I'm Not Easily Distracted, but... oh Look! Shiny!

Hey gang, I'm alive!  I'm just terribly, terribly distracted.  My best wishes, thoughts, and prayers go out to everyone who was hit by Hurricane Sandy.  My sister lives in Brooklyn, so we've been staying pretty up-to-date. I'm just floored, and shattered for all in the area who are still being affected by the fallout from this storm.

Another point of distraction would be that the Gum Zombie's reptile-mania is only entrenching itself deeper, and since I have no objection to being overrun with reptiles (within reasonable limits, and granted "reasonable" is highly subjective), I've been researching like a fiend.  This is taking up what available time I have outside of work, homework, housework, workouts, dance, cat care, Hound duty, and socializing/maintaining the reptiles we already do possess, but if we're bringing more animals into the house I'm going to be darned sure we know what we're doing and that we can afford (financially and time-wise) to take care of them responsibly. 

I can guarantee you that I, personally, will be bringing no lizards of any kind into my home.  They're cute and have personality, but I have other things to take up my time beyond chopping salad for a giant herbivore; gut-loading bugs for the omnivores similarly lacks appeal.  I've considered a Sulcata tortoise, but in light of the fact that they grow quickly from a very cute hatchling size (2-3 inch shell length) to being the third largest tortoise in the world (18 - 36 inch shell length), I think we're going to take a pass for a bit.  I'm not quite ready to sign my back yard over to an animal that's going to not only outlive me, but also rearrange my landscaping to suit its wishes.

So this leaves us more or less with... snakes.  Lots and lots of snakes, at least someday if that child has his way.  My current big mission is preparing a habitat for our first ball python, which I believe we'll be bringing home sometime between spring and fall of 2013.  I have a tank already, but ball pythons have very specific humidity requirements (50-60% normally, 70% while shedding) which can be problematic when you're dealing with a glass enclosure and screen top, so this is requiring some work/ consideration.  Also, I need to provide not only adequate heat levels in addition to the humidity, but I need to monitor same and be sure I have a proper power supply to accomplish all these things.  Honestly, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed but once we get the first setup complete any future setups will be more or less just a matter of repeating what's already proven to work.

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On the list of things I haven't been distracted about would be my workouts and food.  I've started getting up at 5:30 in the morning (much more workable than 5:00) to do my resistance, and that's going well.  I've moved the necessary equipment into the master bedroom and there I can get everything accomplished in some solitude, which I desperately needed. Also, I'm still tracking my food on SparkPeople so I don't lose my mind and consume the entire GDP of a small island nation during this holiday season.

So in other words?  Priorities are sound, and I'll be more present once the newer additions to my schedule fall a bit more firmly into place.  Have a good one, folks!