The great whiskey barrel experiment

Every day at work I can look out my window and see the shores of Windsor, BC.  On a good day, when I get to spend some time outdoors, and if the wind is blowing JUST the right heading, and the Hiram Walker distillery on the opposite bank of the Detroit River is off-gassing at the right stage of their liquor processing, I can smell some really nice results of the fermentation process.

I think that part of my inspiration for this experiment may have been the MANY barrels of various kinds of liquor that poured across the liquid (riverine) border with Canada during the years of Prohibition.  There are may houses on the small rivers and canals in the areas in and surrounding Detroit which have basement boat bays that facilitated the smuggling of this precious commodity.  The liquor was brought across on a boat, and left the building sometime later in a truck.

[borrowed from https://www.reuther.wayne.edu/files/images/27833.preview.jpg]

This summer I bought two whiskey barrel halves to use as planters in the back yard.  The first one was a VERY well charred barrel that I purchased at the exchange.  I left it in the back seat of my trucklet for a few days (because the bed was too full of other crap, mostly sporting equipment like softball gear and golf clubs), and the aroma of whiskey residue was quite pleasant.

Since I have wanted a backyard fish and turtle pond for some time, I decided to fill the barrel with water and buy a handful feeder fish to live in there for the summer.  I think the barrel was a bit too charred and saturated with alcohol, because none of the 6 fish that I bought survived more than 3 days.

A few weeks later a bought a nicer quality (and much more expensive) barrel half at a local garden store.  This one I also filled with water and threw in maybe a dozen fish.  This time I think the problem was that the weather was too hot, and the poor things were getting boiled to death.  I grabbed a few out before they expired, and put them in with the turtles in the basement.

There were three HUGE goldfish in there already, as goldfish tend to grow very quickly when you feed them turtle pellets.  I gave one of the large guys to a colleague after her son's fish had died.  For the first few days he (Fred) refused to eat the regular goldfish food.  He probably thought that it was dust falling into his new, much smaller home........

Someone left a donut on my battery

The title sounds better if you sing it to the tune of "Grandma got run over by a reindeer!"

As I popped the hood on Bruce the Baja today to make sure that my bug (i.e., windshield wiper) juice dispenser was full, I was surprised to find a partially nibbled upon donut on top of the battery.  Maybe it was a bagel, it was pretty nibbled upon, but the circular shape and the hole in the middle made it fairly recognizable.

I have heard that cats can get inside the engine compartment of many cars and trucks, but the nibbles were so small that I assume this piece of carbohydrate joy was dragged into my car by a hungry little mouse or squirrel, maybe even a vole!

I was about to leave for an appointment, so I didn't take a picture of the offending time before removing it from the battery.  I assume that was the location they chose to store the item because it is nice and flat.

But why didn't they finish the munching, I started to wonder.....

• did the item become distasteful because of some leaking battery acid?
• did the little rodent become forgetful about where it left its comestibles?

It had been a very warm fall, so it is possible that there were so many food options that the little bugger found some more tasty options, like my lily bulbs, for instance.

I can say from a very scary and pukey experience several years ago, that lily bulbs, while they may LOOK a lot like wild onions (especially when someone has mown over the bulk of the original foliage.....), should not be consumed, EVER!  [I will have to check and see if I already wrote about that episode in another blog.  If I haven't, that is a good weekend project for me to document.]

South of US = Canada

I know that most NFL commentators have not had the opportunity to serve as Rhodes Scholars, but it offends me that they have such a poor schooling in geography to make statements like, "this is the only city in the US where you are north of Canada."

There isn't an NFL team in Alaska, but most places in AK are at least West, if not North of the bulk of Canada.

[borrowed from http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/namerica/usstates/aknewzz.gif]

Maybe I would not be so sensitive to these inaccuracies if I had not lived in AK for 4 years, but I am not completely sure about that.  Back to the football game where Megatron is trying to break one of Jerry Rice's records.  

Words create worlds

When I wake up early on the weekend, I try not to disturb the spouse and cats on the bed, gather up my electronic toys/leashes, put my sea otter slippers on, and paddle quietly down to the kitchen.  Once there, I turn on the radio, make (or reheat) some coffee and check my email.  Sometimes I feel inspired enough to do some cleaning or create a blog.  Today I have done both, and it is not even 1000 (that's 10 AM for you non-military types).

credit:  John Goodwin
[borrowed from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9VJx12PND7Te6qBLAYPSX_ceX-G_3JCFicA8MpM0osLDD8QObyscCS2D9BhRao7dd6LBA-_uuXlOmX4Ovt1aHPRDTj9OzFI8Eg-RJ0SsGi6DdyBvxBHI2AFO715eCCqd8fu-MZtEctqk/s400/Heschel.jpg]

One of my favorite weekend radio programs is "On Being" with Krista Tippet.  This morning she was discussing the life and work of a rabbi who was a friend of Martin Luther King.  His name was Abraham Heschel.  Krista was mentioning something that her dad always told her, that "words create worlds".

This started me thinking about the 'crisis' du jour inside the beltway.  [See my blog from yesterday if you aren't sure what beltway I am referring to....]

Some are calling it the 'fiscal cliff', others are calling it a 'debt crisis', all terms which are meant to be scary and dire.  It is interesting that they are choosing those specific words.

The better explanation of what is going on, in my humble perspective, is just a lack of teamwork.  The two major political parties are so busy scoring points off each other, that they cannot fathom what it would be like to work together.

The words they use to describe one another are almost always divisive, so no wonder they don't want to compromise and get this stuff done before Christmas.

Fear and loathing in the Capitol

I love our nation's Capitol.

I love politics.

Unfortunately for us, politicians are humans, and there are some of them who just don't act very nicely...... especially these last few years in the USA.

[borrowed from http://aoc.gov/sites/default/files/styles/artwork-node/public/images/buildings/6345373408_e4f8fb2728_o_0.jpg]

I was having a long teleconference on tuesday with two colleagues from work.  We were discussion a contentious topic that really makes my blood boil.  At one point I blurted out something along the lines of, "unfortunately for us, we have to deal with humans who will not always tell the truth.  In fact, it is in their interest to lie in certain situations."  I have been in some interesting diplomatic negotiations where you KNOW that the person on the other side of the table is stretching [actually, tearing apart] the truth, but you have to sit there politely and keep your mouth shut.

For me, that is NEARLY impossible.  It helps when you are conducting the negotiations with non-simultaneous translation, because you have time to think of the right way to say, "uh uh!" in a much more graceful manner that doesn't cause an international incident.

I believe that the gentleman whose statue is shown in the picture above, good ole General George, would have been very disgusted with the way that our elected officials in the two houses of Congress are not getting along very well.  We sent them there to do good things on our behalf, but they spend WAY too much time making people worry about made up stuff.

They want us to fear some sort of fiscal cliff, they want us to worry about the future of social security, and one of the minority leaders spent the last four years devoting himself to trying to unseat the president.  Why was he focusing on that, rather than representing the people of his state, and doing things that need to be done?

I know the answer, and it makes me so annoyed that I am going to stop blogging right now and get some breakfast.

Have a great weekend everyone, and try not to be so fearful!

Legacy of service

I only met one of my great grandparents, but I still think that I can draw the connections between some of them to myself.  Having been associated with the military for the past two decades, when you meet someone for the first time and they find out you are a career military member, they often ask you if your parents were in the military.

I love to tell the story of when my dad was in the NJ National Guard during the Vietnam War.  He was a helicopter mechanic, but he didn't really want to fly in the thing after he had worked on it.  It had nothing to do with his confidence that he had maintained or repaired the machinery correctly, he just didn't want to go up in something that didn't have wings.

I frankly don't blame him, but I have enjoyed most of the helo rides I have taken during my time in the service.  However, there is something more comforting about being in a big C-130 fixed wing aircraft that might have a chance of gliding back to terra firm should something bad happen to all 4 of its engines.  I understand the theory of auto rotation of a helo's blades to bring you less precipitously back to earth should its engines fail, but I do not want to experience that first hand.

My dad's brother was a Marine during the same time frame, and though neither of them deployed overseas, they still did their part to serve their country during a very unpopular war.

My Norwegian great grandparents were soldiers of a different stripe.  They both served in the Salvation Army in New York for many years.  One of them achieved the rank of Colonel.  I am not sure exactly what that means when you are trying to save people's souls in terms of what I know of the US military chain of command, but it still sounds pretty impressive!

[borrowed from http://kxlt.images.worldnow.com/images/20171502_BG1.jpg]

I always think of these ancestors in particular during the holiday season, when I see the folks with the red kettles outside stores collecting money.  Please be as generous as you can during the holiday season (and the rest of the year as well) to great philanthropic organizations such as the Salvation Army, American Red Cross, Red Crescent, Heifer International, etc.

Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year to all!

Crabs crabs crabs!!!

Not sure if it is because I spent so much of my life in the environs of Baltimore, or because my mother was born under the appropriate zodiac sign, but I do love me some crustaceans!

Or maybe it is just that I have a very "Crabby Patty" attitude some of the time, and I tend to snap at things that might be good to eat!

When the spousal unit was working in AK most of the summer, I was back in MI, where the only live saltwater crabs I saw were at the local aquarium shops.  We bought an emerald crab a couple years back for our saltwater tank, but I think he got eaten by the ravenous snails (who also dispatched an unsuspecting blue spotted sea hare within 24 hours) many moons ago.

So I had a hankering for some crabs other than the ones you can buy frozen in your local seafood emporia here in the landlocked (big lakes don't count) midwest of the US, and when my favorite pet shop [Lou's] had blue legged hermit crabs on sale 10 for $7.99, I had to pick up some to take home!!!  They at least fared better than the feeder fish I was experimenting with in old whiskey barrels in the backyard.  But that is a story for another day.......

[borrowed from http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/userpix/47_blueleghermit2_1.jpg]

I did do some research on them before I actually purchased them.  I was also waiting for the new saltwater tanks at Lou's to get firmly established, so that I was fairly certain that the critters living in there were healthy.  My research also indicated that the crabs themselves can be crabby about finding new and bigger places to live, and that they might attack snails and try and take their shells.  To forestall any more death in the saltwater tank, I went thru my extensive seashell collection and found a few good places for crabs that were bulking up, to potentially trade up into.  (Yikes!  Two prepositions next to each other AND ending the sentence......  but I am too lazy to rewrite it now, so it will have to stay that way.)

Instead of the crabs picking on the snails, someone has been eliminating crabs.  I think the likely culprits are either another nasty crab, or the aforementioned bullying snails.  I found a crab carcass in the back of the tank last sunday, and the urchin was making a beeline for that area.  When I looked in the aquarium a few hours later, the crab was gone, and the urchin was taking a  nap on the other side of the tank, just in case it got blamed for the original crab extraction from shell, is what I am thinking it was thinking......

Not really sure how complex the urchin brain is though, so I may be giving it too much credit.

Polarization and Mobius strips

I can never remember if I live in a red state or a blue state (my spouse would say that could be the mad cow disease kicking in), as the colors are both in the American flag I can see outside my window at work every week day.  There are some places where the red stripes are touching the blue field of stars, but you would not think that is the case with our two primary political parties in these "supposedly United" States these days.

[borrowed from http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/american-flag-2a.jpg]

I tried to watch some of the RNC this summer, but after the robot Callista and creepy Newt show, I could not continue to expose myself to such torture.  I have heard some clips of the even more creepy Clint Eastwood performance later in the week, and they make me disappointed that an actor whose body of non-political work I respect would stoop to that level.  [I had a good laugh when he later said that anyone who gave him a live unscripted spot on TV got exactly what they deserved.]

More than 160 years after the War Between the States (there is nothing civil about most wars), it seems that we are suffering from an unhealthy level of partisanship.   There are red states and blue states and blue dog democrats (not to be confused with the yellow dog democrats) and the number of politically dominated news [and comedy] shows seems to have exploded in the last 10 years.

I find it interesting how the far left and far right perspectives are closer to one another than they might think.  The folks in the middle, the moderates of each party (in our primarily two party system) are also fairly close.  I like to think of it as a mobius strip, where the moderates are close to one another in the middle of the straight portion, while the extremists are right at the ends where the twist happens.

[borrowed from http://images.yourdictionary.com/images/main/A4mobius.jpg]

Made in Macau

I went to Comerica Park today for a meeting about the Detroit Police Department's security concerns for the upcoming World Series games, and I just happened to stop by the overpriced Tigers shop.  Since I don't know whether I will be willing to afford any tickets for the upcoming series, I decided to buy a hat.  I wanted a world series one, but those have not been delivered yet, as they want to have the logo of the Detroit opponent to be embroidered on them.  Right now, we don't know who that is.  I am hoping it will be the Giants, but I think it is more likely to be the Cardinals.

[borrowed from http://media.mlive.com/sports_impact/photo/tigers-celebrate-alcs-620x400jpg-32b8382536a1dcdc.jpg]

When I got back to the office and took off the tags, I noticed that the item was "Made in Macau".  I knew it would most likely be manufactured somewhere in Asia, because it has to be made quickly and cheaply enough to have nearly half of the items dumped for a mere fraction of the cost that I paid here in the US.

It reminded me of shopping for sporting apparel in the garment district near the big soccer stadium near Seoul.  When I visited my friend Jon in Seoul after attending a fisheries meeting a few years ago, there were quite a few Utley Phillies jerseys, and a bunch of other baseball and football related items that didn't make sense to me.  There were hats and t-shirts festooned with sporting facts that I knew were not true.

At first I thought that I had misremembered who had won a specific series or Super Bowl or division championship, but when I asked Jon for some confirmation, he explained that people like to buy items with english characters on them, and it doesn't really matter what it says on the shirt or hat.

I remember buying a japanese baseball jersey at a street fair in Chicago, having no knowledge of what the characters indicated about its former wearer, so I can relate to that phenomenon.

I wonder how much in advance MLB and other sports teams order their playoffs paraphernalia?  I wonder if the teams have to order these themselves, and if they are required to destroy the ones that do not reflect reality?

Do they look at the betting odds when they decide how many to order of each outcome?

So many unanswered questions.......

Go Tigers!!

Giant scary eyeballs!!!

Just in time for Halloween,there is a great story in the news this week about a HUGE eyeball that washed ashore near Pompano Beach, FL.

They have not tested it yet to determine what creature lost it, but I am voting for the giant squid.  I think it is more likely to belong to a whale, but it is eerie how much like a human eye this thing looks.  You can read one of the stories here.

[borrowed from http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/10/12/giant_eyeball_found_on_pompano_beach_squid_whale_mystery.html]

I read a few of the stories on this today, and some folks are speculating that the eye might have come from a fish, but they mentioned that squid often have their eyes pop out.

Yikes!  OFTEN have their eyes pop out......  I guess that is a bad side effect from not having a nice hard skeleton.  Sure they have a lot of legs, a yummy diet of seafood and get to swim around in the nice warm waters off of Florida, but that would stink to have your eye just POP OUT!!!  

I checked down in the saltwater aquarium in the basement to make sure that everyone had their eyes, and we seem to be good on that account.  Unless the person holding the eye has incredibly small hands, it could not have been any of my salty friends.  The biggest eye I saw was on the clownfish, and that is maybe 3 mm in diameter.

I will make another post when the Florida Fish and Wildlife folks decided what animal lost this......

All about lids (part two: Curved or flat?)

I know it is not very hip-hop of me, but I prefer the relaxed baseball type cap with the VERY curved brim versus the trucker style upright lid with a nearly flat brim.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I am a more CURVY than FLAT human being.  I have hips and other curves, like many women I know.....

So........ of the photos displayed above, which hats do you think that I would prefer?

I am on a turtle kick right now, and I love wearing red hats, since I have to wear only blue hats at work, so it should be pretty easy to figure this out.

No prize, unfortunately for those of you who choose correctly!

All about lids (part one of ????)

When mere humans are allowed to take pictures of me, I can normally be found wearing some kind of hat.  This compulsion has various explanations, the first of which being I hate to have hair in my face, and a hat is great at keeping my very fine tresses away from the toxic face slime.

Me and the cats, watching some boob tube with Andy.

The second reason I adore hats is because I like to be able to see stuff, and the brims of my favorite hat (a relaxed profile baseball cap like the one I am wearing in the photo above) are great at keeping sun out of my bespectacled eyes.

Another great feature of hats with big brims is that you can hide your facial expressions.  I am very quick to react to things, and I would make a horrible poker player because my face always tells people my emotions.  I don't want people to know what is going on inside my head all the time, so if I need to compose myself before responding, being able to lower my head and grab the nicely curled brim of my hat for a few seconds while I think, that's priceless!

The hat pictured below doesn't facilitate that type of protective behavior.  It has SOOOOO many things wrong with it.

I call it the bucket hat, because it is VERY far from relaxed.  It is very firm, and makes you stand up straight (I guess promoting good posture is one of its best attributes, in fact).  It has these magical properties because it is a military cover with shiny stuff on it.  It also does not fit very snugly, so you have to stand up straight and refrain from bending over quickly.

It is part of my fancy uniform, and I DO NOT like wearing my fancy uniform.  I would much rather be wearing my working duds, which includes being able to carry a knife, or even better a multi-tool, and of course cargo pants with HUGE pockets, and big old boots which make me seem taller than I actually am.

Chris and I wearing my least favorite hat in the world.  Curse you Edith Head!!!!

In the picture above, Andy asked to take a picture of Chris and I in our uniforms at Admiral Gene Brooks' change of command in Juneau a few years back.

However, we are wearing slightly different versions of the United States Coast Guard's Service Dress Blue (SDB) uniform.  I am wearing gloves and my big medals on one side of my jacket, and my other ribbons backwards on the opposite side from where they would normally be.  I also have a white shirt on, while Chris has the normal light blue shirt, no gloves, and the ribbons on the regular side, with her name tag on the opposite one.

I was in the honor platoon, which is why I am wearing the Alfa version of the SDB, and Chris is modeling the Bravo, which we would normally use for events involving non-coasties, during the fall/winter season.

Since I am currently attached to a "field" unit, I wear our Operational Dress Uniform (basically a dark blue fatigue type uniform), which includes a high profile baseball cap.

Unfortunately for me, the current Commandant does not like relaxed baseball caps, so he has mandated a nasty trucker style hat, with no scrambled eggs.  More on that in a later blog.

Why are we fearing more than fear these days?

If you have read any of my political or football (a.k.a. soccer in the USA) related blogs over the last few years, you can understand where I am coming from in terms of the power of fear.

On my drive home earlier this month, I listened to an NPR story about Texans and their fears about gun control.  If you want to hear the entire piece, please check it out here.  There were some parts where I sympathized with the Texas gentlemen and their desire to continue to exercise their second amendment rights, and then there were the parts where I spoke to the radio in the car and asked it, "why do they need AR-15s and night vision scopes to hunt wild pigs?  Are the pigs THAT much smarter than them?????"  The radio had no answer......

The AR-15, for those not in the know, is basically the commercially available version of the M-16 I learned to shoot when I joined the military.  Since then I have mostly used pistols and the dreaded shotgun.  [ I am left eye dominant but right handed, so I have to shoot long guns left handed.  This situation and my relatively small frame (and even smaller brain) which had to figure out how to position the shotgun on my shoulder while wearing a life preserver vest which was too large for me, resulted in a HUGE bruise from burst blood vessels that stretched from my left armpit all the way to the back of my hand.  It was painful during the experience, but only scary looking for the next few weeks, and I did qualify on the course of fire, even though I could barely see the target by the time the final whistle blew.]

Here is a schematic of the AR-15:

[borrowed from http://survivalblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ar-15-parts.gif]

Even better, here is the lovely Hello Kitty model with the much larger banana shaped magazine, which can hold many more rounds.  Hello Kitty needs the additional rounds to take care of all the bad folks she might encounter on a daily basis.  You can see how happy she is by her smile on the butt of the assault rifle pictured below:

[borrowed from http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NNJ_93KS4Hw/SNQb4Pex24I/AAAAAAAAAYs/ZOKKYWqoIlg/s320/HELLO-KITTY_AR15RIFLE.jpg]

To be perfectly honest, I think she always has a bit of a smile or smirk on her little kitty face, so maybe I have misconstrued her affection for this firearm.....

I don't have a problem with guns.  I would actually like to own one, but my husband doesn't think that is a good idea.  I don't normally take that as a comment on my mental stability or judgement, but more as a comment on the fact that we already have WAY TOO MUCH sporting equipment in the house (and the storage space up north, I am afraid to admit).

If we lived in Canada, he would be able to veto my application for permission to own a gun.  Here in the USA, I don't need his permission, but I would not purchase one if he did not agree to it.

I was struck by the statement that FDR made during his first inaugural address in 1933, which I mistakenly thought was related to the famous address to congress after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  You can listen to an excerpt from the speech here.  

Of course the quote is, "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself."  He is referring to the Great Depression and the challenges that face the entire country and his new administration to climb out of the financial crisis gripping the world economy.

It struck me that these days, we fear what people MIGHT do, even if they have given no indication that they intend to attempt to accomplish this particular scary feat that the reptilian parts of our brains imagine could happen.  These two gentlemen from Texas being interviewed for the NPR story I mentioned at the beginning of this blog were worried that the Obama administration was going to restrict gun rights, even though there have been no attempts to do so to date.  OK, the second part of that sentence is my opinion, not something that they said during the interview.

They also believed that President Obama was kowtowing to United Nations (UN) attempts to restrict the amount of ammunition (ammo) that people could purchase at one time.  The journalist pointed out in their commentary that the UN resolution they were referring to was designed to limit the purchasing power of African warlords, not US citizens, and the US delegation did not support the resolution.

So their big fear was based on a misunderstanding of the goals of a UN resolution that the dreaded Obama administration did not even support!  That's fear for you......

To Assange or not to Assange

I love Ecuador!  They are making for some very interesting silliness to help me recover from London Olympics overload and annoying US Election craziness.

As I type this blog, Mr. Assange is hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy, hoping that the Bobbies are not going to storm the place and send him back to Sweden.  Harboring suspected criminals is great drama!

I don't know if he did what he is accused of doing in Sweden, but I am fairly certain that Mr. Assange is at least partially responsible for USCG computer security policies that prohibit me from using thumb drives in my unclassified computer.  There are many reasons that you should not freely share thumb drives, safe computing and scary viruses that can destroy all your important junk on your exterior brain devices......  but the things are darn convenient!

And very cute, which is quite tempting to a tchatchke lover like myself.  [ upon entering my office in Juneau, a colleague blurted out, "it's like a Chinese curio shop in here!"  Japanese might have been more accurate, as I LOVE little anime inspired doo dads like those produced by the German Sanrio company]

[borrowed from http://www.geekiegadgets.com/tag/hello-kitty/]

And since I tend to follow the rules which, if broken, could result in my spending many years in a lovely military location in Kansas learning how to make big rocks into smaller ones (at least that is the common joke), I refrain from using thumb drives in my work computer which is attached to "the network".  Many times, I think it should be called "the net won't", but that is a topic for another blog at a later date.

Back to our Australian friend.  Due to his prowess in getting people to share info which they should really keep in classified spaces, I cannot use useful items like the cute one pictured above to quickly transfer data from one computer to another.  I can, however, burn the data on to a CD or DVD, then put that large easily scratchable item into a computer which is NOT connected to "the network", and then, finally, put it on the illegal thumb drive.

I have attended many international meetings with multiple copies of my presentation on several different types of media.  I have even given some of those copies (usually CDs) to colleagues, so that if one person's luggage was lost, we still might be able to share the information electronically.

But back to our friend hiding out in the embassy.  I hope he is all settled in, because someone will surely grab him if he ever leaves the place.

I personally am hoping that the Brits revoke the diplomatic status of the building and send him back to Sweden.  He needs to pay for at least some of his transgressions!!

Hunting and gathering

In our modern existence, some individuals tend to be more closely related to much older traditions of providing sustenance for themselves and their families.  When I lived in Juneau, I had a dislike for the practice of "snagging" fish.  It just seemed so unsportsmanlike.

You have these huge heavily weighted treble hooks (some jokers call them grey flies) that you are trying to embed in the flesh of the salmon so that you can quickly haul them to shore and dispatch them.  There is no subtlety in this method of fishing, there is very little chance that the fish will not be maimed once it is hit.  Of course this method is only allowed in terminal fisheries where the fish is going to die anyway.

The place in Juneau where you see this method used most often is near the hatchery.  The fish are heading back there because they can smell and remember the water where they were born.  These guys are not truly wild fish, but they try and act like their completely wild cousins.  They think if they get as close to the fish ladder into the hatchery, they will be able to spawn and have their progeny continue the tradition of salmon migrations and the circle of life.  The ones who make it up the fish ladder just get milked for sperm or have their eggs harvested, which is probably about as painful as getting gobbled up by a hungry bear, but at least your kids have a better chance of making it back out to the ocean one day.

Bears are very picky about the fish they eat (when those fish are abundant).  They will generally not take the nearly dead spawned out fish, they want the firmer flesh of the ones who have not yet spawned.  You often just see most of the carcass lying on the ground, because the bear has taken the tasty morsels and left the rest of the body there to rot and attract flies.

But back to human fishing, "snagging" is very efficient.  All the fish are crowded in the area near the entrance to the fish ladder, so at the height of the return, you are assured of getting a fish if you can find a space to cast your line.  If you are fishing to feed your family, you want to get your fish as quickly as possible, so you can get back to other pursuits.

borrowed from http://www.headwatersoutfitters.com/fly-fishing.html

Given that I spent my entire childhood living in the suburbs (except the summers which we spent fishing, clamming and sunning ourselves on the beach at my grandparents' house on an island), and my psyche is dominated by some crazy notion that everything must be FAIR, I am drawn to a more relaxed manner of fishing.  [The picture above is a lovely brown trout from North Carolina.]

As a kid I spent a lot of time in the row boat with my brother and grandpa jigging for flounder, or at the state pier trying to get a striper (a.k.a. striped bass) but normally ending up with a squawking sea robin, but as an adult with too much disposable income for my own good, I have gotten into fly fishing.  There is something very primal about getting in tune with the tides and getting up early in the morning, sometimes even before the sun is up, so that you can be at the mouth of the creek at just the right time to try and entice a beautiful dolly varden to gulp the fly you have provided for their consideration.

I have had some very calming zen like experiences up to my waist in chilly water, rhythmically swaying my rod back and forth in an attempt to get the fly in just the right location to encourage the fish to strike.  If they are already at the point where they are no longer eating, you are most likely out of luck, as they will probably only attack the fly if they are annoyed.

That reminds me, I have some mostly dead canadian night crawlers in the fridge that need to get wet later today!  You don't always have to get out the fly fishing gear, but you do have to use your resources wisely (and get your fishing license, or my wildlife cop friends will come and find you......)

Attack of the killer cukes!

Because my hubby was going to be away in AK for most of the summer, he kindly built me a small raised bed in the backyard so I could try my hand at a vegetable garden.

Last time we had an official garden was in MA, two moves ago.  That one started out as a rock garden with ornamental plants, then some of the compost we were generating had acorn squash seeds in it, so we had all sorts of volunteer squashlings one year.  That encouraged me to put a few more fruits/veggies in the next year, so the rocks had to share space with cantaloupes and the like.  That house also had a small herb garden off the back porch.

The engineer I live with was disturbed by having flowers and food sharing the same space, so he made a rule about having only veggies or fruit in this new garden.  (he made a rule about weeding while he was gone as well, but I don't remember signing any paperwork, so ......)

Given the cars in the driveways of the current neighborhood we live in (let's just say that our two nearly 10 year old japanese cars make us look like bumpkins who do not belong), I do not believe that many of our immediate neighbors have veggie gardens.  The folks across the street are an exception.  The houses are so big that you cannot easily look into people's backyards, so I have no easy way to confirm this by walking around the neighborhood and not getting to meet some of the local police officers.....

I learned some lessons about some things growing faster than others, overcapacity, and what the local varmints like to eat.  The biggest lesson has been not to plant so many cucumbers!!!

Either the soil/compost was incredibly rich, or the gardner was incredibly skilled, or the combination of really hot temps and a reliable sprinkler system did the trick with these behemoths, I am not sure which.

The hubster had the great idea of making the bed almost 2 feet high instead of just 8 inches or so, and the topsoil he got was incredibly rich.  This, and some other kind of rookie veggie-only gardner magic has resulted in the monster cucumbers pictured above.

I will be eating cucumber sandwiches until November!

Lactivism

I was hanging out with some work friends at a party, and a group of women were congregating underneath a tent-like thing waiting for a big rain storm to pass through the area.

I think we were talking about struggles with weight loss, and one woman started talking about how the pounds just poured off while she was breastfeeding.  She explained how she became a 'lactivist' on behalf of some of the junior women at her command when their male supervisors were not being very sympathetic about the need to express milk every few hours.

[borrowed from http://www.sierraclubgreenhome.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/water-bottle-baby-bottle.jpg]

They did not understand why they had to provide a separate private clean location for this purpose.  "Why can't they just do it in the bathroom?" one man in need of a little sensitivity training said to my colleague.  Most of the younger guys were much more sympathetic, and they cleaned out a portion of the common fridge so that the breast milk would have a place to be stored during the work day.

At my last unit, I gave up my private office for a pending reorganization of a bigger joint work space, which freed up another office to be used as the official lactation room.  We all helped to clear out the office furniture, and I went in one day to see what had been moved back in.  I was horrified to see a scary government issued arm chair filled with at least two decades of dust mites and coffee stains was the only thing to sit on in the room.

The next day I brought in a bentwood rocker, cleanly laundered pillow and throw and some artwork that we did not have wall space to accommodate at our house.  The two young moms that were using the space were very grateful.  We banished the yucky chair.

Unfortunately the room became an office once again, as the breastfeeding moms were transferred to new cities the same time that I left Alaska, and none of the remaining coastie women needed the room.

I gave the artwork to some people in the building, and the rocker came with us to Michigan, along with the satisfaction of having helped some of my co-workers nourish their young ones!

Freshwater species propagation

It is a good thing I am getting ready to retire, because I may be propagating invasive species in two of our aquatic environments.  If you look a few blogs back, you will be able to read the story of the unintended invasive purchase I made at a local pet shop.

Last weekend I informed the pet shop manager about the invasiveness of the cute little snails, and he seemed honestly horrified.  Since the little buggers are not illegal in Michigan, I went ahead and bought another one of these snails because I am just fascinated with them.  This snail I named Scar (or S-car) based on the recommendation of a goofy friend who thought it would be fun to be able to say, "Look at that S-car GO!"  I couldn't resist.....

borrowed from http://www.tacomalakes.org/images/831_Mystery_Snail.jpg

The day after I made that purchase, I noticed another snail in the Fluval Edge aquarium.  It did not really resemble the trapdoor guys in terms of shell shape, so it is possible that it was a stow away on one of the aquatic plants that are also in that aquarium.

Later this week I found some even smaller snails, about the size of a nail head, in that same environment.  UH OH!!!

I have no idea what sex Pat and Scar are, and it is possible that one of them was harboring the little ones way before it came to our house, but you never know.

Please check back for snail gestational updates in the coming months!

Fridge Art

I love the house that we bought here in Michigan, but one of its downsides is that it has a fancy stainless steel refrigerator that does not support the application of magnets.

[borrowed from http://cdn1.lostateminor.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/motifo.jpg]

If you are a major appliance which cannot support magnets, you cannot host a magnet collection gathered from each of the fifty states.  Another bad side effect of that is that you cannot use the magnets to hold up fridge art.  Right now our kids(pets) do not understand the concept of art (other than the nice soft quilt which two of them are currently napping on top of), but one day we hope to have some human children to care for and love.

I guess we could have "file cabinet art" collections, but that just does not have the same ring as "fridge art".  

The Party of not only NO, but HELL NO!

There are a lot of Republicans that I love quite dearly, but the GOP is an organization that I increasingly do not understand.  Actually, I DO understand it, but what I understand is quite disturbing.

[borrowed from http://eurthisnthat.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/gop_elephant2009-elephant-upside-down-dead-med.jpg]

I think that my parents are still registered Republicans, but sometime in the last few years the picture of "43" that used to be above the desk in the kitchen nook inexplicably disappeared. [I really do not want to ask what happened to it, for fear that bringing attention to its absence might result in its being put back up.]  I think it was put up initially as an homage to my Grandmother, a former state legislator in Connecticut, who put up a picture of her favorite GOP presidents above her desk where she paid her bills and wrote her correspondence.

But back to the current GOP.  I just cannot comprehend their stances on many of the hot button issues:

• no, you may not marry that person
• no, you should not have access to that medication
• no, we do not want you to become a citizen 
• no, we will not cooperate with the executive branch to help that segment of the population

I was going to go ahead and start listing what they would say YES to, but I need to get in a better frame of mind before I call my mom to wish her a happy mother's day.

More unintended consequences......

Having spent a good deal of my career focused on fish, and the enforcement of the local, federal and international regulations related to those critters, I found out this morning that I bought a potential invasive species to hang out with my perky little cory cats.

I was mortified that I had unknowingly made this questionable purchase. [I was almost as upset as when I discovered that the cool see-through fresh water fish with the colorful streaks near their dorsal fins had actually been injected with some sort of gel. Those poor little guys did not survive very long, because they developed infections based on being tortured......]

There were a couple of snails to choose from. Some big chunky ones whose name I could not remember, and a smaller onw with a nice yellowish shell, whose common name was "Trapdoor Snail". I googled the common name this morning, and found that the actual lineage of the little fella is Bellamya chinensis, or the Chinese mystery snail.

One cool thing about it is that it has a behavior that can be an early indicator of bad water quality. If it senses unhealthy water conditions, it closes itself up so that no more water can get into its shell. This can help you save all your fish by giving you a heads up that something is wrong. It can also use this strategy to survive a short dry period in its environment (i.e., waiting things out until the rainy season brings it some more water).

borrowed from B. Chinensis article on wikipedia.org

The last snail accident we had was back in Massachusetts, when we first started setting up freshwater aquaria.  We were putting plants in with our danios (in the friendly tank) and with the closet killer upside down catfish (who hid under the small decorative log chunk during the day, and came out and hunted down his smaller tank mates at night) in what was supposed to be the semi-aggressive tank.  Apparently catfish do not adhere to research and advice that one finds at pet stores and on the internet, or we were not looking in the right places.  [in fact, we spoke to a pet shop person recently who commented, "oh yeah, you always need to have two upside down catfish in one tank, so they will keep each other in check."

But back to my guilty conscience over the harmless looking snail.  When she reads the e-mail I sent early this morning, I know my friend Robyn will also inform me that this snail is illegal in Oregon, because they are clogging water intake pipes.  AAAAGGGGHHHRRR!!!!   

I may have to go out and kill some purple loosestrife to make myself feel better.....

Decisive, not divisive

[borrowed from a.aaa-cool-dollar-sign.jpg]

Having been a political science major in college, I often get asked why I don't want to run for political office.  The reasons have been many and varied over the years, and the most prevalent one is my highly developed sense of smell, and related peculiarities of my character. Let me explain that a little further.

I do have a very good nose for smells, both literal and figurative.  I could smell the diesel fuel being sucked into our work spaces from the heavy work equipment at the site next to our building when they finally got the air handling system working more efficiently.  Only maybe two out of ten people in the building I questioned about the noxious new aroma could identify the smell.  [Is it a coincidence that only 20% of people in the USCG are women?  I actually do not recall now if the only people who could relate to my alarm over the smell were women, but I know at least a couple were, and that I certainly did not ask more than a dozen.  You can do the math from here....]

When spousal unit met some new 'friends' that wanted him to attend an informational meeting about a business venture at a local church, after hearing a few details before the meeting, I replied, "Pyramid scheme, I will not be going."  I was told initially that I was just being cynical, but after the meeting and several follow up phone calls from these 'friends', he agreed with my snap judgment.

Another good reason why I believe that I could not be a successful politician is that I too often wear my heart on my sleeve, and tell people EXACTLY what I think, even when it may not be the most prudent/polite thing to do.  Over a decade ago, while musing about future technology with my shipmates during a boring bridge watch, I commented that I thought that video phones would be a cool thing.  One of my colleagues replied, "You should never use one of those because people would know exactly what you were thinking based on your facial expressions!"  I thought that would be helpful in communication, but after being married for almost 10 years, I realize that he was right.  It is hard to deny that you think something might work when you just rolled your eyes.......

Those anecdotes aside, my current reason for not wanting to run for office is that the political climate today seems to be only one of divisiveness, not what it really needs to be DECISIVENESS!  Everyone wants to point out how different they are from the competition, when they really should be concerned with helping out the people in our society who need it most.

Since we don't have publicly financed elections, and nice guys/gals do too often seem to finish last, the focus of the incumbents is on raising money rather than raising the education level of our future generations.  For congresspeople in particular, since their terms are only two years long, almost immediately after they are elected, they have to start earning money for their next election campaign.  That means that all the serious work of legislating is being done by their staffers.  Maybe that is OK, since they are they boss, and should be spending most of the time making the decisions, but it still bothers me.

And that is my current best reason for not wanting to run for ANY elected office in our federal government.  Not that anyone is beating down my door asking me to run, but it was just something I wanted to get off my chest on a beautiful Easter morning!!!

Where did all the adverbs go?

I realize that diagramming is probably not taught in schools very often these days, but I remember dissecting sentences for 45 minutes a day with Mrs. Pankratz back in the late 70s.

borrowed from http://georgenewall.com/imagesshr/lolly_shelves.jpg

For some reason, most people these days don't seem to understand that an ADVERB is a word that modifies the very in your sentence and generally ends in an "LY".  See that word GENERALLY in the last sentence?  That was the adverb, boys and girls!

Sportscasters and athletes seem especially bad at properly using the english language when it comes to adverbs.

Maybe they did not enjoy Schoolhouse Rock as much as I did.....

Granted, some of them are much younger than I am, but that is no excuse for not practicing good grammar.  They understand the basic concept, as they usually choose the correct adjective that could be easily converted into the matching adverb, but close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades, right?

Nasty and brutish, but DEFINITELY not short!

I do some of my best thinking in the shower, and this morning I was struck at how our electioneering system (and to a certain extent lately, our political system as a whole) is more like the "state of nature"  that I studied OH SO MANY years ago in college.  Those who are not political junkies, or who did not spend most of their time in college reading political philosophy tomes, might think that a natural state doesn't sound too bad, perhaps.  But the "state of nature" described by Hobbes and other writers of his time was characterized as "nasty, brutish and short".  They believed that mankind had elevated itself by progressing out of this natural state, where every person had to fight and scrabble for existence, and into one where political institutions would provide a better quality of life.

[Just in case there is any doubt about who I am supporting!!!]

But since we have not moved in the direction of public financing of election campaigns at the national level, we instead have a system where an anonymous private donor can give $5M in one lump sum to a super PAC who will cover the airwaves with negative advertisements about the "other guy".

We had a meeting at work yesterday where several people (including myself) brought up the concept that we should treat each other as if we believed in the good intentions of the other person.  I personally have eight teams of people out in the field that report directly to me, and it is honestly hard to serve them all equally well all of the time.  Sometimes we get into adversarial relationships, and I have to remind myself that we all wear the same uniform, we all took the same oath to protect and defend the Constitution, and that we are trying to get to the same goal, we just have different strategies for how to get there.......

Our basically two party political system here in the US has created an extremely competitive environment which is going back to the "state of nature" rather than resulting in civil and productive discussions.  Our elected senators and congresspeople cannot even get their act together and fix our budget crisis, because they are all engaging in black and white thinking, and seem to believe that if the cede ANY ground on ANY topic, that is unacceptable!

And since the election process seems to take about two years from start to finish (for the president, anyway) we have nearly 10 months before we are out of this miserable state.