OWL 2008

Posted on September 27, 2008 by canoelover

What an afternoon…
What a sunset…
What good food…
What good company…
What a sunrise…
What amazing paddling…
Words fail me (please note time and date).
Respectfully submitted,
   Canoelover
P.S.  Coded message to Rosie: one Gomphid, two Libellulidae, innumerable Sympetrii, and one Macromia illinoiensis.  No kidding.  First Macromiidae ever!
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I like spiders too!

Posted on September 25, 2008 by canoelover

Got a new book today.

I had this gift card that had $13.21 left on it, so I bought a book.  Another book on crawlies.Turns out the cover spider is our friend, the Tan Jumping Spider.  Cool, huh?

The other cool thing is that there is exactly one person shown in Spiders of the North Woods.  She is on page 26.
Yep.  Her modeling career sorta started and stopped in these little guide books.  Still, I was impressed that my own little sister, Megan, is a model in a spider field guide.
Sorry it’s blurry, Megan.  You still look amazingly outdoorsy and stuff.

Respectfully submitted,
 Canoelover
P.S.  Saw another meadowhawk today. Sympetrum of some sort. Could be a mutant Saffron-Winged Meadowhawk.  Dunno, they’re tricky.  Pretty, though.

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Something you don’t see everyday…

Posted on September 24, 2008 by canoelover


…but if there are enough opera singers in Ohio…it just might push us over, despite the efforts of the Republican war machine to limit voting booths in neighborhoods with a majority of opera singers.

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Verd’s

Posted on September 23, 2008 by canoelover


Down the road from my Mom’s house is a little fruit stand that has been there forever.   Grampa shopped there, and although his name was Vern, not Verd, I think they shared a common bond of names that started with Ver.

The two old ladies that run the place are grumpy, capricious, arbitrary, and were trained by the Soup Nazi.
Still, you gotta love their relaxed, casual way of doing business.  Only someone confident in their established customer base would have an hours sign like this.
—
I sometimes wonder if people get a kick out of being abused.  Often customer service means a sort of artificial fawning all over the customer, with an oily obsequious tone which I find nauseating.  I’d rather be treated with scorn so long as it’s real, authentic scorn.  The other option might be “Hi, I’m Trevor and I’ll be your server and BFF.”
I doff my hat to you, ladies of Verd’s, for your authenticity.  I wish your lives were less painful and that you would find a way to enjoy some interactions with those Dickens called “your fellow travelers to the grave.”  You have found a way to be successful while remaining your true, prickly, Fruit Nazi selves.
Respectfully submitted,
 Canoelover
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Another NOT an Odonate.

Posted on September 22, 2008 by canoelover

It’s an Arachnid.   A cool little arachnid.
So here I am, washing and polishing and waxing my little canoe and this little jumping spider comes running along the bottom of the hull.  I like the Salticidae (the “leapers” in Latin), they’re small, cute, and fairly fearless.   If you move a finger toward them, they usually hold their position, sometimes even approaching you.  Sometimes they’ll hop on your finger with just a nudge, and they have gigantic eyes which make them seem a little more, well, friendly.  They can jump 75 times their length.  If I were a jumping spider I would be able to jump the length of a football field with ease.

This is a Platycryptus undatus, a Tan Jumping Spider.  A male P. undatus, to be specific.  He has a tan mustache.  The female doesn’t.  Check out the eyes…four in the front, allowing for stereoscopic vision, and four on top of the cephalothorax.
Just for reference, this little dude could sit on my pinky fingernail and there would be plenty of room left for a friend.
Respectfully submitted,
  Canoelover
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CGOS, Day Two

Posted on September 20, 2008 by canoelover

Here’s the finished product, after heating and rubbing and hand-burnishing.  These gunwales were light grey when I got this boat.

Ye Olde Extra Secret Canoelover Miracle Gunwale Elixir works wonders.  No stain, just the natural color of the wood (white oak).
This leads me to the lecture part of this post. 
Some of you own canoes. Some of you own canoes with wood gunwales.  A small percentage of you wood-gunwale-canoe owners lets them go until the substance holding the boat together is barely recognizable as a wood product.  
While I can give your gunwales the canoe equivalent of a four-way cardiac bypass, why not just keep your gunwales in good shape to start with?  Ask any Public Health Nurse what’s the best way to treat a disease, and she’ll always answer “Don’t get it in the first place.”  N.B. I say “she” because I’ve never known a male Public Health Nurse.  Go figure.

Be good to your wood,
  Canoelover
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Ground Fog

Posted on September 20, 2008 by canoelover


One of the benefits (okay, the only benefit) of getting up early to drop the boy off at school for a Cross Country Meet bus at 6:15 is the beauty of an almost-autumn morning.  Ground fog was all over today…lovely.  Even golf courses look strangely inviting.

Have a wonderful weekend, all.
  Canoelover
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CGOS (Canoe Gunwale Oiling Season)

Posted on September 18, 2008 by canoelover

It’s the time of year when the days are blissfully temperate, the nights are just cool enough to make you thankful for your sweatshirt, and a man’s thoughts turn to canoe gunwales. My canoe fleet has a lot of wood gunwales, so I spend a decent amount of time maintaining them. It’s something that as a canoelover, you would think I enjoy.

Actually, I do enjoy it. I have a secret (I guess not so secret now) formula that I cook up quite
 literally. It’s a simple combination of beeswax and boiled linseed oil, but when applied properly it provides an almost bullet-proof finish, provided the bullets are very small.
The scary part is heating up linseed oil until it’s hot enough to melt the beeswax.  Not scary, you just need to be careful not to get the linseed oil too hot.  You then brush it on, and the heated elixir penetrates the wood and soon skins over with a layer of waxy film.  This I leave on for overnight, or a good long warm afternoon in the sun.  I just like to let it work itself in.
When it’s cold, I take my wife’s blow dryer (clearly I am in no need of one) and drive some of the elixir into the wood and rub it in with either a cloth if there’s a lot of excess, or my palm if there’s not.  It makes my hands soft and smell like beeswax.  I like the fact that there are no petrochemicals in this concotion, yet it works as good as a petro-varnish or better.  Totally non-toxic, dude.  And the finish, you can see for yourself.  A nice matte finish, smooth to the touch and very pleasant to smell.
Respectfully submitted,
  Canoelover
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NOT an odonate!

Posted on September 18, 2008 by canoelover

It’s a Crane Fly (genus Tipulidae).
The cool thing about Crane Flies (and all Dipteras) are their counterweights…their halteres.  Those little knobby things sticking out of the fly’s thorax are the functional equivalent of gyroscopes.  They counterbalance the movement of the fly’s wings and help it maintain the proper attitude in flight, as well as providing feedback directly to the fly’s wing musculature, a sort of autopilot.
Pretty cool, huh?
These are harmless.  No sting, bite, or any other annoyance.   They’re not male mosquitos (I hear that one a lot).
Respectfully submitted,
   Canoelover


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This is getting weird…again….

Posted on September 17, 2008 by canoelover

Why, oh why?

Why do (some) Mormons post pictures on their family blogs of their kids sitting on the can?
It happened again.
This is not an anomaly.  This, as I stated back in April, is not an isolated incident.  I do not go looking for these, they seem to find me.  My blog was listed on a page for other LDS (Mormon) bloggers, and last I looked, mine was one of the few that didn’t feature a dozen little blonde curly-haired tykes, some of them going potty on the big toilet.
Maybe I’m overly sensitive, but I must state unequivocably, for the record, that there is no, absolutely no connection between our theology and toilet training.  Zero.  Zilch.  Nada.  There is a rich and interesting history of Mormon doctrine and theology.  None of it mentions Number One or Number Two.  Salvation, Happiness, and Charity, absolutely.  No scriptures on bodily functions (except in the Old Testament, but that doesn’t count in my opinion).
Bemused in a sinking sort of way,
  Canoelover
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