ONCE, TWICE, THREE TIMES A TRIOPS and other oily messes.

Thanks for the mail. The Triops is doing fine. A little buttery right now. Apparently you don’t have to restrict it to pellet food. Tiny bits of vegetable matter or even something like… shrimp, for example. Kind of like sitting down at a restaurant to eat monkey, if you ask me, but hell, they’d eat each other given the chance. To be clear, the Triops is really small. A. gave him a little piece of shrimp. Unfortunately, it was left over from our meal and had been marinated in a delicious butter/ garlic sauce. Great for us, but in the morning I did see the oily globs floating on the surface of his tank – tray more like it. For a moment I thought, yikes, I should change the water, poor…guy-thingy, but then I smartened up and thought, if he goes out in a buttery mess, so be it. Should the Earth be invaded by crustacean beings from the outer regions of our galaxy and round us up for a butter/ garlic marinade then my only response can be, “figures.”

Onto more pressing matters. As I have never owned a Hammond organ until about a year ago, I didn’t realize that it would require an annual “oiling” – but hey, it does! And I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that I could use any old oil. But no, Hammonds only use Hammond oil. I ordered mine from St. Catharines, ON. And so, now it is oiled, both in the motor funnels and the generator. You would think that the bearing “squealing” would be done, but no, apparently it’s a slow ooze into the mechanical workings and can take up to 2 weeks to get to the necessary parts. 2 weeks! Your next guess would probably be right on the money. The friggin’ Hammond must have been designed by a watch maker!

Bingo. Celebrate with a half-price dish of battered shell fish at any conveniently located Red Lobster.