Yo hi ho,
I've got another round of baby fish! 10+ black ones this time. I
doubt all 10 will decide to hang around (only 1 from my previous batch
did), but if they do, I'm gonna have to break out my fishing pole and
have a fish fry.
Speaking of cooking things, did you know you can bake an artichoke? My
friend Helen taught me that one. We will finally get a chance to met
each other in 3 weeks, after having corresponded via email for 6 months.
She will be flying here from NH for a 4 day weekend to find an
apartment. She moves here in July for a 13 month fellowship at the
clinic.
Speaking of fellowships, one of my IBM groups finished one of our
challenging chips a few weeks ago, so to celebrate, 20 of us drove up to
the cities this week and went to a Nascar simulator. I'm not a Nascar
fan, but it was fun to jump into pretty realistic full sized cars and
bump each other around on the track.
Speaking of cars, Zach got promoted to assistant manager yesterday!
More hours, more money, more happiness.
Speaking of happiness, my study is now happy. Last weekend it ran out
of shelf space, and the study is nothing but shelf space. So it
triggered a spring cleaning event. Worked all weekend on it and it is
now ready to house the library of congress. This weekend I did the same
to the shop, so it is now ready to take on Menards. Next weekend I'm
targeting the garage.
Speaking of garage, that first picture is of a pack of vulgar roof
dwellers on the roof attached to my garage, known as my house roof.
Zach is about to launch my 35 lb barbell past my deck, 30+ feet down to
my poor back yard lawn. The 2nd photo is Mike and Lee trying to extract
the weight from my lawn. This took a while, as it was fully embedded.
The dull thud of a 35 lb weight in bunker busting mode is fun, but not
loud. And roof dwellers like loud, so they found a dead Subaru hood in
the garage surplus yard (the one going bye bye next weekend) and placed
it strategically in the weight landing zone (3rd pic). It was loud.
Speaking of loud, that was my reaction when a rainstorm once again
eroded out a big hole at the end of my deck. Every year for the last 20
years, the spring rain from my big roof comes down and rather than going
down the hill like it should, those scheming rain drops manage to unite
and redirect their efforts into washing out a hole behind my retaining
wall (4th pic). So every year, my trusty wheelbarrow and I gather up
all that washed out dirt and push it back up the hill and back into the
hole. Packing it down harder every year with the confidence that this
year it will be un-erodible. But this year, as I was talking to the
same dirt that I have moved every year for 20 years (we have a bond,
that dirt and I), I got this crazy idea that maybe I should try
redirecting the roof runoff better. So I redirected the gutter. Took
all of about an hour. So next year, there will be NO MORE HOLES!
Speaking of holes, our neighborhood is infested with 1 billion hole
making rabbits. Nobody is too fond of them, as exemplified by the
native blow dart bush hunter in that last photo. Now these rabbits are
extremely fast (faster than even Jessy's lightning fast Rat terrier Mia)
and they are very wary of us human types, so normally all we see is
fuzzy blurs. So I was not too concerned about Zach trying out his blow
dart on one. But Zach is really good with that thing! He is now short
a couple of darts, and some bunny is now sporting a couple of bright red
plastic feathers. Probably will become something of a style fad in
bunny circles and I'll wake up some morning with a long line of bunnies
outside my door willing to buy some darts with their little bunny monies.
Speaking of long line of bunnies, this letter has gone on long enough.
Bruce
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