Thousand Word Thursday

From National Geographic- Dapper black-and-white razorbills (at right) and bright-beaked puffins (at left and in air, at center) find a haven on the Shiant Islands, just a few miles southeast of Lewis, Scotland. Nearly 8,000 razorbills and more than 200,000 puffins are estimated to use these islands as their breeding grounds each year.

http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/puffin-shiant-islands/

World Wide Wednesday

Wait until PETA here's about this, Pam Anderson is gonna' be pissed...

Fish Stories

So I took the Manolin out twice over the weekend around town and caught zero fish and lost my anchor (don't ask). But I really did enjoy being out in the kayak. There is a water poker run on Squam Lake up in Ashland this weekend. I will probably go up freakishly early so I can fish for a while first. Prizes ironically include a new kayak donated by Dick's Sporting Goods in Concord.

So a customer at work named Chris gave me two rubber worms and a hook and showed me a little better way to rig my lures so I am excited to give that a try this weekend. One last note on fishing for the week I picked up some Berkley Gulp Worms, these are obviously worm shaped but with the odorous liquid that made the minnows so successful for me. So again I am excited for the weekend and it's only Tuesday.

The Kayak

So I have received the mythical pile of Army money for being held a really long time after my contract was supposed to end. As an added bonus the Army took out very little in taxes, most likely because I was in a war zone when I technically "earned" the money making it tax free. Most of the money is earmarked for repairs of one sort or another but Renee agreed that I could get a Kayak. So this is the Kayak that I got on clearance from the Piche's outlet in Belmont and this is basically the rod holder that I installed myself (the trade-off for saving a couple of hundred dollars not buying a fishing kayak).

I took her out this morning from about four a.m. until 7:30 and had a blast. Unfortunately I didn't catch any fish but fun nonetheless. Realizing that a boat without a name cannot possibly catch fish I quickly came home, did some nice errands with the family, bought a small anchor, and did I quick online search for the name I had in mind.

Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea is one of the most poignant and timeless fishing tales in American literature. Set in Cuba, the old man, Santiago, hasn't caught a fish in over two months, has trouble remembering to eat, and wouldn't have the money to buy food if he could remember. He is essentially the archetype for the unlucky fisherman. Manolin is the young boy who helps to take care of the old man and brings good luck with the fish...and not a bad name for a little kayak. Just my opinion, but naming her Santiago would be like asking for trouble.

Family Friday

So no major news for our first Family Friday. The boy was very good both yesterday and today. Yesterday we went to the park for awhile and then we went fishing for about an hour. Jackie was very cooperative, he helped carry a few lures and helped me look for fish. Today we had to do some serious power shopping between 6 and 7:30 pm and again the boy was a very good sport. When we finished, as a reward for good behavior, I took the boy to Big Lots and let him pick out a few super hero friends to play with.

He got a real kick out of his little men completely ignoring the pre-existing collection of 700 little men in order to spend quality time showing his new friends around. All in all a nice week. Renee and I also had some nice chats about different future plans which we are considering.

In him I see myself

So the point of Thousand word Thursday is to post a title, a picture, and a link or credit as needed without further explanation. As this is the first Thursday I thought a brief explanation was in order. Some pictures may be of historical significance, I am also partial to National Geographic and their images, and some days like today I may just choose a family photo.

Most people think that the boy looks a lot more like Renee than me which is, of course, true but I love this particular photo because he could be my twin when I was little and we lived on Guam for a while.

I Write Like

For our first installment of World Wide Wednesday I picked a simple little website which I came across "which analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them with those of the famous writers." I write like is a very straight forward website where you copy a sample of your writing and simply paste it into a block, click on the analyze button at the bottom of the page, and presto your work has been compared to a famous and well respected author.

I played around with the website and copied a few different posts. The website is certainly good for one's self esteem because at best I was comically compared to James Joyce and at worst I was compared to Stephen King (who does OK in spite of what critics might suggest). Interestingly enough the website never responded by saying, "your writing is crap, did you ever wonder why your a blogger rather than an author?"

Fish Stories

Last week was a six day work week with two projects for school which is not really all that different from a lot of weeks but just a busy week in general. As it is I was only able to fish once, on Sunday morning, for about three hours. I went back to the Messer Street trestle. There was a nice temperature and an ever so light breeze. The downside with the breeze was that it made light ripples on the water reducing visibility.

I was able to hook another large bass in the three pound neighborhood. I was using a wounded shad pattern, mostly silver with flecks of red which I picked up at Wal-mart for a couple of bucks. I had been losing a lot of fish slipping off the back of my lures so I wanted to buy this particular style with a hook on the back. I tend to do a quick retrieve to avoid a lot of reeds and rocks looking for reaction strikes and I thought this style would help. So anyway, I hooked the bass and he fought well enough that I had to let the drag out a little. With the 20 lb. test line it was probably unnecessary but I'm still pretty new at this. Anyway he tugged hard and brought the line under the bridge. Somehow he was able to rip the lure off the line. Now a customer at the bank that I was telling this story looked at me dubiously at the suggestion that a 3 lb. bass could snap a 20 lb. line. But in reality once we talked about it I realized that I am not tying my lure on correctly and I need to learn a more secure knot. This knot will provide a tremendous amount of strength and doesn't look to complicated to master.

Five Great Military Movies

So my first installment of Motion Picture Monday will have to be a cheapy. I stalled on a weekend paper and as it is due today I had to finish writing it this evening. So just a short review of five great military movies in no particular order.

Gladiator- Let's get this out of the way right now, we weren't the first nation to go to war and we sure as hell won't be the last. I love the battles and Russell Crowe's stoic leadership, a soldier who has been there and understands. Favorite quote, "If you find yourself alone, riding in green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled.For you are in Elysium and you are already dead."

Empire of the Sun- Produced by Steven Spielberg this movie is probably the most elegant war movie ever coupled with a haunting soundtrack featuring a lip-syncing Christian Bale to the Welsh Lullaby Suo Gan. I also love the war imagery, war isn't all about bombs and tanks sometimes it's about riding around a living room on a bicycle and golf shoes that don't quite fit.

Stripes- If I could only watch one movie on a continuous loop until the end of time it would probably be Stripes. Bill Murray, Harold Ramos, and John Candy are like peanut butter, jelly, and powdered sugar.You should go pick it up in the $5 bin at Wal-mart and check out the deleted scenes. "Cuando, cuando, cuando cuuanddooo..."

Red Dawn- Laugh, I don't really care. I grew up at the height of the cold war and when I was a kid and had bad dreams it was of this. The Russians were scary and there was always that little chance no matter how slight that they might not love their children too. Granted I was like eight years old when this movie came out but this is another classic probably found in the $5 bin.

Das Boot- I know you're thinking, "Oh great he's probably got a black beret and will next tell us how much he loves Franz Kafka." But let me tell you, I have like a twelve minute attention span and I was riveted to the director's cut of this movie, which for the record is three and a half hours and entirely in German, seriously.

The Old Course at Saint Andrews

If you are just getting out of bed at ten a.m. on this lovely Sunday morning you are probably a. not a fisherman and b. not interested in the Open Championship (commonly mislabeled the British Open). For our first ever installment of Super Sports Sunday I thought I would throw in my two cents on the state of Tiger Woods and the Open Championship. This year the tournament is being held at The Old Course at Saint Andrews one of the most stunning gems in all of golf. If you had to make a list of five course to play before you die St. Andrews, Pebble Beach, and Augusta National would probably all make most people's lists. You can quibble over the other two until the end of time but any of those three would be tough to exclude. Click here for a stunning interactive map of the course being played today for the championship.

Like anyone who claims to know anything about golf, I too will sit down to a perfectly delightful telecast in high definition and be completely distracted by the performance of the great Tiger Woods. Of course, there was a time when we were collectively awe struck by his innate ability to steamroll through any tournament field, wearing his bright red shirts on Sunday and his opponents wilting away like flowers in the desert sun. Currently the winner of 14 major championships sits in 29th place a completely irrelevant 13 shots behind the leader. Jack Nicklaus is the all-time major tournament champion leader with 18 titles and there was also a time when people expected tiger woods to blow through that number en route to a final destination in the neighborhood of 30. Sitting on 14 titles at 34 years old, and going through significant personal, financial, and marital problems Tiger is looking remarkably human. At 34 let me tell you, you start to feel remarkably human.

Maybe Tiger Woods doesn't deserve to make a comeback. Maybe golf like every other sport is starting to pass this particular athlete by. The vast majority of majors are won by golfers under 40. Tiger is of course a special sort of athlete, but an aging special athlete with a gimpy left knee (so I guess we have that in common as well as our age) who is a lot closer to sunset than he is to sunrise. There was definitely a crowd coming into this tournament who was rooting for the man who carries the sport to make a comeback, to win a major on a course on which he excels. Sadly after of Tiger Woods appear to be an automaton who demolished all comers Tiger Woods looks strangely human. Perhaps more amazing than the young robot who won 14 majors will be a curtain call by an aging legend who wins five more. Whatever else I see in sports in my life, I lived through the eras of Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky and I lived through the era of Tiger Woods.

The Best Laid Plans...

So I have thought out an agenda for the blog. I doesn't necessarily mean that I will start writing every day and I reserve the right to break my own self imposed rules. In the interest of sparking a higher quality of creativity I will try to post on different topics on different days. That way over the course of a week a thought can be more refined on a given topic.

Monday- Motion Picture Monday's will be for discussing or reviewing movies, either the family movie of the week, a new movie coming out, or perhaps a classic favorite. Another possibility is secondary topics related to movies such as who's the best Bond or the Jedi Religion.

Tuesday- Fish Stories will be reserved for Tuesdays. I do most of my fishing over the weekend so this is a good day to spin some new yarns or share some photos.

Wednesday- World Wide Wednesday is the day to explore unusual articles and websites from the web. A link to a link can lead you to some interesting places, and there's always YouTube.

Thursday- A picture is worth A Thousand Words. Picture, link as appropriate, and credit only no words on Thursday.

Friday- Family Friday will cover our adventures in parenting, what the boy is up to, etc.

Saturday- Jumble covers loose odds and ends Muskrat scores, politics, crazy drivers with cell phones, whatever.

Sunday- Super Sports Sunday covers topics near and dear to my heart in the world of sports. The Tour de France, the Little League World Series...whatever as long as it's sports related.

Structure

As if my life doesn't have enough structure I am dabbling with the idea of adding a little structure to my blog. This will give me a different topic as a jumping off point perhaps sparking creativity. One example would be World Wide Wednesday for I find some mindless drivel from the web, like the mushroom song, or this.

We'll see, I am still mulling over topics but with school winding down I will have a ton more free time.

Viva La Espana!

Congratulations to Spain on a brilliantly played World Cup Final Championship game. Iniesta scored on an overtime strike giving Spain their first ever golden trophy. Sadly, soccer now slips back into obscurity on the North American continent for another three and a half years. One of the nice things about soccer is that a regulation game fits neatly into a two hour commercial free time slot. Add in a a half hour pre-game show and your still shorter than your average baseball. Soccer is supposed to be the sport of global appeal but a quick scan of the results shows that 13 of 32 finalists, 6 of 16 to make the knockout stage and both of the teams in the finals call Europe home. South America runs a respectable second but the rest of the world is "futbal" wasteland.

Segueing to other popular European sports which I enjoy but know nothing about, the Tour de France is also underway. I can DVR this daily and condense a somewhat tedious three and a half telecast into an hour or so highlight show. I watch a good chunk of the pre-game so the stage is nicely set, then I fast forward to the mountainous parts (slower cycling but higher drama and better scenery), then I fast forward to the last 10k or so to see who wins the stage and what that does to the overall standings. No one could accuse me of not being much of a purist but I do have a day job you know.

In completely unrelated news, I still eagerly await the mythical pile of government money. Conveniently, I work at the bank so if it was a scam I would literally be the first to know, or at least the second...my wife is very sharp. At this point it has been more than a week and most crooks aren't that patient, and you will recall I did independently verify the existence of the program. We will probably spend the bulk of the funds sprucing up the bathroom, but Renee did agree to let me buy a small one-person kayak and related accessories...which brings me to fishing.

Today I caught my first honest-to-goodness respectable fish. Not just a fish which I can be proud of, at this point I am still pleased with any fish, but a fish with which anyone could be pleased. Today I caught a modest 14" lake trout and was going to have to be content with that, but as my time was winding down a saw a mammoth smallmouth hanging in the reeds about forty yards from the trestle I was fishing (near the Messer Street bridge for locals). So I figured what the hell he was either going to bite or not and I casted my new neon yellow worms past his head and reeled them into the strike zone. He was interested and followed it a little but I could tell after three or four casts that he wouldn't bite. So I quickly switched to my other new lure a 4" Wild Eyed Minnow and I continued casting about ten to twenty feet past the bass so I wouldn't spook him. Each time I let it settle for just a few seconds and then I would reel frantically hoping for a reaction strike and also that the large exposed hook wouldn't get caught in the reeds. He was definitely interested in who was swimming through his water and on about the third cast he bit hard and plunged a little. This was the first serious test of the new 20 lb test line that I have been using as the smallie dragged my line deep and through the reeds and then he lashed back and forth a bit. after a minute or so the bass conceded defeat and I had to reel him the 20 or so feet up to the train trestle (again another good test of the line). Easily the biggest fish I have ever caught, he was a solid 17" and using a weight estimator on the Bass Resource website and my own instinct I would say he was very close to 3 lbs (2.8 says the estimator). All in all a very good day, for me and the bass which I unhooked and let go.

School

So I have finally come to a decision of sorts regarding advanced schooling. After finishing my bachelor's degree in September I will be taking at least a year off. I may not need or pursue an MBA degree at all, but I am definitely taking a break. After two and a half years of basically uninterrupted schooling, coupled with chasing a toddler, and a consistent effort to advance in my career has left me pretty tired.

As the boy gets older keeping up with him gets a little easier, and finishing school will free up a lot of time as well. I am glad I went back to school, and I enjoy my work so it's hard to articulate except to say that I am a bit tired and need a break. I am envisioning that after a year I will have a better idea of how content I am in my work and whether an MBA is necessary at all I will also have a pretty good perspective of how much I am enjoying and will miss my free time. For the moment I have nine weeks left of school and a paper to finish on the roles of human resources in the public and private sector.

Birthday Week

We have had a busy few days for the Mitchell family. On the fourth we had a nice BBQ at my parents with a lot of the nieces, nephews, and siblings. Later we went to the Muskrats game, left in the seventh inning and caught two different sets of fireworks going off simultaneously that were visible from Opeechee park.

On the fifth we had the the boy's third birthday party. This was the first year in which we had a big birthday party. We had easily fifty guests, one Muskrat mascot, and my first cake that involved actual construction. I made the scene from toy story where the toys are climbing up the bed to greet Buzz Lightyear. Unfortunately, to much sun and sugar left the boy throwing up and miserable for the rest of the fifth and sixth.

The seventh is my birthday and I caught two little rock bass in the morning before I went to work for nine am. After work I bought some new fishing line and a couple of new lures and we had a very nice dinner (thanks Renee) and ice cream cake with my parents.

Today is no one's birthday but the Muskrats have an exhibition game against team Canada and we may see some friends there.

Catfish

So I have a nice three day weekend for the fourth, unfortunately do to a scheduling glitch I was unable to use a vacation day on the sixth when Renee and the boy will be going to Story Land. Not a big deal as we will all go again later in the summer.

This morning at about five I went to the bridge by the Belknap Mill to try my hand at trout and salmon fishing. Naturally I caught two little rock bass. Nothing exciting but two fish for me in one day is still a pretty big deal. I caught one with my Berkley Gulp Minnow (far and away my champion lure) and the other with my biggest dud lure, the Rage Tail baby craw. The Rage Tail is such a slick looking lure but with plenty of opportunity today was the first time I caught a fish of any size using it, meanwhile 11 of the 18 fish that I have caught have been chasing the Gulp Minnow. It was almost 60 degrees by five am with clear skies and little wind, so it was a pleasant morning for fishing.

By seven am I had tired of the limited action under and on the bridge so I figured while I had a couple of hours I would head back to the Laconia Citizen parking lot. It had started to get warm so I took off my sweatshirt and spent the better part of two hours watching little bass float feet away from me mocking lure after lure. Then as I was starting to think about leaving I caught a flash of black out of the corner of my eye. At this point all I have caught is basically lake trout which is kind of a silvery color and bass which is mostly greenish so black struck me as odd. After watching the spot for a few minutes a beautiful little catfish swam into view. Catfish favor amateurs like myself because basically they are scavengers who will eat just about anything. So I pulled my lure and switched to a leftover chicken finger that I had brought with me. I dropped it where I had seen the cat and got nothing. Then I saw the cat on the other side of the little pier and when I cast to the other side I almost hit him in the head spooking him a bit. With a little bit of frustration setting in I took a break to see if I could spot the cat again. Looking back where I had seen him originally sure enough he was there and he was rooting around where I had dropped the chicken originally. Now I'm no brain surgeon but even I could tell he was sensed the chicken with his barbels and was looking for it. I slowly dropped the chicken back in the water and after settling for not more than a minute the cat swallowed it whole. The fight was brief but the best that I have had at this point having to let him back out a little a couple of times so I didn't snap my line (at this point I am using the 8 lb test that came with the reel).

When I pulled him into my hands I was impressed with his size and beauty (for me anyway). At 14" and a pound and a quarter the all black cat is the largest fish which I have caught and it made for three in one day. I wanted to snap a picture of my catfish but I struggled a bit with the hook and I needed to get him back in the water. The only thing that was odd was that I couldn't find the exact species in the NH Freshwater Fishing Digest. The digest lists one catfish species, the brown bullhead, which is brownish with a white belly, this fish was definitely all black and definitely in the catfish family. He actually looked like this fella' who apparently lives in Brazil, go figure? Anyway, I am excited for this Army stop-loss pay, Renee and I discussed, and if it isn't a scam I will probably get a little one-man kayak and a roof rack.

Irony?

Merriam Webster defines irony as, an incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result. So yesterday, more than five years after my final date of discharge, I was watching Kathryn Bigelow's powerful film Hurt Locker. The film portrays snapshots into the life of a explosive ordinance disposal team serving in Iraq. Well-crafted characters and vividly realistic sets really brought me back to my year in the desert. The movie earned six well-deserved Oscars (including Bigelow for Best Director).

So strangely enough buried in my usually nondescript mail today is a letter from guess who? My crazy old Uncle Sam was just writing to let me know that he felt bad about all that time I had to spend in the desert as well. Your uncle appreciates how challenging it was to readjust and the perseverance necessary to fit back in with normal folk (after working 70 hours a week staring at three computers in a room with no windows). Your Uncle Sam feels particularly badly for all of those months he made you serve after your contract ended...and he wants to pay me $500 for each of those months.

Now your crazy old uncle has been known for questionable integrity from time to time but I am optimistic. Not enough to buy a kayak mind you, just you know, window shop a little. ; )