crabbies

I woke up at 5:30am to one of my hermit crabs making an annoying scratching noise and couldn't fall back asleep, so I thought I'd write a blog entry. I've had three crabs since July. Recently I gave them some new substrate (soil plus calcium sand) and they don't seem to like it much. With the old substrate, they'd spend most of their time buried underneath, but now they climb onto things instead. They wouldn't even walk over the substrate at first. I thought I'd give it a little time in case they were just throwing a hissy fit in response to the change, but it's been long enough now and they still won't dig much, so there must be something about the substrate they don't like. I bought some of the stuff I used before, "Ecoearth", made from coconut fiber, that I'll use to replace what they have now. I mix it with calcium sand, which is edible and beneficial because the crabs need the calcium for exoskeleton growth.

The crab making the scratching noise was climbing upside-down across the wire-mesh cover of the tank. Just climbing across makes enough noise, but he also seemed to be scraping his claws against the wire... maybe he was trying to break through? This was the same crab who, since the beginning, had always been very active and curious, and almost escaped a couple times. I had to get a new cover because of him. Now I have a coconut-fiber climbing wall attached to the side, so it's easy to climb to the top, but this crab was able to reach the top before I added that, when he only had the silicone in the corners to grab onto.

Yesterday I spent 1.5 hours walking the four miles home from work. It was such a nice day that I decided to start walking home, and then just kept going. By the end, my legs were getting very tired but it was too late to catch a bus at that point. I find it's easier to exercise when I have a destination, rather than making a special trip. When it gets consistently nice out, I'm going to start taking my bike with me on the bus to the way to work and then bike home. Another thing I do is take the stairs at work. I'm on the eighth floor, and coming up from the 1st or 2nd floor is surprisingly difficult, but I've been doing it for a couple months now and it's slowly getting easier.

This week, I started taking fundamentals of management as a summer class. I need it as a prerequisite for one of the nutrition courses, so I thought I'd take it now to get a head start. So far it seems pretty general and common-sensical, but as someone who doesn't have any management experience, I think I will learn a lot from it. I'm not really looking forward to the exams though. I think exams are harder with general courses, especially in the non-sciences, because less detail is given, the information is less concrete, and there is more of it. Because there is less detail, it requires more memorization because you don't have the whole concept to use as context. But all in all, I think it will be good for me to learn a bit about how businesses work and what makes a good manager.

Ok, I have to get ready for work. Check back, because I'm planning to write a lot this weekend!