Couldn't think of an existing thread to put this in so I created a new one. There is probably something like it somewhere but the search function only angers me.

I reached a new level of being Canadian yesterday. I spent Saturday afternoon helping a friend to tap maple trees. I never saw it done before so it was interesting and I got to spend a nice day snowshoeing through the woods.

Wow. Tapping maple trees. I like the outdoors, so to me that sounds like something fun to do witha friend.

I spent several hours yesterday doing a local saltwater tank tour. A number of people from a local chapter of the Greater Iowa Reef Society club went around town to look at people's tanks. The smallest tank was 75 gallons (being replaced by a 180 gallon that was just getting set up), and the largest was 250 gallons. The 250 gallon tank had a 120 gallon "sump" tank attached for filtration.

It all made my 120 gallon look tiny.

Murph is the Canadianest.

I was the Deck Referee at King County Aquatic Center (site of the 1990 Goodwill Games!) for a bigass age-group swim meet all day yesterday. I used my whistle quite a lot. My feet got wet. My kids were not swimming, but I volunteered anyway, because the world needs helpers.

Bet he was listening to Stompin' Tom and sucking back a Timmies the whole time.

Did you ask what the hydro bill was? Those huge tanks are a wonder to behold, but the bills...

I just finished a working design for a 2100sq ft rancher around the 8'x15'x26' LR/HT. I'm going to try for vaulted throughout with 9' flat ceiling in the LR but I already know this is pushing the engineering available to me.
We loose the kids family room but their bedrooms nearly double in size.
The wife gets her own ensuite and walk in closet and I was able to add a half bath in the utilty room/family entrance.
3.5 bath, 3 bed.
Will start the scaled drawing tomorrow to see how close my line drawing is.

I guess its not exactly non audio.
The drawing was around the HT and tunes were playing while I got lost in the design.

I'm finishing up some tasks for work (IT) that have to be done during off hours, does that count?

I just (painfully) did an overdue expense report early this am before my wife starts complaining about us financing my company travels! They're so easy when you stay on top of them, and so painful when you procrastinate and build up a big pile of receipts.

Ha!!!
We had to drive to my house when he neglected to charge his cordless drill. We did indeed pick up a coffee on the way.

No Stompin Tom but there was a Maritime band playing on my MP3 deck in the truck. The Stanfields

Warning:
The Stanfields kick ass and get a pub rocking like no other Maritime band I've seen in a long time but if you watch the new video on the link I posted, be forewarned it's ridiculously violent. I kept waiting for it to make a statement that would justify it but instead it just kept getting more violent.

Looking for a new job, sick of corporate evil empires.

Hiking in the "mountains" (rolling hills) behind Floyd Toole's home in Agoura Hills, near the Pacific north of Los Angeles.

Enjoying an extended visit in perfect weather, 78F. Nice to get away from the lousy cold in the Northeast.

Heard a mockingbird and saw a tiny gekko on my hike. Got my heart rate up to 120, max for my age.

Alan

Max heart rate is a funny/interesting thing. I remember monitoring on an exercise bike in my 20s and getting to 165. Now I get to 145. Guess in another decade or two I'll be in the 120 club.

_A_ Mockingbird? What if _B_ Mockingbird sounded better?

Was the forest around his house a properly-controlled environment?

No, but the bullfrogs were placed midway on opposite sides of the pond.

did the gecko try selling you insurance.

I ran to the other side of the hill to the hear the B mockingbird!

Hard to set up a blind test in the wild (I crouched behind a bush and pretended not to look) so the results are worthless.

Enjoying a nice Pinot at the moment.

Cheers.

Update on the maple syrup efforts. <near disaster>

My friend decided, for some reason, that he would try boiling a smaller pot down on his kitchen stove while he did much bigger batches outside. When he finished outside, he forgot about the pot on the stove and went to bed.

He awoke in the night when the smoke detector went off. There was so much smoke when he tried to evac out down the stairs that he and his brother turned back around and waited out on an upper deck for the fire dept. They were rescued via ladders.

The good news is that nothing in the house truly went on fire. It was just smoke from when the sap boiled right down to a solid and went on fire in the pot. The pot was big and tall enough that the flames stayed contained to the pot.

The bad news is that his house and everything in it have to be professionally cleaned so they had to move out for a week or two.

Syrup production is delayed for the week but the important thing is that he still has his house and that no one got hurt.

Wow, that's terrible. I have some paranoia about stove fires (that my wife doesn't share), so that's a really scary read to me.

Oh my gosh!! Terrible! Good thinking getting out though - it's usually the smoke that gets you, not the fire.

Not to be Sandy Safety (as Alan Lofft) would say, but does a Crock Pot get hot enough to boil syrup? Wonder if that would be a good option for the homegamers.

Tiny cups of hot maple syrup while we went on hay wagon rides at the sugar shack - such a BIG part of my Canadian youth!

From what I've learned so far, it takes several hours of boiling. The ratio of initial sap to final syrup is 30to40 to 1. So for instance, 30 liters of sap would need to be boiled down until it nets only 1 liter of syrup.

After chatting with him today, he tells me he was just doing the final boil stage indoors where you transfer the dwindling amount to a smaller pot. It would be difficult to do the full boil process indoors (crock pot) as you have hours of heavy steam in your kitchen.

Yah, but it would be heavy sweet-smelling maple syrup steam . . . I'd be sitting there all blissed-out until it was done!!

I've made maple syrup (involved from the very first step to the last), and yes, the boiling process takes a very long time. For us, it turned into a yearly event that lasted a weekend, and included the making of fresh pressed (a barrel with a hand crank) apple cider.

Great, now I'm craving TWO of my favorite things.

P.S.
Apple Cider is a great mix for Murphshine.

I'm in the middle of a cross-country road trip with my family: wife, 9yo son, 7yo daughter, and 13yo dog. We started in the DC area of VA on Feb. 16, going southwest. We hit Chattanooga, TN, Birmingham, AL, Jackson, MS, Shreveport, LA, Paris, TX, that hung out with my parents in Oklahoma City, OK. I flew back to work two weeks while the remainder of the family continued to Amarillo, TX, Vega, TX for two nights during a blizzard, Albuquerque, NM, Petrified Forest National Park, Flagstaff, AZ, Los Angeles, CA, and then to Mammoth Lakes, CA for skiing with my wife's parents, where I rejoined them.

This past Monday, we departed Mammoth Lakes, CA and drove over the Sierra Nevadas just south of Lake Tahoe to Loomis, CA to spend a night with my sister's family. The drive was absolutely gorgeous. Snow everywhere but the road -- as it should be, From there we drove to Carmel Valley, CA to spend the night with my wife's cousin and her husband. That town is a little piece of paradise, let me tell you. Perfect weather, too.

Now, I'm posting this from Berkeley, CA where we're staying a few days to show the kids and dog all the places we used to take them when they were younger, and to hang out with my wife's sister's family. On Saturday evening, we'll book it to Denver as efficiently as possible where we'll visit with my sister and her new twins. From there, we'll book it to Chicago to get a tour of the Fermilab and to visit with my two brothers. Next stop will be outside Cleveland to stay the night with my wife's aunt, then home by March 24.

Whew!

You're planning a beer-by-beer report. Right?

Safe travels!

Cool. Did you take the FJ?

Just spent 15 days on the Big Island. Working through a state of depression right now.... Got on the plane with flip flops and shorts, just to get off the plane in Alaska with temps about 10 deg. I'm moving to Hawaii, come hell or high water.

Went fishing (bad time of the year, so didn't do too well), wild boar hunting, hiked through an active volcano, looked at a lot of property and relaxed a bit.

I finally got my Arcade machine upgraded and working last night. Had some stupid issue with the computer locking up on USB device scans at startup only to find out that the motherboard manufacturer has a bug in their latest BIOS. I had to downgrade 1 version to get it working.

Oh, and I swapped out my one pachinko machine for a different one (I have 3 options) to change things up. Now my 14 year old and her friends are playing those and the pinball all morning. YAY!

Holy crap, Peter!!! 7 & 9? How did your kids grow so freakin' fast?!?!? I still remember when you broke the news about your wife being pregnant.....

Currently, the 5 of us are in New York State for a skiing trip. The wonderfull thing about living near Ottawa, is that there is great skiing within a 2 to 2.5 hour drive.

Hot sauce store shopping today! $100 later...

Let us know what the winners are.

2 - 2.5 hrs!! Shawn you need to move out here, great skiing 1 to 1 1/2 hrs away

Yeah, crazy how fast they age when you spike their milk with crushed caffeine pills.

I'm going to taste test them all this evening, bud. Apparently the Mango Curry one is quite hot.

I would LOVE to come skiing out west. We have ski hills much closer, but to get to an actual "mountain" (New York, Vermont, or Quebec), a min 2 hour drive is in order. And these mountains would be considered hills to you out there! LOL

We are very spoiled for mountain sports here, sadly I don't partake in most of them, I only camp and go fishing when it is much warmer than right now.

The other night, I played Star Fluxx, a fun card game that parodies pays homage to all things scifi. Recommended. Now I'm interested in trying Monty Python Fluxx.

African or European?

What? I can't hear you over these coconuts horses!

I'm in a meeting. Help.

Is it starting to be both unpleasant AND impossible now?

It's unpossible and impleasant!

Help me, I'm drowning in numbers..... 3 days to get my certification for residential heat loss, and heat gain calculations. Full days, plus 4 hours of homework each night. FML. My last "formal" day of school was back in '88 or '89. I don't know what I was thinking.

I give you a lot of credit, Shawn. I don,t think I would do well in a class anymore. I just can't concentrate anymore.

Way to go, Shawn. You got this.

I survived the hopeless unpleasantness for another day. Think I will go to Mount Vernon today.

Hi Tom,

Hope you have a unpleasantless hopeness.

Tooth extraction. 3 roots... all twisty.

I guess I can take that off my bucket list now.

Oof. Hopefully the dentist gave you the good kind of stabbity stabbity with lots of pain medicine before starting the herky jerky.

I say that because my dentist is the Swedish Chef, apparently.

BORK BORK BORK!

I bet that's strong motivation for good dental hygiene.

Yes, lots of numbing, no good drugs after though.

I purchased some Grade A light amber maple syrup (American classification) from "The County" (Prince Edward County) last week. Tapped the traditional way and boiled down over open fire. I must admit the county folk know what they are doing. Best maple syrup I have ever had. Amazing flavour, yet "delicate" and "clean" on the palate. You would have to try it, hard to describe.

Now I'm jones-ing for some pancakes with pure maple syrup I have in the cabinet somewhere, I think.

Butter or no butter?

Took the dog for a walk to look for keys I thought I had lost. Found a brand new Blue Jays ball cap on the way - bonus. Found my keys hanging up on the key hook . Put a new laser in a PS3 ,cant test it cause I don't have a controller. And now I have to go get milk and pancake syrup, lol

Afternoon nap with my little white lady cat 'Jasmine' curled up between my legs - it's a daily ritual...

TAM

I moved 2 tons of gravel yesterday, then went and looked at Dodge 3500 dually's...

Not my usual Saturday, but was a good workout, and quite an experience going to the country to test drive the larger trucks..

Sledding with my almost-6yo son. We're near Deep Creek Lake in MD, currently getting snowed the hell in. Hopefully it will be cleared/melted enough for us to leave on Friday, esp considering we've not got an AWD/4WD. Or, you know, chains.

We just got back from our cross country road trip this evening, and then it started to snow. Upon entering, we discovered that we had run out of heating oil some time in the last week. ARRRGH.