R.I.P. Kelvin: Bad Water Days In South Salt Lake

Kelvin, the majestic King Betta fish that Rachel gave me for Valentines Day finally quit his long battle against apathy and took his own life sometime Monday night while I was working. I came home sometime around 2 AM, and tried to feed him. Strangely I found that he was nowhere to be seen in his fishbowl. I was perplexed. Fish don't just get up and leave. So I looked around and found him on the floor on the other side of the room. I will not describe his condition. It's too painful to think about.

Since I have no cat, I had to rule the cause of death as suicide. He had been acting strange lately. Last time I fed him he would put the fish food in his mouth, but then spit it back out and just glare at me. But I never thought it would come to this.

He will be missed.

That was just the beginning of my watery woes, however. When I woke up at 10 am I found that I could not read my watch because of the water condensing inside it's, supposedly, waterproof face. I should have taken this as an omen of things to come. I went outside and checked my pool. Everything seemed to be fine. But sometime around noon I went outside to check my mail and the health inspector was there checking out my pool. I walked over to see if everything was satisfactory, and this woman informed me that it was not.

Apparently my chlorine levels were too high. My test showed me that it was fine. Her test showed me that it was high. I do wonder a lot about the objectivity of these test kits. It all depends on how your eye interprets the color of water, after all. But I know better than to argue with inspectors. She then told me that my Cyanuric Acid was also too high. Since I've never heard of Cyanuric Acid in my life I can't say I was particularly surprised to find it too high.

The woman explained to me that I should buy a Taylor test kit like hers so that I can test for Cyanuric Acid in the future. I wish someone had told me this last year, and we could have avoided this problem in the first place.

So now I have spent too much time again trying to get my pool back into compliance so that it can be reopened before all my neighbors (who don't even use the pool anyway) come over with torches and pitchforks and nail me to the wall like the terrible pool boy I am. Why did I ever agree to this nonsense?