Disorder In the Court

One of my all time favorite episodes. Not only is there excellent pratfalls, slapstick, and writing but who else in the 1936 had the balls to flip off the camera? Moe, Larry and Curly that's who!Look for it at minute12:52

LumberJackin'

Saturday and Sunday proved to be a productive day in the yard. Brother came up early to help me bring down some hardwood in the backyard. In about 2 hours on Saturday morning we managed to bring down 4 trees about 6-8 inches in diameter, 6 trees about 4 inches, and one maple about 13 inches in size.

The maple was tricky because it was leaning the opposite direction I wanted to bring it down in. So to bring it over safely I put I line on it, up about 12 feet from where I would place the cut and ran the line over to a come-along. We cranked up the tension and I placed my wedge cut. I had my bother crank the eveah-lovin’-crap out of the come-along to really get the tree bending. Then as I placed the backside felling cut the line would slack just enough for him to get one or two more cranks in. The maple went down perfectly and the top landed about 2 inches from my brother.

Sunday morning we went back out and limbed up the trees. Segregated the wood into three piles. Pile 1-Brushy crap. This I will stack off in the woods and let dry out. In the fall Ill come back into it and break it up to use as kindling. Pile 2-small diameter limbs. Pile 3-larger diameters trunks. The limbs and trunks Ill cut to size and split it all. It will dry out way faster and be ready for December.

The pic is a before and after of the area. It doesn’t’ show the maple and isn’t as dramatic if the trees had leaves. Regardless it will be some good firewood and I just reduced my leaf raking about 3 hours.

I am spending some time today and tomorrow at the Northeast Geological Society of America meeting. This morning I managed to grab some GSA schwag (pictured), cruise the poster presentations and sit in a couple of talks.

My problem with the talks, as it has always been, is that while the presenters are among the best know and respected geologist in their field, few of them have any clue how to present good, clear and meaningful slides or how to SPEAK THE FUCK UP.

I was sitting there this morning thinking of this. Guy! speak INTO the microphone. Don't look at your slides and speak towards them. Not only that you are not projecting your voice AT ALL. Good lord man your like one of the 10 ten guys in this room right now.
I wanted to shout out ' could you please speak up'. But, as that I know who most of the people in the room are; it is really not the situation to be shouting at the idols. It would be poor form.
After lunch Ill go back up and sit in on a couple of more talks. Might as well. It's ligit time away from the office.

Sign of Spring

Well, well, well today is the first day of spring. Isn't that just great? I think so. And right now the temperature is a fine 28 deg.F. Gotta love Maine.

Anyway, I was out in the yard last night playing with my dogs and after looking around in I realized that around here the first real sign of spring is that the dog turd starts to reappear out of the melting snow piles. Its not just some dog turd either. It is a lot. How much, I wondered as I kicked the red jolly ball down into the back yard, is there?

Assumptions:

1. December 1 to March 19= 109 days
2. Dogs= 2
   
3. Turd per day (t.p.d) = 1

• Therefore:

(109 days) x (1 t.p.d) x (2 dogs) = 218 dog turds.

Well shit, literally, at least during the summer the turds decay quickly. Ya see, the real issues are the temporary frozen stasis of the winter turd environment and that each new snow storm covers up the previous batch of turds while simultaneously providing a new layer to accept new turds. Then as the snow melts, more and more turds are., in turn, reverse exposed.
Kind of like erosion and paleontological discoveries of dinosaur bones. But these are no bones., no sir...maybe the processed remains of bones, but no bones. These are dog turds: brown ones, fresh ones, old ones, gray ones. turds covered in bird seed. turds with fur. turds that are now so mushy are barely identifiable...until you get close.
It was the bird seed encrusted ones that led to a minor discovery. My dogs are eating the bird seed that falls from the bird feeder. Great...
Now I'm wondering:

• how much does that all weigh?;
• how does it correlate to the weight of food I am feeding them?

I better stop now. my mind is swimming in thoughts of dog shit. Only one last question remains: how much of it will I step in tomorrow?

Have a great spring weekend.

Ride Training

Here's just a short little clip I shot on Saturday showing my fixed gear bike with appearances by my two Australian Shepard's.

On Sunday I took this bike down to the video store in town. just over 5 miles each direction. The way into town is about 1 mile of climbing and 4 miles of decent. the return proved to be a real killer. Never have my legs been sore from riding.
The bike is amazingly quite, not a real surprise considering it has no gears or derailleurs to clickty clack. The hard part is controlling the speed on descents. The fixed drivetrain is unforgiving. It took me about 24 minutes each direction which is an average speed of around 12-13 mph.
But such a great ride. Good training, especially with the Trek Across Maine Ride coming in a couple of months. I still need some donations. If your interested please go HERE. or click on the TAM logo on the right. If you have already donated Thank You very much.

Fish Story

I grew up in Maine on a large pond/small lake named Bauneg Beg. My brother and I felt like we practically owned that pond. We knew every nook and cranny. every shallow spot. every deep spot. where the best rope swing was. where the best fishing was. we explored this place in great detail with either: a 14 foot aluminum canoe when out for fishing, a 10 foot 9 hp aluminum boat or a 14 foot 90hp fiberglass boat.

***memories of waterskiing and kneedboarding alone after school before mom got home from work will have to wait, this is a fish story.***

My brother is into fishing among other things, bass speciffically. His luck and skill has always been very good. One summer he was out on the pond, in the canoe, somewhere between 12 and 14 years old he hooked on to the biggest bass ever pulled from this south western Maine pond. 10 pounds 12 ounces. So, large we actually had it mounted. Here it is:(beer bottle for scale)

Hold on...this story would be better told by him. Standby.

Batholith Study

Here is just a flash thought I had today. I will come back and define the idea better at a later date:

I would like to propose a study into the thickness of the Sebago Batholith. I would like to drill a hole (core preferable) through the batholith to measure among other things, thickness. The reported thickness in 1-2km. My study would include chemical analysis at 500 meter intervals and an anlysis of the rock type(s) beneath the Sebago. Who can drill this? geothermal drillers perhaps...it the grand scheme it just ain't that thick.

I know its been measured by gravity by Behn et. al in 97-8 (Can. J. Earth Sci. 35: 649–656 (1998). And they have a great paper about it HERE.

There is more here to uncover I think.

Comments from the geologists please.

More snow and some LG

Grandpa came up on Saturday. We taught LilGuns how to play Cribbage.

Then ANOTHER storm came in Monday morning dropping an additional 10 inches of snow. *woo* The nice thing was the timing. I stayed home from work with Wife and LilGuns. He's so damn cute. I think my kid is the cutest ever. All your kids are ugly in comparison. But doesn't every parent think that? Every normal one anyway.

And of course a shot of me clearing the driveway. *w00t*

Rock On Good People