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clarification: fish actually don't like ice cubes in their aquariums, and the shock of such a sudden change in water temperature could potentially kill them. when the weather warms up like this, the problem isn't so much the heat is what the heat does to the water: it decreases the oxygen level and thereby slowly suffocates the fish. today was another hot and humid day and i made sure i kept a close watch on my tanks. the male guppies seemed kind of lethargic again, some of them hovering near the surface of the water, while another one stayed motionless at the bottom that at first i thought it was dead. the water temperature was at 84 degrees. i immediately went into action trying to lower the temperature. 1) turned of the fluorescent light (the heat from the tube adds a few degrees). 2) removed the tank cover and ran a box fan across the top to cool the water. that was my mistake last time, i just had the fan blowing to the side which didn't do anything to lower the temperature. 3) i hooked up an airstone and aerated the water. 4) i turned off the water filter. for that particular tank i use a penguin bio-wheel mini, which has a flow rating of 100 gallon/hour. it's a good filter (especially for biological filtration) but there's no way to control the flow output so i sometimes think it stresses the guppies because it cycles the water so often. by the end of the day the temperature was down to a safe 78 degrees and i managed to keep all the fish alive - for now at least.

i can't believe it's been almost 2 weeks since i last went running. the problem with going on a hiatus like this is any improvements i might've achieved a few weeks ago have probably all been reversed by now. as soon as i started i could feel my knees groaning under the forgotten strain. fortunately it was just a false alarm. this being my first run of the week, i had a lot of energy, and surprisingly my stamina was still good despite not having ran for a few weeks. i was using my sansa express mp3 player for the first time and it felt pretty good; normally i hate carrying anything in my hands when i run but i hardly noticed it. the headphone cord was also short enough that i didn't have to wrap it so it wouldn't slap me in the face. the foam covering on the earbuds could use some improvement however, and it did fall out of my ears a few times. with my old mp3 player i'm used to just carrying a maximum of 30 songs; with the 500+ tunes i loaded on the sansa last night, it felt like my music selection was limitless. past few runs i've been cramping up at the 1st mile mark and today was no exception: although slightly painful, if i keep on running eventually it goes away.

since my fridge was pretty much empty, instead of having lunch i went to the supermarket to stock up on some groceries. after a visit to market basket, i went to trader joe's on memorial drive. since i got some stuff for my mother, that was my excuse to revisit the cafe, and get some free lunch there (by then it was almost 3pm).

when i finally returned home, i turned on the air conditioner and stayed in the living room for the rest of the day. for dinner i ate my sister's leftover curry from yesterday.