It is a new year, and my thoughts turn to ----- hybrids!!!

Normally, my hybrid daydreams are of the automotive variety, but in learning a bit about the hatcheries in my current home state, I found out about a very attractive fish that is heavily stocked in Michigan's upper penninsula.  Its common name is splake, and it is pictured below:

borrowed from http://www.maine.gov/ifw/fishing/species/identification/splake.htm

I know a bit about fishes, and I had not heard of this fellow.  It is actually a hybrid between a brown (or speckled) trout, and a lake trout, hence the mishmashed name - SPLAKE.  The Marquette hatchery released over 300K of them a few years back.  Their web page is not up to date, so I don't know if they are still breeding this cultivar.

One thing I do know is that it looks awful tasty.....

As hubby and I traveled from west to east thru Canada to get to my new duty station, we took a fly fishing charter on a beautiful lake in Jasper National Park.  I had my gear in the car, but we thought it would make more sense to "go with the pros" as it were.  They provide everything, including the license.

We got in the wooden canoe powered by an electric motor, and helped the guide set up the gear, as we traveled to a good fishing spot.  I thought we would be casting with dry or wet flies, but it turns out that the best method for this lake is to troll at 1-2 knots with the fly sunk down about 15-20 feet.  We both caught an energetic lake trout, but we could not keep them as we were not local residents.  I don't normally believe in "catch and release" (I am more of a "catch and eat" gal), but we had a great time nonetheless.

So I guess that is an example of hybrid fishing as well!

How do little brothers get so smart?

Little brothers are very curious .......  when they are adolescents, they are EXTREMELY annoying.  I could list a few examples, but any one who HAS any younger brothers is more than familiar with the activities to which I refer.

However, when they get past that phase, they can be very helpful, to say the least.

I attempted to bake a rum cake to bring to a relative's house for Christmas.  I had the recipe, I followed it ALMOST to the letter, but I made a questionable Bundt pan choice too late in the process to recover from my blunder after all the stores were closed on Christmas Eve.  For those that don't know it, I am an EXPERT procrastinator, so I didn't make the cake until Christmas morning.

There were a series of unfortunate events I could go into in detail, but suffice it to say, the mini Bundt pan choice was a big mistake, and one should always have lots of Crisco on hand if one is going to do some serious baking.

So I was relaying the gory details to my little brother the day after Christmas (I had to find out how the book intensive gift choices went over with his 7 year old), and a statement of incredible wisdom and insight came out of his mouth.......

"So you were making a rum cake, were you drinking any rum at the time?" he asked.  I wasn't, since it was Christmas morning, and I was still trying to be more nice than naughty......

"That was your first mistake!" he replied.  Or "No WONDER the cakes didn't come out the way you expected!" or something to that effect.  I don't have a photographic memory, so the story will necessarily change from telling to telling......

I am not sure if he is so smart now because he is a parent, or if he benefited from all the big sisterly advice I provided through the years, but he certainly turned out to be an excellent guy. I would like to think that I had even a small part of his becoming such a smart, caring and funny adult.

Canada is Cool!

borrowed from http://lavendercottagegardening.blogspot.com/2010/06/happy-canada-day.html

I don't just mean temperature wise, Canada is just cool in many different ways:

1)  They introduced me to gravy + cheese + french fries = poutine

2)  They are an Arctic nation (ok, that is temperature related, or at least latitude dependent, though China would like to think that it is also an Arctic nation [do an internet search on China, icebreaker, research, arctic.... and you will see what I am talking about])

3)  They are pretty good at brewing and distilling (e.g., even their cheap beer is pretty good)

4)  They are pretty darn good at that game they invented (hockey, not skiiing, for those of you who were wondering......GO CANUCKS!!!)

5)  They have lots of moose and polar bear and beavers (fish, not so much, unless you count those mushy fleshed atlantic salmon they farm in the pacific)

6)  Lots of them speak a language quite similar to us here down south, or for us here in the Detroit region [or Alaska] up north

7)  Their national anthem has a much better melody than ours.  OK, I know I grew up mostly in Baltimore County, and that is kind of like heretical when you are from the land of Francis Scott Key, but really, just listen to the two anthems side by side, and see what you think!

8)  I cannot think of anything that is cool about curling, other than the playing surface....

9)  They have more than one official national language, which is pretty neat!

10)  They understand that embargoes don't normally work.  It has only been about 50 years, so maybe we have not given that experiment enough time yet!

Feather bowling, anyone?

borrowed from http://media.smithsonianmag.com/images/feather-bowling-detroit-388.jpg

My brother in law Dan would not consider this ACTUAL bowling, but a few weeks ago we had a competition between the officers and chiefs at my unit, at a FEATHER bowling venue.  What is feather bowling, you are certainly asking yourself now........

Well, it is apparently something that is done in a couple locations within Michigan.  One of those very few establishments is located very close to my house, at an establishment called the Cadieux Cafe.  It is a Belgian inspired bar/restaurant, which has two feather bowling lanes located adjacent to the main building.

Feather Bowling involves a bocce length court that is bowed, just as the picture above shows.  Two teams of six people roll those wooden cheese wheel type things towards a feather stuck in the dirt lane, creating a vertical target for each team to shoot for.  Now it is just like horseshoes or curling, the team with the largest number of throwy things closest to the target earns the larger number of points.  At the lanes where we played, the goal was 10 points to win the game.

We won the challenge, but I am hoping that the next time we play the chiefs in something, it is more manly, like paint ball or laser tag!

Why can't white men dance?

borrowed from KYLE-VANDEN-BOSCH-thumb-590x357-53092.jpg

I went to my first Detroit Lions game last week, and it was the first NFL game I had attended in quite a few years.  I prefer to watch football on TV, because you get to see everything all zoomed in, especially now that they have all those crazy cameras on cables suspended over the field.  But because I had not seen a game in person for a while, I didn't realize/remember that they do some crazy introductions before the game starts.

I expected that there would be lots of dry ice and loud/deep/dramatic announcer voices, but I didn't expect that they would do some silly dances as they were introduced.  The defense was the part of the team that was introduced, and most of them were African Americans who had a good sense of rhythm.  Unfortunately, the defensive captain is a white guy who should not even ATTEMPT to dance, but he did.....  Good think for the Lions that he is a much better football player than a dancer.  He should NOT give up his day job.

My husband is white, and he can swing and jitterbug with the best of them, but he probably would have looked just as silly as poor Kyle Vanden Bosch if he had tried to dance to the modern hip-hop type music that they were playing.

Come to think of it, being a white girl myself, and not such a great dancer, I think I would have embarrassed myself with the musical choices that seemed to be prevalent during those pre-game introductions.

Faulty Wiring?

From http://oljeep.com/gw/elec/78/78_FSJ_WiringDiagramPage8.jpg

I get the feeling that women are generally supposed to cry at weddings, but somehow my tear duct wiring diagram does not work that way.  I get all choked up at sporting events and profound displays of patriotism.

I cannot always predict when these events are going to affect me in an extreme fashion.  I went downtown EARLY this morning to try and catch some of my work colleagues running in the relay portion of the 33rd Annual Detroit Marathon.  I never actually saw them, but I got all teary-eyed watching people run and be cheered along by all the spectators.  There were not nearly as many people lining the streets as I am used to from seeing the Boston Marathon, but there were quite a few folks out there for a Sunday morning (given that they don't serve alcohol in this state before noon on the Christian sabbath).

I probably blubbered the most when the competitors in the wheelchairs were nearing the finish line.  I kept it mostly under control, and wearing sunglasses and blowing my nose frequently as if I had a cold was also good cover.

I also determined that this was not a MAJOR marathon since there were no Kenyans in the top 20 finishers.  Not the huge crowds I was expecting, but there were lots of happy midwesterners cheering on their friends and family members.  

I was standing right next to this family with a Dad, Grandad, brother and sister.  Dad had a hard time identifying his spousal unit amongst the half-marathoners streaming down the opposite side of the street.  [We were on the side of the barricade where the full marathon participants would be closest to us, but they hadn't showed up yet.]

Every few minutes he would shout out, "There's Mom!"  This would be followed within 15 seconds by, "Oh, that's not her....."  The kids would get all excited and then quite disappointed when they didn't see their mom.  She did finally jog past, after at least a handful of false alarms.

Speaking of wiring diagrams, I have to do some research on my Subaru so that I can figure out which fuse I need to replace so that my GPS will work again.  Somehow I blew the fuse that controls the cigarette lighter style power supply.  Gotta run!!!  (just not in a marathon....)

Blue Laws and Fashion Malls - learning the rules of Michigan

I guess I have lived in the last frontier a bit too long, because I have had some shocking experiences since moving back east of the MIssissippi River.  None of these were big shocks, but they have been eye opening for a person who was very comfortable in the capital city of the 49th state.

Last sunday I needed a few things for the kitchen, so I made the trek up to a mall called the Somerset Collection.  It was a HUGE mall that had people movers in a sky bridge that joined the north and south portions over a six lane road that bisected the structure.  There were hundreds of stores and restaurants, and VALET PARKING?  (lots of valet parking here in Michigan; why can't people park their own cars?)

I thought I was dressing up by putting on Carhartts instead of the sweat pants I was planning to wear, but I was still drastically underdressed.  I spent maybe two hours in the mall and having lunch in a restaurant, and of the approximately 500 people who crossed my path, only two were wearing t-shirts.  I probably covered only 1/10 of the square footage of the mall, and in my travels, I saw two VERY expensive Italian shoe stores.  I thought we were in a mini-recession, but apparently that is not affecting the people who shop in this mall.

Crate and Barrel didn't open until noon, so I had some time to kill, and decided to get a bite to eat.  It was probably 1145 when I sat down at the bar in a Mexican restaurant with the very gringo-esque name of J. Alexander's.  The bartender asked if I wanted anything to drink, and I ordered a bloody mary.  I also got some soup and some very tasty crab cakes, and watched the pre-game analysts talk about the NFL games that would start at 1300.  The bartender came over and asked if I needed anything else, and then she sheepishly admitted that she had broken a Michigan law by serving me alcohol before noon.  I was very apologetic, and explained that I recently moved to the state from Alaska, and would not have asked for a drink if I had realized that it was against the law.

We both had a good laugh about it, but it seems like such a silly law.  One of those things that is still on the books, but should probably be repealed.  So much for a nice sunday brunch with a mimosa..........

Asian Carp: The Awful Truth

borrowed from Detroit Business Law (www.detroitbusinesslaw.com)

Someone asked me on Friday why keeping the Asian Carp out of the great lakes is such a big issue.  "Why don't they just close the locks?" he said.  I rubbed my thumb against my index and middle finger (the American hand signal for money) and matter-of-factly said, "they won't do that, because it will slow down commerce, and that's going to cost people money."

Engineers are smart enough to make the Chicago River flow in a different direction than mother nature intended, but they won't be able to win a victory over the carp because they are not willing to close the locks and slow down the delivery of goods.

They are quite a handsome species of fish, I think, and they are also very good jumpers.  There are tons of youtube videos that bear this out, but I chose this one -  carp video
No wonder one of their nicknames is "flying carp".

Tribal Canoe Event on the Detroit River

Had a nice few hours out on the Detroit River on Friday, helping some local native peoples exercise their treaty rights to pass freely back and forth between Canada and the U.S.A.  Even though I really dislike being in front of the camera, I consented to give an interview to a nice CBC television correspondent.  She asked a few basic questions, and then she asked me the same question 6 different ways.  I obviously was not giving her the answer that she wanted.

What I think she wanted me to say, was that the canoes traveling back and forth the river were "shutting down" the river for a time.  I was telling her the truth, that we had worked with authorities in Canada to try and bring most of the large commercial traffic through before or after the canoe event.  We actually had to slow down two ships, and keep the last canoe on our side of the river, so that they would not get run over by the big tug and barge combos or big lakers that are traveling past my office window (up or down river) several times a day.

If you have a lot of time on your hands, you can find all things nerdy and boaty about great lakes shipping at this link.

Photo of M/V ALGORAIL in Saginaw River by Todd Shorkey - borrowed from www.boatnerd.com

This is one of the boats that we had to ask to slow down a bit, the ALGORAIL, so that they would not create some search and rescue cases for us.

Everything went fine.  There were a lot fewer canoes than we expected, but I don't think that they aired the piece on the CBC, because they could not get the controversial response that they were hoping for.

Of course one of the organizers had repeatedly been quoted in short press stories saying that Canada was shutting down the waterway for the event, which was patently untrue.  Either she did not understand how these things happen, or she was trying to claim that their event was causing a big disruption.  Luckily the later did not happen, and no one needed to be saved.  SUCCESS!!!

Interesting things I am learning about fresh water

I have been working at my new job for about a month now.  Detroit has a much different landscape than Juneau, and the water just doesn't look or smell the same.  I am one of those strange people who actually likes the smell of low tide.  There are a lot of different smells one can experience along the waterfront, but none are the salty, tide pool inspired smell that I crave.

However, there are lots of wrecks in the great lakes, and they don't deteriorate as quickly as ones exposed to salt water.  The ice and winter storms do wreak havoc with these unfortunate ships, and the link below shows what my guys were working on recently:


German freighter gets new attention 44 years after sinking in Lake Huron


http://www.uscgd9.blogspot.com/

(The flange where peanut-sized drops of oil had been escaping. Photo courtesy of NOAA)

The weeds in the water are entirely different, and the most plentiful mollusks are the invaders that have made the water much clearer, but have also eaten up all the microorganisms that lots of native fish need to survive.

I think I may have nightmares about zebra mussels tonite.......