New Year's Eve in Maine

This is an attempt to post a video. Did it work?

The Bassassins

Two weeks ago our baby-sitter took the night off, so, instead of going out on date night, I took Zoe fishing at our favorite nearby canoe haunt. The fishing was fair, it will pick up a bit more as the nights get cooler and some of the weeds die back a little.

Zoe caught this tiny minnow, but she was happy with it. She was really starting to get the hang of casting, and was able to unhook the tiny pickerel without loosing a finger. That is no small feat, because these bad boys are related to the deadly fresh water sharks of Borneo, and they have the razor sharp teeth to prove it.


Poor little thing, its not even as long as her arm.


Here it is, lunging at her throat, trying to rip out her jugular.


A few minutes later, I had to show her how it was done. Check this bad boy out! No, that's not a whale, that's a delicious bass. I didn't have my scales, but the bass did. Anyway, I figure probably he weighed 13 or 13 1/2 lbs. Probably a Maine State record, but I threw him back anyway.

Today, after two weeks spent on and around multi-million dollar yachts, I thought I should get back to my roots, so I woke up Kate and Zach for another trip in search of the lunkers. The morning was clear and bright, the seas calm. Just check out the reflection off this water:

I hooked another record delicious bass, but I let Kate reel it in.

A little later I hooked another Leviathan, and not knowing if the beast would be bigger than him or not, I passed the pole to Zach, with a stern admonition that if the great fish were to pull the fishing rod out of the boat, Zach should still hang on. I knew that if he could do that, the mighty fish would exhaust himself trying to keep Zach's life jacket under water, and that eventually they would both rise to the surface, where I could hopefully harpoon our prey like the mythical White Whale of Captain Ahab's fevered dreams.

In the event, none of that proved necessary, and Zach was able to land his quarry with no serious mishaps. All in all, a fine day on the river.

Here is Kate, trying to pet the fish.

This morning when I went to take a shower, imagine my surprise to see the throw-up bucket, complete with HUMAN VOMIT, sitting in the bathtub. Weird. I had already asked Joey how she had slept, and she had had a peaceful night, so I was a little perplexed. Not that I suspected bandits or anything, it was just weird.

When I called to check in this afternoon, the mystery was solved. Apparently Zoe (who had gone to the fair yesterday with Joey, her Grammie and Grampie, numerous siblings, etc. etc.) had a dream that she was on a fair ride, and that made her sick, so she got up an threw up, and, knowing that she would get no sympathy from her parents went back to bed.

I have no idea how it is that the real rides did not make her sick, but the dream about the rides did make her sick.

This afternoon Grammie was a little too wiped out from the fair, so Joey gave her the night off from babysitting. I decided to take Zoe fishing since she hasn't got to go all summer.

Zoe had a little luck, landing two small pickerel, really not much bigger than minnows, but she was excited because she was doing it all, from casting to taking the fish off the hooks.

While it was no substitute for datenight, it was fun. Oh, and Joey's mom came over anyway and took Zach and Eleanor for a sleepover, which of course aggravated Emily to no end, seeing as she never gets to go to the pool or fair or anything. Or something.

Long time no blog

Well, rather than try to catch up, here is what I have been doing between trips taking Magnus to the E.R.

In honor of Pioneer day, I decided to clear some land. The first day cut a path through the middle of the thickest part of the area I intended to clear. I have used this method before, and it has the benefit of making a path that leads back to the burn pile, it gives good access to the center of the problem rather than just chipping away at the edges, and also divides the work into two clear halves. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera for a before picture, but here are a couple of after pictures. This took about two hours, but of all the days, it was by far the hardest, if only because it was so hot, and I was so unused to clearing land by hand.



Here are some pairs of pictures that show the before and after, more or less from the same vantage point and angle.




Another pair:




Here is what the raspberry patch looks like if you mow it:



So far I have about 8 hours into it. Tonight Zoe, Emily, Zach and Kate all came out and helped for most of the 2 hour block. They were a big help. Zoe is a little freaked out by how big the burn pile is though. We'll probably burn that towards the end of September. It should be a doozy of a conflagration.