Blog Number 224

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Let me take a minute here before I start my workday and tell you about the latest addition to our household.  We are now the proud owners of a hermit crab.  It seems that last week the wife took the kiddies to the local mall and there was a kiosk selling hermit crabs.  The thing that drew the kids to this particular vendor was the brightly painted shells that the hermit crabs were living inside.  Among the many designs were the superman logo, the batman logo, etc.  Now as a person who sees through these kinds of marketing ploys, I was immediately skeptical.  However the daughter would not stop talking about these crabs and the next day they made a trip back to the mall to see what the cost was.  The wife called me at work to inform me that she felt she could talk the lady at the kiosk down from $20 to $15 (which included the crab, the shell [of course], a small cage and about 2 weeks worth of crab food).  Given that the daughter was so enamored with these creatures, I caved in and OK'ed the purchase.

I will admit the little guy was kind of neat to watch as he scurried around the little cage.  The wife then checked out a book from the library and immediately discovered that we were doing a great disservice to the crab (by the way, the crab's name is Michael as in Michael Landon) by leaving him in this small cage.  I deciphered this message to mean that $15 was only the beginning of my expenses related to hermit crab ownership.  $30 more dollars later we have a bigger cage, another shell (in case he gets tired of his bright yellow shell with the owl painted on it), a cuttlebone, a small palm tree (which he uses to climb and then hang up side down from the new cage lid), and a better watering sponge.  I can tell this is only the start of a windfall of crab related purchases coming to my credit card bill soon.  Per the book we have, they are social creatures so it is really not fair only to have one crab.  Perhaps we need 2 or 3.  Also, the cage we just bought will not be big enough for more than one crab so a new, bigger cage will be needed.

Sigh, I suppose after going all of September without spending a dime, I was due for $100 worth of useless spending that gains me nothing (other than my daughter's gratitude).  I will have to post some pictures soon of Michael so you can see where my money is going.

I do not know if this blog entry is my official return or not to semi regular blogging so don't get your hopes up too much.  However I have heard from several of you recently so this blog is a direct result of your complaints of the lack of blogs.  Until next time...

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon