Yesterday marked the 3 year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. With every passing year, my odds of a normal life expectancy increase. 3 years is a pretty big milestone. 5 is the ultimate goal...though still no guarantee. It's still not rare for colorectal cancer cells to linger "dormant" for a decade or more.
But I'll take my 3, gladly! Especially as one who has had a lung metastasis. The vast majority of stage 4 colorectal cancer patients require chemo for life. And that life is often relatively short, unfortunately. I've already lost so many friends to this disease. Fit, otherwise healthy people <50.
Last night I celebrated by attending my monthly bunco game...and eating so much delicious junk. Then arrived home to leftover pizza -- yay!
Today I finally got around to applying some sweet decals to my Christmas present 2019 Canyon Speedmax CF 8.0 tri bike. A friend-of-friends does vinyl decals and designed it for me. It looks so amazing! I'll be adding some random red and blue stars. Those aren't my fancy aero wheels in the photo. My good wheels have yellow (Mavic) decals that the WW decal nicely picks-up. Eventually my pursuit bars will have blue bar tape to match the blue in these decals (and the blue stars). I really can't wait to ride this outdoors, in spite of the fact that I'm pretty happy to roll around on Zwift most of the time. I don't have to worry about inattentive or downright aggressive motorists on Zwift.
I also spent a decent amount of time, today, working on my terrarium and researching potential occupants. It's been a long-term work-in progress. At one point it was a paludarium with a water feature and briefly held about a half-dozen red devil crabs. They were adorable and entertaining, but the largest one was a serious asshole and went around beating up and killing all of his tankmates...until he was alone and died an angry little man (I think it was a male, anyhow). They aren't typically a species that doesn't play well together, but it apparently only takes one rotten apple.
I'm not entirely pleased with my current set-up, but it's mostly because I'm working with the limitations of using a 29g aquarium as a terrarium (and a section of the glass has horrible limescale build-up that we've been unable to remove from a "crabitat" water feature). A purpose-built terrarium would be be preferable. Something taller and deeper. Someday when all the fish in my 50g aquarium are gone, I want to put a terrarium with the same footprint on that stand. My aquarium is 36x18x18. I'd like a 24" tall terrarium with doors that open on the front, rather than trying to dig around from overhead to prune plants. I really enjoy the planted/scaped aspect of terrarium/vivariums and would like to be able to have some taller plants. Perhaps with a couple of rough green snakes (very small, skinny, bright green snakes that eat only bugs -- no rodent friends for dinner). Or maybe more frogs.
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| Ranitomeya amazonica |
I'm kind of smitten with these tiny guys. They're a "thumbnail" poison dart frog. It appears that they will get along in small groups, so 3-4 should do OK in my set-up. And they will love all of my dwarf bromeliads. They should happily hang out in those and breed in ones that hold water in their center cups (fun fact, pineapple are bromeliads!).
I won't likely be adding any little frogs to my terrarium until May. We're planning a week-long road-trip out West and these little guys need daily feeding until they are full-grown. I don't know anyone locally who I could trust to come in every day to feed wingless fruit flies or teensy crickets. Plus I may have to have them overnight shipped and it's still too cold for little froggies to travel to MI.
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