Strange snails, cow intestines

I'm sitting here in the pleasant company of my fish, and also the 5 snails I bought yesterday to keep the tank clean. 3 snails just crawled on top of eachother and they are slowly sliding down the wall of the tank. I remember something strange from zoology about snails... it may be that the one on the top is curretly undergoing a dramatic change from female to male. This is an interesting topic for a Japan blog because it is happening in Japan. While I'm on the subject... I don't know if I mentioned the drama of Atsuko's bettas or not, but it is worth mentioning today as the story has taken a deeply sad turn. Atsuko had a beautiful blueish-purple male that lived alone for a while, then had a wife for a while, then moved in with 5 women and seemed to be having a wonderful life for a couple of weeks. He was a very gentle man and seemed to enjoy the female company. Then one day one of the women turned on him and left him with fin damage and severe emotional damage -- Atsuko moved him to his own bowl but he was depressed and would not eat for several days. Slowly he seemed to be recuperating, eating food but still spending most of his time in deep thought at the bottom of his bowl. I stared at him many times and wondered what sad state his fishy mind was in and tried to convince him not to take it too hard, but alas today he is dead in his tank. Killed from the pain of his broken heart.

Subject switch time. I had some cow intestines today. It turns out that I had them yesterday too. When I went out to dinner with Edgar and Mitoko I picked some "hormone" from the menu, not knowing what it really was and just asking if it was "beef," and they said that yes it was, so I felt pretty safe. It had the rubbery consistency of squid, which confused me, but I have learned not to chew such things and just ate it as the sauce wasn't too bad. I even said it was pretty good. Well when I told Jiamei what I ate she was very surprised and said that Americans don't usually like "hormone." Why not, I wondered? Oooooh. She pointed to her stomach area and with a sinking nasty feeling I realized what part of the "beef" I had eaten. Unfortunately when I went to the church BBQ this evening they were frying up a bunch of it, and since Edgar and Mitoko knew that I liked it they gave me some more. The tears came back but I ate it. It's all about mind control. It did result in an emergency trip to 7/11 for some ice cream afterwards, however. I'm going to miss my church people here! They've been really good friends. We had cow intestines together, that is a bonding experience.

My toe looks really gross today. I had a vision of being eaten by a shark in Okinawa, attracted to my toe. That would be such an unusual set of circumstances leading to the time and place of my death, wouldn't it? I think I will go home. I can meditate on my lab notebooks as I drift off to sleep. I don't know what I will present tomorrow, I have tons of data but no real conclusions. Hopefully I can come up with some in meditation.

Absalom is trying to eat my snails. At least it keeps him from abusing his wife. Maybe this is the secret to ending spouse abuse in the U.S. Give the guy an endless supply of twinkies or something. I really need to go get some sleep.