Wow, so busy

Unfortunately I haven't had the time to keep up with the A to Z Challenge. I probably should have known better than to start, but I'll finish it on my own time!

C is for Callen

Oh hey, that's my name!

My grandmother named me, and her inspiration for my name was actually a romance novel. She loves romance novels and came across a book with a doctor that had the name Callen. And boom, I was named. She just loved the name.

My family has a little tradition of having first or middle names that are associated with another family member. As examples, my mom's middle name is Kennedy as that's my grandma's maiden name. My mom's first name is Rosemary and my middle name is Rose after my great-aunt Rosemary. My cousin Donny was named after my grandpa Donald. My cousin Cabria's middle name is Judith after my grandma. And so on and so forth.

I actually really like my name. It's simple, I haven't yet to meet a single person (other than internet) to share the same name, and it's fun when people can't figure out how to pronounce it. I make people guess first.

B is for Bigot

A bigot is a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices, especially one exhibiting intolerance, and animosity toward those of differing religious or other beliefs. The predominant usage in modern English refers to persons hostile to those of differing race, ethnicity, nationality, inter-regional prejudice, gender and sexual orientation, homelessness, various medical disorders particularly behavioral disorders and addictive disorders and religion or spirituality. Forms of bigotry may have a related ideology or world views.
Source: Wikipedia.org

We all know someone who is a bigot. I know I do.

I apologize that this post isn't very long! I'm cooking and need to catch up on other posts.

Oops!

I'll get caught up with posts by the end of the day! I've been busy and just started a new medication that is making me sick.

A to Z Challenge; A is for Adaptation

"Adaptation is the evolutionary process whereby a population becomes better suited to its habitat."

I decided to use a random word generator to help me come up with a word starting with "A" to base my first blog entry for the A to Z Challenge. After going through a few words "adaptation" came up and it instantly clicked. I'm constantly fascinated by how living things adapt to their environment. Such as fish to water quality and temperature. Plants to light and soil conditions. And so on and so forth.

Being a fish keeper I always read about how fish can adapt to their environment whether they're tank bred or wild caught. For example, Bettas are originally from rice paddies (read: paddies, not puddles) in a warm climate, yet look what they're sometimes kept in now. Small, unheated containers where they can barely move around and often live in their own filth. Those fish adapt to the colder temperatures, the smaller space, and the poor water quality than what they generally require. Now, I'm not saying that is by any means ideal, nor would I recommend that for anyone keeping Bettas. Keeping a fish in those conditions has it's consequences and I advise anyone to read up on those.

I have done mild experiments to note the differences in person on having Bettas live in different set ups. I have had 5+ gallon tanks set up, heated, filtered, and decorated, and I've had bowls ranging from 1/4 gallon to 1/2 gallon without heaters, without filters, and without any decor. From my personal experiences, I had happier and healthier Bettas in the nicer tanks (the happiest being the male Plakat in a 20 gallon with a handful of girls ;) ).

After taking a minute to go back and read what I wrote I'm almost appalled at myself because I had hoped to kick the Betta addiction for a while longer, but apparently I'm going to have to go out and buy myself a Betta. To wrap everything up, I think it's interesting watching how things adapt and to what lengths they'll go to.