Grrrrr.

I made a deal for a set of purple G2 ponies. I dont' like G2s, but I had an idea for a custom involving a purple G2, and all of the male G2s but one are purple, so I hoped to pick up at least one of the males for my collection as well.

What just arrived in the mail today was a set of PINK and fuschia G2s. With one purple one that's even uglier than usual, and which is such a pale purple it really won't suit for my custom idea, and one that you might charitably call purple instead of fuschia if you really felt like it. And the rest are not even remotely purple in any way.

I am not pleased. Not pleased at all.

Update: the seller has agreed to give me a partial refund, so I'm not upset about it anymore. But sheesh. Purple! How hard is that to understand?

Today is being one of those days.

(In fact the last three days in a row have been those sort of days, really.)

I got a collections agency bill from Juno for an account called "stephanieparkx1@juno.com" Funny thing is I've NEVER, ever, ever, ever used any Juno services, and I ALWAYS get account names involving spark, I'd never use my full name for one, and if I have to add on a number or something because what I want is taken, I have a number of things I'll ad, and x1 is not one of them. So it's definitely not my account, but they want my money anyhow. Grr.

Also, my hair clippers have died. I went online to the manufactuer, to find out how much replacement blades cost, as the blades are the thing that's broken. A set of replacement blades costs $10.99. An entire new clipper kit, with combs and case and everything is $15.99. When you factor in that the blades aren't sold locally, it's cheaper for me to just buy a whole new clipper. Which I shall. But I found that rather funny.

Also, also, my freaking apoxie sculpt still isn't here! But somehow I managed to miss getting a package at some point this week, so hopefully that's it, and I can go pick it up at the post office. I'd be picking it up today, but of course I forgot to check the mail until after five.

Bite Club

I've been bitten by a rainbow boa. It was gorgeous. It looked about like these guys and was about that size. It didn't really hurt, just startled me a little. I've been hurt more wrestling with Kali, who sometimes forgets she has claws.

A few weeks ago JJ's mother noticed a sign for a reptile store. She knows I'm interested in snakes, so she mentioned it to us, and we went by last week to check it out. Well, last week they were moving things in and weren't open yet, so we decided to come back later. Later turned out to be today, and we dropped by for a while to see what they had.

The building itself is something of a hole, and we were rather expecting yet another dingy purveyor of imported animals of dubious health, but what we actually found was a tiny, sparkling clean, really spiffy place where they breed their own turles, and buy all their lizards and snakes from a friend who breeds. Nothing imported or wild-caught, or even captive hatched (eggs collected in the wild, animal hatched in captivity) everything was captive bred.

That's a really good sign, and I am very pleased! I'd been thinking I'd probably have to get a ball python shipped to me from somebody on line, because all the local sources have captive hatched, or wild caught, and I just don't want to deal with the health and behavior hassles, not to mention the dubious ethics, that come with imported reptiles. But the gal we talked to said she could almost certainly get me in a baby ball. I'm honestly tempted by the rainbow boas though. They get a little larger, but if she's got a male... They're so pretty! See? It was quite funny when I got bit. The gal picked the snake up out of the tank, and was handing it to me saying "They're tiny and nervous, so they're a little strikey." (strikey meaning "tending to strike," which many baby snakes are, just because they're food for everything, so they tend to be twitchy.) And about half a second after she said that, as she was putting the snake on my hand, sure enough it struck at me. Really fast, and for a bit I wondered if it had actually bit me, or just headbutted me hard or something, because I didn't really feel anything. But I have a little cluster if tiny red pinprick marks, so it did actually get me. They grow out of that though once they get a couple of feet long. It's really, really tempting... they're totally gorgeous, and the males don't get much longer than 5 feet, from what I'm reading, though not all sources seem to agree.

They're a different care hassle than ball pythons. Ball pythons are fussy eaters, rainbow boas are prone to over-eating and getting fat. Ball pythons are semi-arid, rainbow boas need lots and lots of moisture. I'll have to think about this some more before I make up my mind.

(I should add, the store had Columbian rainbow boas, rather than the slightly more common Brazilian type. I still can't find two sites that agree on exactly how big they get, but they're supposed to be smaller than the Brazilians, on average.)