Is it murder if you kill a rock?

Tonight's "zone" was our bedroom. We picked that since, after the living room, it's pretty much the easiest room in the house to clean. Since it's crazy hot upstairs in the summer, to save on electricity, we sleep downstairs on the futon in the Boy Room - plus Cody swears the futon is better for his back. So the bedroom is pretty much just a big closet all summer. Anyway, we wanted an easy room tonight because (1) we're generally lazy if allowed to be, and (2) tonight was Party in the Park and we figured we'd better go, lest they cancel it again.
A quick Party in the Park lesson - for those of you not from STL, people go crazy here in the summer - the winter sucks so bad they try to fit in everything cool and fun into the few short summer months. One of those fun things is Party in the Park - it's just what it sounds like - in Shaw Park in Clayton (a really nice part of St. Louis) they set up a band, some food and beverage (read: beer, wine and booze) vendors and throw a party from 5 pm until 8pm - it's a sort of after work, extended outdoor happy hour. Anyway, it's the second Wednesday of each month and this summer it seems it always storms on the second Wednesday of the month so they cancel it and move it back to the next Wednesday. Unfortunately in July, the third Wednesday was an amazing heat advisory so they cancelled it all together for July. So we figured we better get one in before they're over or they cancel another one. So after work we headed up there and met up with friends - as usual a good time was had by all - especially since it was amazingly nice outside tonight!
Okay, back to cleaning. So tonight was our bedroom, which consisted mostly of putting away the multiple baskets of clean clothes and gathering the baskets of dirty ones. Then we put up my "pet net" a net type contraption that hangs from the ceiling/wall to put stuffed animals - yes, I still have a ton of stuffed animals and just not enough room to store them so the "pet net" works great - I get to keep my keepsakes and they're out the way, but not just sitting in bags in the basement.
Finally we had to deal with the salt water tank. Up until January (yes, JANUARY, 8 months ago), we had a salt water fish in the tank, Bubbles, who lived with just herself and her live rocks. You see, in salt water tanks, you put rocks that are alive - they actually are members of the salt water community and contribute to the tank environment. Well, in January Bubbles died - she was a few years old so she lived a good fish life - but instead of getting around to getting another fish we just left the rocks in the tank to live by themselves. Of course, in the past 8 months I haven't done much to keep that tank up to par, so it's sort of fallen in disrepair, if you will - until today while on my cleaning binge I decided we needed to do something with the tank. We had a few choices: (1) clean the tank (a big pain), change the water (an even bigger pain because now that I live in the Midwest I have to MAKE saltwater), and get a new fish (which then I would have to feed) or (2) be happy with the three tanks we already have, clean the tank and put it in the basement. The problem with (2) is what to do with the rocks. I would pretty much have to "kill" them. To "kill" rocks you either put them in bleach or put them in the sun outside a few days and that pretty much kills off anything living on them. For whatever stupid reason I just hated the thought of "killing" my rocks.
First, as an old anti-war friend described me during our war discussions, I'm pretty much a pacifist and hate killing - including rocks (thanks Adam if you ever read this!). I guess I could have donated them to a pet store to live in their tanks of for them to resell, but then it's like taking your cat or dog to the pound because you didn't think hard enough about the responsiblities of pet ownership when you got him/her and are now too lazy to take care of it. I didn't want to be THAT person. Second, live rocks are expensive and I just knew if I killed mine then I would decide in two weeks that I wanted to reset up the salt water tank and I would want to buy new rocks.
So, what did we do? We spent the better part of a few hours, draining the water, cleaning the tank, making new salt water and setting up the tank all nice and clean again, all so I wouldn't have to "kill" my rocks. Now my rocks are happily living in clean water, with a clean filter and light system. Yippe skippy rocks. So hopefully this week I'll find myself a salt water fish store in St. Louis (someone in the Midwest has to have salt water tanks, right?) and buy a new fish. On a less pain in the butt note, salt water fish are crazy beautiful and I look forward to picking out a very pretty one. :) Maybe I'll name him Bubbles 2 or Nemo. I LOVE Nemo!
Now, remind me who ever said rocks can't be pets??