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Slightly solid chilly water makes my steps crispy, crunchy

The first real snowfall of the season started late last night.  This morning I woke to the neighbor's high pitched little snow mover thing.  I don't think that it qualifies as a snow blower/thrower like we have.  That purchase was a consequence of moving to a state that has frequent snowfalls of the heavy moist nature.

The stuff here seems to be more fluffy and puffy, akin to the snow I experienced living in the Rocky mountain west.  It is easy to brush off your car, and the only bad thing about it is that your tire tracks compress it and make it difficult to remove from the driveway if you are using a conventional shovel.

I love how it seems more quiet when there is a nice snowfall going strong.  I know most of that has to do with the lack of cars on the road, but when machinery is not working and ruining my chill with motor noises, it is still and idyllic. 

Shovels do not seem to bother me.  The rhythmic scraping can be soothing.  This is best heard from a fair distance.  If you are closer and hear heavy breathing, and possibly swearing, that just ruins everything. 

Today I got decked out in my winter duds, and grabbed the snow shoes to take them out for a test drive.  It is funny how so many things are easier to get than take off.  I got the technique down, but decided that I had chosen the wrong boots.  I will probably go for a little walk tomorrow as well.  Or maybe I will switch to the throwback wooden Ojibwa style snowshoes.  They are more difficult to fasten and release than the aluminum variety, so that will take a bit more planning......  Yuck, planning.

It will be worth it to get more time playing in the snow!

Garage Turtles

We recently had a flood in our basement, and the two feet of water decimated a great deal of our aquarium equipment. 

We found homes for the fish that did not perish when all the pumps and heaters were destroyed, but since the turtles are so large we could not find homes for them in any of our local pet shops or rescue organizations.  Since the basement will need asbestos abatement (there were asbestos tiles under the cheap carpet), the turtles won't be able to go back down there until the spring time (if we can afford the repairs by then).

The garage turtles have gotten all sorts of improvements in their equipment (titanium heater, fancy control system and a brand new filtration system).  I used to be able easily visit them several times a day when they lived in the basement, but now it takes a special trip to the non-attached garage to visit or feed them.  Now that it has started to snow in the midwest, it is harder to motivate ourselves to get out there more than just feeding time.

The turtles don't seem to miss their giant pleco and gold fish friends (Goldie and Whitey started out as 1.5 inch feeder fish and ended up over a foot each).  They have a new algae eater buddy named Algernon, who seems to be getting quite fat on the primarily plant based turtle food.

Garage Turtles would be a great name for a garage band, but since the turtles never make any sounds (except when they fall to floor after escaping the tank), so I think I will have to

How to Divide Peonies

How to Divide Peonies: You seldom hear someone complain about a big, fragrant peony blooming in spring. You often hear, however, gardeners bemoaning the retail price of a new peony plant. The good news is that if you already have a peony growing in the garden, you can divide it to come by more plants. Dan Furman, a third-generation peony grower at Cricket Hill Garden in Thomaston Connecticut, and Fine Gardening's web producer Antonio Reis walk you through the division process in this video.   Now there's no excuse for a lack of peonies.

Angry v. Placid v. Hungry Birds

I have been regularly filling the bird feeder in my back yard, and the hungry little ones have been cleaning it out completely in about two days.  The robins and cardinals seem to just chill out and wait for the little birds to knock a bunch of seeds onto the ground.  They seem to do this quite frequently, but I am not sure if this is an intentional altruistic effort  on the part of the little birds, or just sloppiness.


Maybe they are just SO EXCITED that this stupid woman keeps shelling out her hard earned dollars to buy birdseed for these wild creatures, that their exuberance causes them to be messy while eating.  Or perhaps they are throwing out the small round seeds to get to the bigger sunflower seeds, or other yummy morsels?!?

Waiting area on the power line - good thing they don't weigh too much!

When I put out a suet feeder the first fall we lived in SE Michigan, I put it in a place that I could see from the kitchen window that looks out into the backyard.  When no birdies were enjoying this free bounty, the nice lady at Wild Birds Unlimited suggested that I put it in a more private location where the birds would feel somewhat sheltered while nibbling on the fatty goodness.

So I moved the suet to a location underneath the pine trees, where I could not see it from the kitchen window, but the squirrels appreciated this new spot, as they could easily get to it from a secluded tree branch without alerting me.  Those buggers are quite healthy and fat, and they hang around sleeping most of the winter, so I didn't think they really needed any additional nourishment for a long migration south.

Last week I bought a shepherd's crook metal feeder holder, which can also accommodate a nice wind chime that we got for our wedding.

Perching room only!

Now I have noticed a few hummingbirds hanging around in the backyard.  They checked out the hanging feeder, but I think they were attracted by the sap in the pine trees, or the nectar from the trumpet vine on the side of the house.  Our composting also attracts a lot of tiny flies, so that is a good source of protein for those fast paced critters.

There are at least 4 on the feeder in this shot.

The angry birds are the ones I hear or see fighting in the trees.  I think the mating season is over for them, so I am not really sure that their problem is.

Makers v. Takers = Shakers v. Bakers

I was listening to Terry Gross on Fresh Air  within the last few weeks, and she was interviewing one of the stars of the HBO series "The Newsroom" John Gallagher, Jr., and they played an audio clip from the show.  The main stars are Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortimer and Sam Waterston, and their performances are quite excellent from my point of view.  Jane Fonda plays the big boss, and she does a great job of manipulating all her minions.  And the spouse will tell you that I have watched a LOT of television, so I might know what I am talking about in my review of this show.

They deal quite frequently with politics and public opinions in general, and the specific discussions of what they should feature on their nightly news programs are quite fascinating.

The audio clip I mentioned in the first paragraph had to do with the Makers v. Takers argument that Governor Mitt Romney tried to advance during his presidential campaign of 2012.  This is one of the most misguided statements that he made, though my favorite is still the Binders of Women comment during one of the debates.

[borrowed from http://www.whatamimissinghere.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/118899-47-Color-by-Eric-Allie-Caglecartoons-515x356.jpg]

While I was mulling over this comparison of who Romney believes are producers as opposed to consumers of public largesse is exactly backwards.  The makers are the people breaking their backs to actually support their families at little more than minimum wage (people like bakers and fast food employees, etc), while the takers are the ones shaking down the government for lower tax rates so they can keep more of their millions of dollars they make each year.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Always keep the vermouth guessing!

I must confess that I am a big fan of Martinis.  Not the James Bond version with a crazy lemon peel and vodka AND gin, but the more pedestrian classic semi dry and dirty Martini with olives.  The little green fellows can be stuffed with either peppers, garlic cloves, some sort of yummy stinky cheese (preferably gorgonzola or bleu),  or if I am feeling more spicy, I will go with straight jalapeños or pickled okra.

I couldn't find a cool vintage advertisement from the cheap brand of vermouth I usually use, but this one was from my second choice brand.

[borrowed from http://rlv.zcache.com/martini_rossi_torino_vermouth_bianco_vintage_ad_poster-r14507a846fa4418ab0ae50ad40295e1c_ez7u_8byvr_512.jpg]

The meaning behind the title of this blog involves anthropomorphizing my bottle of vermouth and assuming that it can sense which bottle, gin or vodka, might be joining it in the shaker.  When I want it to be really perplexed, I delay a few minutes before grabbing the gin or vodka out of the liquor cabinet.

Why do I attribute sensation to a bottle of spirits?  Why do I try to figure out what the cats, fish or turtles are thinking?  Kind of relating to the crazy way my brain works.

Salute, salud, skol, kam-pai or whatever toast you may prefer!

Oh yeah, never drive a motor vehicle or boat under the influence.  Stay safe out there!

lawnmowers and leafblowers

Most of our neighbors have their lawns mown by professionals (read teenage boys employed by landscape companies), and thursday is the day that has been chosen for the days on the right and left of us to get their lawns manicured.

Now that I am retired and get to sleep in on weekdays AND weekends, I am greeted in the mornings of nearly every thursday (except those with torrential rainfall) at 8AM by a symphony of lawnmowers and leaf blowers.  Those do not bother me as much as the nasty high-pitched weed whackers they use instead of the edgers which take more time to operate effectively.

The whackers make a bunch of grass bits and the blowers follow them up pushing those clippings back into the lawn.

octopus pants

My dad has not played golf in years, but I do sometimes enjoy watching or playing a good round on a lazy sunday.  OK, truth be told, I have probably never actually 'played' on a sunday, other than smacking some balls at the range.

I started watching the coverage on NBC today after getting my political news fix, and the commentators were laughing about the octopus pants that were going to be worn by one of the top players:  Billy Horschel

[borrowed from the golfer's twitter feed]

They just made a joke that the pants weren't working very well for him, and they might soon become calamare.  I think they are confusing an octo-dish with one actually made of squid, but at least they were fairly close......

Black and white, right and wrong, etc.

cardinal fish pic borrowed from Seegrest Farms' Facebook page

I don't think it is just because I chose a career mostly dominated by law enforcement that I see things in a very ON or OFF fashion, I have always been that way.  When you come to a fork in the road, you either have to turn left or right, going straight won't work, unless you have a tank or something like that.

In applying fisheries or safety regulations, the person is either in compliance or not.  I realize that there is grey area.  Sometimes the humans who are interpreting the laws do not see things the same way as the ones who wrote them in the first place.  My job for four years in Alaska was to interpret the intentions of the regulators, fishermen and scientists, and explain to them how the laws they wrote would actually have to be practically enforced by a 20 year old kid with a gun who spent the whole night before on bridge watch and had potentially lost their lunch in the drink on the way over to the fishing boat.

[Losing your lunch (and I have unfortunately done that) is much easier than losing a coded radio or a clip of ammo:  MUCH LESS PAPERWORK!!!!!]

We have recently been going thru some of our artwork that has been in the same storage boxes since before we left Massachusetts in 2006.  Kind of like getting new birthday presents that look somewhat familiar to old birthday presents.  I get excited, like a kid in a candy shop, waiting for them to be unwrapped and anticipating what they might be........

Is it the print of the watercolor of the Boston Aquarium montage of African cichlids???
Is it the Winslow Homer print that I got during college of one of my favorite works from the Art Institute of Chicago?
Is it the amazing small photo of Ana Purna that Andy's friend Scott took while on a trip to India????
Or is it the wonderful oil painting of sea grass that my grandfather Milton painted on Martha's Vineyard in the 1960s???

Each one has their own story and memories all wrapped up in it.

When we found the 8x10 glossy of me on the field at Fenway wearing the 2004 World Series replica ring and one of the biggest smiles I can ever remember breaking out on purpose while IN FRONT OF and not BEHIND the camera (where I would much rather be....), I immediately blurted out - "That goes in the sports cave in the basement!"

For almost everything that we unwrapped I knew exactly where I would want to put it, based on either the subject matter, where the frame or colors would work best on which walls, or just where I wanted it based on how I wanted to feel in each room when I saw it.  Black or white, cut and dried, simple!