots of peeled grapes, and she can move about a bit now, but she's definitely not normal. She is past the average life expectancy of a rat by about 25%, so while we're all pulling for her, I believe that death is imminent.

Poor JackieC.

Yesterday, we went to the Denver Zoo with the 4-H group for a guided tour. It was interesting. The tour was two hours long, then we stayed another 4 hours (at which point the zoo closed, and everyone was cranky from being on their feet all day). Naturally, we didn't go home.

We went to The Mrs.'s favorite Greek restaraunt, which is in Denver near the zoo. And then we headed home.

Well, not quite. Then we headed to Bass Pro to spend all my gift certificates. Oh, and spend we did. I got me all setup for catfish hunting. Just so Carl, Jr. can be jealous, the rod was $130, and the reel was $110. Together, that exceeded my gift card balance by $5. I didn't get anything that was purpose-built for catfish. Instead, it's a lightish surf-fishing outfit. The "catfish" gear looked like crap to me, and the dude at the store said it was crap, too. They make them look really big and strong, but it's all cosmetics. I stuck with a spinning reel, though a pretty big one that also has a trolling mode.

I doubt I'll catch a thing.

I need to find some good stink-bait recipes. Then, I plan to try them out in the back pond where we have two very well-fed catfish (along with 18 goldfish/koi). No hook. I just want to see what these guys like to eat. I saw the black catfish up close for the first time in a while today while I was cleaning algae out of the pond, and he was over a foot long. Oh my. Two years ago when we got them, they were only about 3". The black one has always been bigger than the white one.