Random thoughts

...err, just because it's supposed to be random.

There are some mornings when I first venture out the door on my way to work that CDA feels almost like a coastal town. When that happens, it's around 0615 with a rising sun shrouded by a thin fog. This seems to make all the vegetation appear luminous but dark at the same time, kinda like the recent photos from my camp on the St. Joe. Top that off with seagulls flying around calling out, the smell of the lake in the distance, and a general dampness = coastal! It's peculiar though, because I cannot ever fully immerse myself in the thought and "be" at the ocean for that brief time. After thinking about it for a couple weeks, I came up with the answer. The coast has a distinctive smell...something about the salt and fish smell, and that's missing. The vegetation is "wrong" as well as the architecture of the houses in my neighborhood. Isn't that funny? It's the little details that make it incomplete despite the majority of my senses trying to make it true. Interesting.

I'm missing some old posts. They are still there in my "dashboard" but they don't show up on the web. It's a known issue that others are having problems with and that Blogger isn't responding to as of yet. Like one person said on a forum, "Well, Blogger is free. I guess we get what we pay for." So true. I believe it has something to do with storage and the size of a given month's posts. It's frustrating, but I'm glad to see that I at least have access to them. I like to go back in time and read about what I was doing that month in years past. For example, I still can't believe I paddled across Lake Coeur d'Alene in March two years ago. I think of that every time I drive past my old place and all I can do is shake my head. I can look over to Arrow Point and see some large fishing boats...they look very small at two miles. Go figure.

I shaved off my beard last night. I didn't necessarily do it on purpose, I was just trying to clean it up a bit...seems as though the setting on my clippers was lower than I thought. It's been so long since I've completely shaved that I now look like a goober. I feel like I look like Bart Simpson. Babyface. At least I can rest comfortably knowing it'll grow back and I'll look normal again.

We've had some wicked little cells passing through the area lately. One little cold front after another and despite having temps in the 40s - 50s, we still get some thunderstorms (saw lightning yesterday.) These squalls bring a rain/snow/hail mix and some serious winds that gust into the 50 mph range...the proof is in the woods and around town, there are trees and branches laying all over. Some poor shmuck had a tree fall on his vehicle the other day because he wanted to watch the last two laps of Nascar before moving his Suburban to a safer area. I feel sorry for him, not because he likes Nascar or that his priorities are screwed up...but because his "story" was in the newspaper!

I've been trying to get back into some kind of exercise routine lately. I read about interval training, so I'm giving that a go, but I modified it to interval / hill work so I can be in the woods. So the idea is to run as fast as you can for about four minutes (up the hills), then stop until your heartrate returns to normal. Repeat. And being in the woods let's me have my new workout partner off her leash, adds the element of unstable footing, uphill and downhill sections, logs and puddles to jump, etc. All in all, it keeps it from being too boring...like distance running is to me. Lucca has a great time but she doesn't avoid the puddles. The other day we were running down a ridge and had to jump some logs, but hidden beyond them was a massive puddle. Lucca was in the lead and LAUNCHED off the top log like she was jumping off the dock. All I saw was a splash followed shortly by a smiling yellow-lab face poke up above the log (That made me laugh. Labface.) Ahh, she has fun...it's a game to her...but at least we're both getting a workout. I follow this little adventure with some basic exercises at home. My goal is to finish doing my floor work before Lucca finishes her dinner because otherwise she likes to come over and help keep the sweat out of my eyes. Kinda hard to do planks with a dog licking your face.

The wine is coming along well. Ha! I make it sound like I'm actually doing something with it. All it's doing right now is fermenting and sitting there for a month at a time. I racked it the other day to get the sediment off the bottom, and in another month I'll do that again. So in about a month and a half I'll be ready to bottle. But talking to my boss the other day, I may get about 20 pounds of cherries from her. Cherry wine would be interesting. I just need to go get the equipment for a five gallon batch (primary fermenter that has room for the pulp) It's not that spendy and the process is identical to making a gallon, but obviously the reward is greater.

Oh, and that IPA I made about a month ago has passed some taste-testing by friends and family! It doesn't have as pronounced of a hoppy taste like some IPAs which makes it really smooth. The funny thing is that I'm not drinking it! Every now and then I'll have one, but I'm almost hoarding it. They say it gets better with age, but I'm just enjoying basking in my accomplishment I guess. More fun giving it away anyways.

I'm getting a lot of pressure to get the boat up and running for the season. It's pushing that time of year when the water warms up a bit and the spawning starts. I'm fairly interested in pike fishing this year (for some reason) and I want to try trolling for salmon. Hopefully in a couple weeks I'll have some stories about that. But the weekends are filling up quickly and turkey season opens on the 15th.

Ahh, it's nice to break my winter-funk.