I complete my trips around the sun in September, and I started making sure I always take a selfie in September when I completed the 40th. My grandmother was 50 when I was born. She was always beautiful to me. I don't buy the idea that beauty has to look young. Sometimes, if I turn my head just the right way, I see a little of my grandmother in myself.

They've also been moving little clumps of algae into the castle. That could be a coincidental thing - just drops in there and doesn't get flushed back out. But it means algae growth is picking up, which is healthy for them.

Apparently, their brains are just a little ring of cells that release amino acids and maybe have something to do with metabolism. The nervous system actually controls most things.

I don't know how they know to do this. Not even just instinct. But if a shrimp dies and eggs were already fertilized, they finish developing. I have seen babies coming up from the graveyard.

When a shrimp dies, they move the body behind the castle. There is nothing blocking them from continuing to move it. They just don't move it back out. But they still go back there to eat algae. They aren't avoiding the decomposing shrimp.

I spent too much of the day looking up info on brine shrimp brains. Mine have started a graveyard and are tending it. I can't find any evidence that their brains would even be capable of recognizing "get rotting flesh away from live creatures".

Somebody molted and the exoskeleton came off in almost one whole piece. Now it looks like there's a ghost shrimp haunting the tank.

I'm going to tell y'all because nobody told me...

Snakes don't have eyelids. They sleep with their eyes open.

Shai-Hulud doesn't usually have his head out of the sand when he's sleeping. I thought he was dead! No...just sleeping.

Spent a big chunk of the morning figuring out how to make a gif from a video of my shrimp. Things that were super easy 10 years ago can become a challenge when you don't keep up with the tools. But I did it!

I just realized the week is most definitely NOT almost over.

Yesterday was two months long.

Shai-Hulud has little desire to come out of the sand. African sand boas spend something like 95% of their life in the sand. He makes a big show of it when he does come out, though!

The Aqua Dragons and Sea Monkeys have now been moved into a tank together and will just be "my little shrimp".

https://youtube.com/shorts/hgCoTPAlYDU?si=H88TzXnz1QfxEC-9

When someone asks, "What song were you playing?"

I grew up listening to mockingbirds. That song is the intro to "Dueling Banjos", the intro to "Hallelujah", a verse of "Dust in the Wind", a verse of "Scarborough Fair" melting into "The Hanging Tree", a verse and chorus of "Margaritaville", and it ends with "Leave Her, Johnny".

I finished writing about the "Star Trek: TNG" tarot deck, looking at Minor Arcana this time. The Romulans/Klingons/Wands/Swords relationship has me looking at some things from a different perspective than before I got the deck.

https://open.substack.com/pub/diydiv/p/star-trek-tng-tarot-part-ii

I'm preparing to move my brine shrimp to a legit tank, so doing lots of reading on how to do it right. Pleasantly surprised to discover the Sea Monkeys reddit might be one of the most wholesome places on the Internet!

People give good advice and resources, cheer each other on, and console each other when shrimp die. I was not expecting that.

It's day 150 for my Sea Monkeys! 🥳

https://youtube.com/shorts/vSjzGkHXQhM?si=F2uj2opBQCufAg3M

Because I'm not weird enough...or maybe because I like learning weird stuff... I've gotten some resources from people and will finally start seriously learning about astrology.

I had someone explain it to me as planets and stars not controlling things, but making pictures in the sky that we can look at as patterns of events in cycles. Kind of "well, here's what happened the last few times this was going on". That interests me.

It looks like the people who don't like being called weird are fighting back with, "Oh yeah? Well, I think YOU'RE weird!"

So I still get to be proud of being weird.

My post about the Star Trek:TNG tarot deck was getting much longer than I intended, so part 1 is about the Major Arcana cards I chose to highlight. I'll write about Minor Arcana cards next week.

https://open.substack.com/pub/diydiv/p/star-trek-the-next-generation-tarot