Valerie's thoughts on my iPhone!

So I was eating breakfast the other day while Valerie was reading the morning paper. Suddenly she says, "Oh this one is for you!" and proceeds to rip out Dilbert and hand it to me.

Sorry for the tiny font, but I can't find a way to enlarge it without it getting wacked. So, let me interpret:

Box 1: Dilbert - "I've fallin love with my phone."

Box 2: Dilbert - "It entertains me. It knows where I am. It responds to my touch. It never judges me."

Box 3: Therapist -"So, it's like a woman to you." Dilbert -"Way better! Are you even listening?"

"Guilty as charged" is my response!

:)

Tapping Maple Trees

This year, we decided to do something very New England, or in our circumstance, very Maine. After talking about wanting to try it for the past several years, this year Valerie finally inspired me to go out and buy some tree tapping stuff so that we can try our hand at making Maple syrup.

So, order of business #1: identify your maple trees. Had we tried to do this within the first few years on our property, I would have been hard pressed to tell a maple from an oak from a beech from a hornbeam (kind of hard when they don't have leaves). But, we found the maples we wanted to tap.

Order of business #2: drill the hole (7/16" bit, drilled to about 1-3/4 inches deep) using the handy-dandy, shiney new, 18V Li-ion Makita that I just got for Christmas to replace my 16 year old Dewalt.

Order of business #3: drive in the tap. The tap is tapped into place with a hammer, deep enough that it can't be pulled out by hand, but not so deep as to split the wood.

Order of business #4: affix the bucket cover, and hand the bucket from the tap. We'll have to get some close up shots of the tap, but you'll just have to trust me that there is a hook to hang the bucket from. Big operations string together all their taps using blue plastic tubing that all runs down to a collection point. I have seen places up north that have miles and miles and miles of tubing, all draining into the sugar house. The sap is pretty much like water, so will easily flow downhill.

We have no real aspirations of making gallons of syrup, but so far it has been a fun project. I'll try to post a follow up on the syrup making process and how many tablespoons we end up with.

JTB

Winter Camping

Thomas and I went on a winter campout with the ward troop (Troop 866).
We went to a pond in Casco named Owl Pond, which is on some private land owned by Hancock Lumber. We had to hike in a bit less than a mile, mostly up hill, but then had the place to ourselves. There was not enough snow to build Quincy's (snow caves), so we just tented it. The temperature got down into the teens that night, but no one complained of the cold.

One of the highlights of the trip was the ice fishing. Here in Maine they mostly use "traps", which are a cross like device that keeps the spool of line under water. When a fish takes the bait and takes out line, a trigger causes a flag to go up so you can see that you have a fish on. In the top photo, you can see Thomas with his monster catch (a Yellow Perch). Each of the boys caught fish, and most of the fish were 12-16 inch Chain Pickerel, with a few small Perch




The adults on the this trip were; Dennis Frappier, Mike Brammer, and me. The scouts were Thomas, Jake Brammer, Andrew Dyer, and Mark Lamonte.


What a great outing! Would have been fun to stretch into a two nighter.

Hazing, I say! My office was foiled!

Clearly some explanation is in order here. While you may think this was an attempt by me to harness and refocus the awesome brain waves that take place in my noggin while at work, it was not. No, this was an act of hazing by my colleagues. I go away to Germany on a trip, and come back to the office to find that I had been foiled! Foiled, literally with foil. They wrapped so many things in my office. Had I been gone any longer, I am fearful that the walls and floor would have been wrapped in aluminum foil as well. While these pictures show some of the extent of this attack on my persona, it is hard to really appreciate the extent of the foilage. Some things were wrapped to very fine detail. For example, the push pins on my cork board were foiled, as were a few coins I had left laying on my desk.

This whole event took place in November of 2006; about 2.5 years ago. To this day I still have some foil wrapped items. Take a look at the individually wrapped books on my book shelf, along with the triple beam balance, and other items.

This horrible attempt to bully me was really a reprisal by some of my colleagues for similar, albeit much smaller scale, pranks which they assumed had been perpetrated by me. No evidence existed linking me to the alleged events, but this hanging jury did not care!

When I arrived home from Europe, I stopped by the office (late at night) to drop off something. When I rounded the corner to my office, all I could do was stand and laugh for several minutes. Way to funny!