In which nothing goes quite as planned...

[Andrea]

On the plus side, I had paid the damage waiver on the rental truck, so when the guy in Santa Barbara said he was really good at backing trailers managed to jackknife the thing and bash up the side of the truck, at least I don't have to pay for it. Not that I didn't feel *really* bad about messing up their brand new truck. And on the way to find some muscle to help us unload stuff, we found some military-looking guys moving in 2 blocks away, and they kindly agreed to unload for us. And once I bought a new cap and some plumber's tape and a pipe wrench, the drain pipe on the bottom of the fishtank stopped leaking. Oh! And none of the fish died... yet.

And then there's everything else. LOL

The fishtank wouldn't fit in the gap between the house and the garage, so the greenhouse I so carefully assembled was in the wrong place from where I ended up setting everything up. And it won't fit over the tank anyway, though I'm trying to rig it anyway so the fish will have shade and shelter.

I used some cinderblock and red bricks to prop up the legs of the greenhouse, so it's high enough over the fish and slanting to ground level at the front. I'll also need to raise the growbed up another cinderblock height so I can fit sump tanks below it. And that's assuming the barrel guy ever comes back to exchange these toxic barrels for food safe ones like I'd requested in the first place.

Okay, I bought rain barrels and 12 16" cinderblocks (and managed to get all of them into my Z... and out again). And pipe and fittings to connect the rainbarrels.

And I'm exhausted and done for the day. Tomorrow, I'll put the rest of it together... assuming my muscles are still speaking to me. Otherwise, it'll wait. As long as I keep feeding the fish, I should be okay.