Rp8. Thank you. I actually have a very good friend that I call "RP" He is from Armenia and his name is Arpiar. RP for short. :)
Like you said, when my wife and I first got married we would say the same thing when we saw old people holding hands. Little did we know, we would turn into them. It is a great feeling having a spouse like that. Much better than not having to quarantine and worry about silly parasites. :oops:
My only worry is about my wife, kids and Grand Kids. I no longer have to think about my job, Thank God. Don't have to think about making money, never worry about hair cuts. ;)
I used to be a construction electrician foremen in Manhattan where we built big buildings all over the City, Sometimes I would have 150 men (and a few women) working for me and it was very stressful.
(Thats $18,000.00 payroll a day, including benefits)
Every day it was very expensive decisions and the unrealistic schedules added to the personalities of the workers, breaking up fights etc, was not something I miss. I was a very good foreman and my jobs always made money but it took a huge toll on my psyche
Of course Viet Nam was not exactly a picnic and I think it made me a much better and tougher person.
Remember I spent the entire year in the jungle, only coming out once for a day to go to Saigon to get a tooth pulled, Which was an hour helicopter trip. Then when that was the wrong tooth, I went back to get the next one pulled. :oops:
Those 2 dentist days were my only time out of the jungle. (Jungle means sleeping in the mud under the stars, no roof and getting sprayed with Agent Orange all the time not to mention the combat stuff)
If you don't go through life changing or close to life ending things, most things in your life will be tough.
I hear people on here talking about a fish as if we were curing cancer, Teraforming Mars for colonization by Liberals or exfoliating your face. :rolleyes: ( I don't even know what that is but I know it's a thing)
I like my fish, I don't love them. I loved the flounder I had for dinner last night and the macadamia encrusted grouper I had the night before and the calamari before that.
Behind my house and down 176 steps is the ocean. Many times when the tide goes out I can find hundreds of little fish caught in a tide pool behind a sand dune and they die. It makes the seagulls gush with happiness.
It's part of life, if you want to be a fish, you have to expect that. I am sure many of the ones that get back to the sea get eaten by the cousins of that Grouper I had for dinner. I never think about the demise of those fish.
Last week my female ruby red dragonette jumped out. A few days ago the male jumped out. (I guess he was like me and couldn't live without his main squeeze) yesterday I was working near my tank and found another stiff. I don't even know what fish it was.
It's not a big deal. In the sea he probably would have gotten eaten by a tuna.
I would rather the fish stayed in my tank and I try to cover all the holes, but it's a fish and it was his choice to jump. I didn't push him and he may have been a fish that was happily in my tank for 10 years.
I have so many fish that hide all the time and most of them are pairs so I can't be sure what fish it was.
I can't even name all my fish for that reason. :D
Fish tanks are easy, we make it complicated. Life is much more important and if we live long enough, as we age we will get much more serious things to be concerned with.
Now at my age many phone calls are not about going on the boat, where are we going to dinner, how many friends are coming to the lake to have canoe fights etc.
Now phone calls are more about which lifelong friend is sick. Whose parent died, so and so has cancer, etc.
My happiest times now are spending time with my wife, hoping she feels good and thinking up things to do for her. Her birthday is tomorrow. :)
"Teaching" my Grand Son's class about sea life. You can see they are really paying attention.
