struggles

Obviously, the goal of this experiment is to grow the lobsters until they’re big enough to settle to the seabed and then release them, because they have a much higher likelihood of surviving to adulthood when they’re able to hide. Ideally, captive lobster hatcheries can boost the wild population and keep things stable, so we don’t have a major crash in a decade or two.

The first year we tried this was pretty bad. We had a lot of eggs, but very few babies. It turned out that the CO2 levels in the building spiked as more guests visited throughout the summer, and that settled into the water and threw off the pH and caused a chemical reaction that prevented a lot of the eggs from hatching. I think we ended up releasing three baby lobsters (which is still better than their wild survival rate but not great).

The second year was a little better. We added a de-gasser to the aquarium and got a ton of larval lobsters, but right as they were settling to the bottom we had a disease outbreak that killed most of them. We ended up releasing four babies at the end of the season.

But this year? Oh boy. We have so many lobsters that we had to release the first round early (usually we wait till September or October so guests can see them). We just released a total of FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE baby lobsters, and we still have over a hundred who haven’t settled to the bottom yet. I genuinely don’t even have words to explain how cool this is. OVER FIVE HUNDRED. We just added hundreds of lobsters to the wild population that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

Yes, I was tearing through books constantly, and talking to this teacher at least weekly. Because even though I always loved reading as a kid, literature was always a very weak subject for me in terms of a teaching-to-standardized-test school setting (I just do awful on "what color were the curtains" type multiple choice questions. Those details don't stick in my memory THEY JUST DON'T). But that didn't matter for this class. I could just read my way out of any bad test score. I have always had fond memories of how I "fudged" my way through that class and "abused' the extra credit policy.

So I have had...several medical procedures this year. Two colonoscopies...the first as a checkup for management of Crohn's disease, and the second three months later because the first found inflammation in my large intestine and the doc adjusted my meds. Second showed improvement so that's great!

I have also this year, after a Lot Of Shit, been diagnosed with endometriosis. My left ovary, in fact, is completely encysted in a 9.2 cm endometrioma. In one month and two days I am having surgery to completely remove the cyst, which will involve completely removing my left ovary. (Righty is hanging on and being a model citizen so far, no cysts at all currently.) After going back and forth with my care team and considering options, I'm going to follow their reccomendations and also undergo a hysterectomy at the same time. Right ovary can stay for now.

This, since American healthcare is a hellscape, costs money. I've done the regular measures to reduce the bills, but they're still adding up. I've maxed out my FSA already for the year and still have about $4,500 to go before I hit out of pocket maximum for my insurance for the year.

So. Any help to defray medical costs...the ones already incurred and the ones I'm about to...would be wildly appriciated.

Good question, also no that won’t help.

shitty MS Paint 3 minutes doodle, nto entirely accurate: When you have your pinky hooked on the “bottom” edge of the phone for the extra security so it doesn’t slide out of your hand that easily, you’re wreaking damage on your hand, since the pinky is extremely askew from it’s resting position. You might have noticed that when you hold your phone like that for long time it begins to hurt, like when you are gripping a pen too tightly for example.

They semi-cancelled Timothee Chalamet for simply saying he found opera and ballet boring, by the way.

How does Hollywood work these days?

Being a bit of a naive, foolish young man and (wrongfully) calling opera and ballet irrelevant?

“You must apologise immediately! No Oscar for you.”

Acknowledging you stole terrified teenage girls from their bedrooms?

Embarrassing as it is, this other man admitted to war crimes.

AROMANTIC PEOPLE

ASEXUAL PEOPLE

AND AROACE PEOPLE

ALL BELONG IN THE LGBTQ+ COMMUNITY