Hi --
So I checked in on the football stuff and it looks like the Packers are having a pretty good year so far. Sorry the Eagles hadn't been doing so well, but at least they beat the Giants by one point this last time, if I'm reading the stats correctly. The year's not over yet. I see they're playing the Cowboys next time.
I haven't watched any of the games this year since I have no one to watch them with who also enjoys football. My husband is totally not into it, especially professional football. He thinks those guys ought to donate some of the $$$ they make to charity. I guess he's got a point, but I imagine or at least hope that some of them do. Either way, it's not as much fun this year without the stadiums full of fans, so I'm surprised that they're still playing the games. I hope none of the teams end up spreading the virus around among themselves, and that they will shut down if anyone tests positive.
I hope you can figure out what's wrong with your aloe. Believe it or not, my husband is still managing to keep most of his squash plant alive with one of our leftover reptile heat lamps and the ingenious little mini-greenhouse he built for it out of leftover materials we had sitting around in the shed. Our outside temperatures are dropping below freezing at night so he leaves the heatlamp on 24/7 nowadays. Some of it is still flowering and he hasn't lost hope that he may get a walnut-sized squash by Thanksgiving. We'll see -- stranger things have happened. :?
Meanwhile, winter is here in Anchorage -- never mind what the calendar says. We're getting measurable snowfall for the first time this season but the temperature is right at freezing so it's going to be slushy. It's been mild up until now but this is typical since we almost always have at least a little snow on the ground by Halloween, sometimes a lot, depending on the year.
Mystery solved for Broly, huh? -- pre-brumation hungry, like the bears in the fall. I still think that may be what's going on with Puff, even though he's never really brumated before but is getting older, approximately 8 years going on 9 around next spring, so maybe this is going to be the "new normal." My husband and I have decided to try
bathing him and offering him food 3 times a week instead of every day, and let him sleep the rest of the time if that's what he wants to do, just as long as he doesn't start losing weight.
Speaking of napping, he just went downstairs, tried to get in his hide, and got hung up on a towel (he's such a klutz), so now he's "downstairs" next to his hide giving me "The Look." I'm too fat and too short to reach the bottom of the tank, so he's going to have to wait until my husband gets home from work, either that or figure it out by himself. I can only reach him if he decides to go back up on his basking platform, and he's got a nice little "stairway" for that.
That's good news that you've managed to get Rain nice and tame. My little gerbil was not very tame when I got him at the age of about 2 years, so I don't know if I could have gotten him any tamer if I had tried hard enough. He seemed contented enough in his little habitat. I still had him when I got married but he died sometime in our first year of marriage at the age of 4 years, which I understand is about the life span for a gerbil, so I guess I did an ok job taking care of him. I had 2 cats and 2 ferrets at the time too, but I never let them out together because I know what would have happened to the gerbil. I would let the cats and the ferrets out to play together when I was home to supervise, but I always kept them separate when I was at work. The gerbil always stayed separate in his little enclosure. So I know that you can have cats and beardies and hamsters and other critters in the same house without a disaster as long as you're careful with them like you are, although there are people on these discussion forums who will try to tell you different... :roll:
Enough TLDR for now -- I hope you have a nice Halloween in spite of all the cautionary restrictions -- I suppose we can all just stay in our "quarantine bubbles" and watch campy horror movies on YouTube if nothing else. although I've seen that people are coming up with some pretty creative ways to "hand out" treats, figuratively speaking. :mrgreen: