New Kid in Town

Brought into this wacky world back on April 17th, the every-so-growing 'Bird' arrived at the Frankfort place this past Friday evening with SO MUCH ENERGY; and no social media account thankfully. If she did have a social media account, the first couple of days would be classified as "it's complicated" with her curious nature of wanting to get into everything, deciding that drinking from the water bowl is easier if she gets her front paws in the bowl while consuming and standing next to a deer with no idea that said deer was there. Based on the size of her paws and her ability to inhale food at a record pace, Bird is going to be a large girl when all is said and done.

Welcome to the world Bird; and please don't pee in the house.

Trail Head

Skegemog

The 2nd weekend of June was upon us and that means fishing time at Lake Skegemog for the annual Mother Cup. No cup/trophy for the winning team this year. Just money. The same cast of characters were in attendance, one year older and still showing the maturity level of a pack of teenagers. 

Lessons learned from the weekend and we won't name names to protect the innocent but don't bring a massage tool to a gathering of said adolescent minded guys who will misinterpret it as a self pleasure tool. The second lesson learned is always make sure the boat clip is in place. The clip attaches to the boat kill switch for safety reasons. Without the clip in place, the boat won't start. The owner of said boat was claiming boat trouble, had his boat towed by another back to the house, took apart his motor, cleaned the gas lines and after all was almost lost, one of the many supervisors in attendance made the comment about the clip. Clip on, the boat started right up. The third lesson is beware of Jill and Roger's cat while sleeping as he will pee on you if given the chance as one individual found out.

Host Roger had door prizes for everyone in attendance in the form of pocket ponchos, which came in handy as the Saturday morning fish session saw a bit of rain. Two individuals received television monitors. I'm not sure if they were prizes or Roger was just getting someone to take some trash out of his home. A nice gesture nonetheless. 

The fishing was a bit slow compared to past years as few boats brought in a full bag of five during the three sessions. The big fish trophy was a 3 1/2 pound bass by Keith M. A nice fish but not as large as previous years. The team competition victory, a nice purse, again went to yours truly's Seadog team with Gus taking team lead for production. I doubled my quota of one. I'll take it.

In between reliving junior/senior high school with stories around the fire and the fishing, some good eats as usual as Alex B. cooked up some fajitas Friday night and chicken on Saturday. 

Trail Head

big fish for Keith

show me the money

Alex B. working his magic

the urinator (but a cool cat overall)

door prizes for Doke and Alex

needed these Saturday morning

New Arrival Coming

After some thorough soul searching, a new member to the northern experience will be joining me on a permanent basis at the homestead in a couple of weeks. I look forward to long walks with her on the beach. More to come as I reveal who this mystery woman is...

To keep me company in the meantime, I'll get by with the friends pictured below who are not shy in taking over my yard.

Trail Head

Dream Weaver

This year has been a weird one so far for this large melon; particularly my dreams. They've became so funky that I started putting a sheet of paper on my bed table to jot them down for recall. Surprising I haven't had the one in awhile where I missed all my college classes and the semester was ending. I've had that one in years past but it hasn't made an appearance this year. The meaning of dreams have been analyzed to death and I have no theories; they are just weird.

With that, I give you my list to date:

- I'm shopping for clothes in an airport. Not just the shirts that advertise the state you're in. I'm shopping for every piece of clothing.

- I'm mountain biking up a hill thousands of feet in the air.

- A repeat performance in a few dreams but can't find my car.

- I lost my shoes and walk up a very long spiral staircase looking for them.

- My bicycle is stolen at a check point.  I have no idea what the check point is for but it's a check point.

- I'm crawling through a small hole in a house and everybody has a letter jacket on when I make it outside the hole.

- I'm with friends at a family's house that none of us know.

- I'm shore fishing with strangers on a hill.

- I'm at a school for some reason and I look down a very deep hole where people are calling for help.

- I'm taking a shower in the middle of church and a person I don't know approaches me and says "I know what you did."

- I am sitting at a work desk that has too many people at it. I don't know any of the people at the desk.

- I park my truck on a street, walk to a family's house I don't know. After leaving the house, I can't remember where I left my truck.

- It's raining inside a house I don't recognize and water is leaking everywhere from the ceiling.

- I walked many miles to see friends. The directions I have make it even farther. When finally arriving, I discover that the friends had a bet how long it would take me.

- I'm looking to repossess the former president's (the MAGA idiot) two cars.

- I have a file in my hip that the doctor's ask if they can remove to alleviate the pain.

- I'm at a party, don't know anybody and have no way to get home. I end up taking a shower with my clothes on and sunglasses.

- I'm at a football game, don't know anybody and everybody keeps changing seats.

- My dad pops up everywhere I'm at as strangers transport him to my locations. He doesn't say anything but is always there.

Again, no sense to them but bizarre. 

Sleep tight (a saying I still don't understand).

Trail Head

Trailer Time (revisiting my last trailer experience)

My spring project was finalized this week and got a chance to see if this mechanically declined individual didn't screw up assembling a trailer with some boat roller modifications. Thanks to YouTube for the assembly instructions as the trailer had quite a few parts to assemble in addition to brake light installation. While it took me a little longer than the individuals online making it look so easy, I think I did okay. Now it was time to see if it would tow a boat. I was optimistic the trailer would be fine, however, my last time trailering anything didn't work out so well. 

Queue the Way Back Machine to the summer of 1990 (1989?) when yours truly was working one of the many post college jobs until finding my footing in my current career that is going on its 34th year. I worked for an auto rental company. Their niche against the competition was that they would deliver the rental car to you. How was this done with only one employee doing the delivery you may ask. The person delivering the vehicle would  drive the car being rented and tow a very, very small car behind. Something like a Geo Metro as I recall. So one very hot afternoon, yours truly was on his way to delivering a rental going down I-696 right about when rush hour was kicking in. All was well until traffic about 10 cars ahead of me came to a sudden halt for whatever reason. I put the brakes on as everyone else was doing so no issues for anyone in a single car, however, with the Geo Metro in tow for me, when I hit the brakes, the vehicle in tow swung around the car I was driving, went on its side and pulled my vehicle on its side as well. I made the traffic report that day along with a careless driving offense getting attached to my driving record. I remember asking the police officer as I climbed out the window if any other vehicles were impacted. "No, it was just you." Needless to say, that job didn't last long.

Fast forward to yesterday and while my nuts clenched a bit going around some hilly turns, I'm happy to report the trailer successfully made it to the lake without incident. 

Trail Head

also my first boat motor experience - a little
work to do there with a bit too much tilt

My Beef (one of a handful)

A sports radio talk show out of Detroit used to have a weekly segment for fans to call in and give their 'beef' with anything that's on their mind.

Some links below from their "What's your beef?" segment:

https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/whats-my-beef-week-7/

https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/whats-my-beef-week-18/

https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/whats-my-beef-week-21/

My latest beef is with canisters with powdered drink solutions in them. The views below are when I opened each. Both aren't even 3/4 full. Fill it to the brim please!

Some other recent beefs revolving in my large melon:

People that film concerts with their cell phones. You're there, watch the show as the video will be forgotten next week (and will have my voice yelling at you in the background instead of the band playing). Watching the show here and now will be much more rewarding.

Spam e-mails. I wonder who is the creator of these and where they are sending them from. Is it their primary job? What pleasure do they get corrupting someone's computer that they don't know?  I am naive to think that everyone ignores them but with idiocracy alive and well, I'll bet there are some who treat them as legitimate e-mails and click away on the links.

Social media addicts with filtered pictures (and social media in general). First of all, get some real friends outside of your computer screen and the filtered picture isn't going to help when people see you in person. "Why do you look different?" will be the topic of conversation when they do.

In the spirit of the NFL draft this weekend in the D, mock drafts eight months ahead of the actual draft. I know it gets the "clicks" that online publications love to get but most aren't even close. I recall a few years back in a "way too early" mock draft, the "experts" were calling Michigan quarterback Shea Patterson a first round pick, possibly top 10. He didn't even get drafted.

While on the topic of sports, I'm all for college players not being held hostage at a school when things don't work out for whatever reason but the transfer portal has become a joke. A little less than 2% of college players will suit up in the NFL (I looked it up) so Player A who transfers after he didn't get enough playing time in the spring game goes to another school, probably dropping out in the middle of the current semester, losing any course credit there and probably not going to class at the new school until the summer, possibly the fall. Those 98 percentiles are going to eventually have to get a non-NFL job and those 12 credits accumulated over four years aren't going to help the process. 

It's all about me but the pre-season college football magazines that come out in the upcoming weeks that I love to read are now going to have put disclaimers on their reviews, such as "prediction is based on Player A and Player B still playing for the team in the fall."

Trail Head

Rehab With a View

Father Time brought me in for another round of rehab as the hips I've learned have arthritis and my  prostate body part has me heading to the john a handful of times each night (I didn't think it was possible to pee that much). While the prostate is being handled with some pills, physical therapy called for the hips, again. I had physical therapy on them about a decade ago and was usually able to get by with some stretching since but they've had their own heartbeat at night lately with the throbbing so off to the local therapist I went. 

Physical therapy around here is handled at the local hospital which resides on a hill overlooking Lake Michigan. The physical therapy equipment is what you'd see in any other location with the rubber balls, stretch bands, mini-stairs and a handful of beds but what a view! While the therapist is pushing you to do one more set of excruciating exercises, you look out at endless blue waters in one window and the Elberta Dunes in another. A good example of pain and pleasure.

Trail Head