What next?

The last several days have been interesting. Jeremy is slowly going insane and has decided to take me with him. Some years ago I worked with a college friend of mine who was into fish. He had the most fantastic coral reef tank in his living room. It was huge and colorful, and looked like it cost a fortune to build and maintain. I always did like aquariums. He gave me a small tank he wasn't using, and helped me set it up as a simple freshwater tank with a few fish. I learned it was possible to grow aquatic plants in a fish tank and decided I wanted to plant myself a little watery garden. A few years or so went by before he gave me a bigger tank to try. I retired the first small tank and planted up the larger one after joining a local aquatic plant community. Enter Jeremy. His house has a tank built into the wall in the entry way just below the stairs. I had brought him along to a plant club meeting and he came home with a large bag of cuttings. Since then, he has joined the club, and started gathering more tanks. He now has the built in tank, a small tank he once had a turtle in, a tiny tank to isolate pregnant fish, a 29 gallon I gave him, a ten he found on craigslist, and a five gallon tank he just started keeping frogs in. I had three as of a few days ago. A very large 55 gallon tank my ex-boss gave to me, and the two Manny gave me. I've been thinking that might be more than enough. The small tank I put back together just to breed a cherry red shrimp colony I had been given. I had meant to take it down again once they had bred out enough to populate the two larger tanks. Jeremy has other ideas. He just went out and picked up another ten gallon tank from craigslist, then bought a 20 gallon tank for cheap at a local pet store. He has also been gathering other bits of aquarium equipment for some time. I don't even want to know how much he spent gathering stuff he didn't even need. Now he has decided that I need more tanks. He found out I have another aquarium stand that I used to use. It will fit two small tanks. So. He's now given me those last two tanks. He came over today to put them together. Holy crap. That makes five tanks in my place. I like aquariums and zoos, but I am not sure I want to live in one. Not content just to slowly fill my house with fish, Jeremy decided he wanted to see what free stuff he could find on craigslist. He found a bunch of shit piled all over the south bay and decided that he might want it. I talked him out of most of it, but he did find one thing that I had to have. I juggle. I'm not very good, but I enjoy it. Some years ago, I bought a set of juggling clubs, which seems to impress him. I don't use them enough, probably because it really isn't an inside sport. They make messes indoors. There was a friend of ours at leland that had a set of juggling torches. They were made by the same company that made my clubs and have the same balance, so that if you could juggle the clubs, you could also juggle their torches or knives. Jeremy found a fellow on craigslist giving away a set of torches for free, providing you could prove you could juggle. We went to meet the gentleman in question in Milpitas. He was older, with grey hair and rather quiet. Businesslike, but quiet. He gave me many tips on how to use the torches, how to light them, put them out, and what fuels to use. His companion (wife? daughter? girlfriend?) made sure we learned who used to use these torches. He didn't juggle he said. He was a magician. Two of the torches had been modified to mount to either end of a staff. The girl again insisted he tell us who used the torches. He didn't seem like he really wanted to talk about it, so she did instead. The last person to use them was a trained elephant. It turns out he wasn't just a magician, he was also an elephant trainer. In one of his acts, he would hand the torch/staff to the elephant who would use it for who knows what. So now I have in my possession a set of antique juggling torches that were once used by a magician/elephant act in a circus.