Service Horible (should be an accent in there somewhere)

So again I'm drunk, this is usually not the case up here, but as it turns out it was 3 for 1 beer night at the bar my boss and I stopped off on the way from the st. paul campus to here. We were really confused when we ordered 2 MGDs and 6 opened ones were put before us. But we decided hey, if they want to give us 6 drinks who are we to argue, we then went to a table to order some food. We were in between 2 waitresses sections and I was ready to order some tacos anytime they happened to come by, which took a long time. It was more comical than annoying considering the more of my 3 beers I drank the less hungry I became. We even made significant knowing eye contact with the two lasses but to no avail, I corraled a young busgirl and asked her if I could order from her, but she said she'd tell our server, 30 minutes later that server, apparently they use the term loosely, came to our table asking if there had been a receipt left there from the previous occupants, it seemed an odd way to ask if we wanted to order. Long story short we never ordered food, but filled our stomachs with beer, and relished the complete lack of service. I left them a note though that said
"Cincinnatus, empereor of the known world. Retired as a farmer. George Bush a make-believe rancher who would be king. God bless America and well-prepared Fish." It sort of just came to me over time, it really doesn't mean anything and is honestly more critical of GWB than I am usually, but I was drunk and the service was horible (again, spanish version) so someone had to held responsible, even if it involved a low-blow personnal attack on the man who even today said nuculor rather than nuclear power.
By the way after visiting wonkette.com the other day, I don't usually go there but sometimes it can be a good laugh, I was directed to a site that involved a cogent explanation of privatizing social security and anal sex. It was most hilarious. I won't link to it directly because I don't know how (still new to this internet posting thing) and to still have hopes of not offending anyone who reads this who might be a huge ann coulter fan, but if you go to the 26th of April entry for wonkette you should be able to pick it out and link to it.
So I walked in an 160 acre area yesterday that we burned 2 wks ago,. After we burned, the landscape looked like a war zone with the scorched earth and large plumes of smoke. There's already quite a bit of green grass coming out of the ground so it looks like a mosaic of green and black, that coupled with the greenish buds on the darker colored oaks made for some very nice imagery, at least to this observer. We also found a turkey and deer skeleton. The deer was fairly impressive with the entire spinal column intact and what not.
So I understand that tazo has linked his earthlikesky.com blog to mine , this along with bryan's and jayadev's links really puts the pressure on to keep this going and make it interesting. This means tazo is reading my blog though, which is exciting, Tazo I meant to email you the other day but I don't know your email address anymore, does the alumni.uchicago.edu account work? By the way everyone should go to tazo's blog and congratulate him on his soon to be matriculation to medical school. Soon it will be Doctor Tazo. Man its hard to believe that someone who forgot to put the car in park in a chinese fire drill would be responsible for someone's health someday, but here we are, the world truly is a tremendous place.
I guess I shouldn't conduct personal correspondence on my blog, but this whole thing is new to me, like cheesecake to the chinese (note: I assumed here that cheesecake is new to China, it could well be the fact that they invented it for all I know, if any sinophiles wish to correct me please feel free to do so).
So I ordered two books online on Monday, which constituted my first internet transaction in material objects. They were Gamesmanship, the Art of Winning Games without Actually Cheating, and OutLaw Cook, I really had my heart on getting the former until the Seminary Coop emailed me that both were out of print and unobtainable by conventional methods. Hopefully I don't soon become as impotent in the bedroom as I seem to be in the online marketplace. Anyway with that sobering thought, even to me which is notable on 3 for 1 night, I bid you adieu dear online public journal. May you be a written record of why I never should, nor be able to hold public office.

more fauna, maine connections

So the last few days, a few more prescribed burnings yada yada yada, I'm drunk so this entry may have a different feel. So recent fauna to report to those keeping track at home, I've seen two bull snakes. now the first I was about to walk into this ring of plots to do something as this 5 ft snake slithers out, most fascinating, I immediately looked to see if it has a rattle, it didn't so it can't be venomous right? Well I don't think it is, but today was really windy and I went to pick up a metalish box that had blown away, one wanders how it moved if it was as dense as I claim but no matter, and I get to it about to pick it up and all the sudden the ground moves and all that goes through my mind is snake. It was big, coily, and slithery, most entertaining in retrospect, though the adrenaline pumped rather well at the time. And what other piece of fauna did I see, one bald eagle is the answer, yes that classic piece of american iconography was finally seen by me as I was riding in the "burb" (I'll write a short piece on that later) to the fields. Didn't see it for long but it was sweet what with its soariness and such.
After work today went to a mandatory fire meeting which consisted of everyone who does real work around here, meeting at a bar and cutting loose. Was fun, learned a bit about the people I'm working with, the dirt on the no good bosses and such things as every new employee should be exposed to. The nachos were a little weak but the company and $3 32 ounce Leine's red were good.
So I promised Maine connections, well as it turns out the fire boss guy, Steve actually went to U of Maine to study environmental toxicology for a masters and plays a bit of ultimate. Which means he knows people such as my former boss, and others from up there. That's cool because they were cool and he seems cool so I'm somehow connected in a web of coolness which I hope transfers the cool onto me via the transitive property which is itself cool.
I could probably write more but I'll save you the inner ramblings of the drunk man except to say this. If you happened the catch the initial appearance of Cardinal Ratzinger -> benedict XVI on tv as he spoke to the crowd for the first time you may have caught amongst the flags of many nations (brazil, US, vatican, italian, etc) the TEXAS STATE FLAG. It was awesome, GOD I LOVE TEXAS, AND SHAME ON YOU WHO DON'T, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE! anyway enough beligerence for me, I have to make potatos and kale, Mmmmmmm. Oh yes! one more thing. I was recently reading the book Stalking the wild asparagus, basically about finding and preparing wild food, and I realized I'm in the perfect position to pursue this random interest of mine. So be prepared for my escapades into trying wild food as I find it, or my lack there of (its sometimes hard to follow up on random interests). I figure I'm young, and if I find poisonous food and I eat it, well there's always after I get better. I'm kidding, I'll be dead, no seriously I plan to be careful especially as I t try to ferret out that furtive flavoral fungi, the morel mushroom, yes I've heard talk of its grandeur spread throughout these parts and I plan to find, show (to determine its lack of toxicity). and ingest much to my heart's content, or rather my stomach, I hope it doesn't stop my heart.
Note: I joked a lot about dying from food in the last paragraph (run-on sentence), and it really just isn't that much of a possibility, I hope no one takes my jests seriously, and lets all continue on as we were before.

Mammals

So Sunday was one of my first off days here, after a lazy morning involving some reading and spy kids 2 I set off in the early afternoon to get a better sense of the place. I first went to cedar bog lake, which is really a big mud puddle. Though I saw my first turtle and a pair of snails, I picked them up and stared at their foot for a while, it was fun. I then crossed the road, a marsh with only minimal wetting of the feet hiked, across biocon (where the experiment is I'll be working on most of the time, through the trees and past grandmother's house, and I found myself at the shores of fish lake, a good deal more picturesque and picnicable than the bog lake.

I sat down to finish a letter, and after a while I look up and there is what I take to be a beaver headed straight at me. It gets on a log 10 feet from me and then swims off. It looked like it had a flat tail, and the second turtle I see is what I think scared it away. I asked the naturalist here about it and he informed me that it was more likely a muskrat then a beaver, dash it all I still haven't seen a wild beaver though I did once incorrectly call a wild frog a beaver, but that was on purpose or at least I told Kevin it was on purpose. However, I'm told beavers can actually be found around here, I'll keep my eyes open.

Hopefully more open then I did for 5 minutes after I saw the muskrat because I looked to my left and 5 ft away is a long rodent like creature. AN OTTER, we both get a good fright as I jump and yelp like I do when I'm scared, and it jumps and swims gracefully through the water, popping up on a log to hiss at me then swam away. Most exciting. This was later followed with what I now realize was a second muskrat siting, this one looked more like a rat than a capable dam engineer, and was a different one from the first, more brown and less grey and a very rat like tail. That's a lot of varmit wild life for half and hour so it seems I picked quite the spot, although it took some getting to.

Some bad news now I'm afraid, at least for all you U of C ulty fans out there. The team got eliminated Sunday at sectionals by western Illinois after narrowly beating indiana and losing to Purdue, each by 1 point. Feel bad for them as I know many 4th and 5th year players had their hearts set on making regionals again. Seemed like a weird season even though I didn't see any of it, playing really well, and really poorly depending on the stars and weather X had 2% or skim for breakfast. I am happy they beat Indiana as I never beat a full strength Indiana team in college, though through the cursed fates Indiana wound up winning the next 3 to take the 5th spot at regionals again. How cruel is fate, apparently you just can't keep a hoosier down , at least lower than 5th place.

Still thinking about the middlebury tourney, Its theoretically doable, but it will take the suspension of my sanity to make it happen. It hinges on 2 amtrak 8 hr train rides, 2 14 hr car rides, one of which most get back to chicago in a no more than 20 hrs after the tourney ends, 3 days of missed work, my boss agreeing to drive me to and fro downtown (although that may work as he has class in st paul mon and wed night) and sally letting me crash at her place. All for a tournament in vermont more in a canadian spirit than american which is good. I get to see Lyrica, josie, sasha, ian and tazo again, not to mention U of C folk. So what does everyone think. Should I do it, am I nuts, or am I just a little too much in love with spring ultimate in the state that conceptualized Mud for me (sorry, inside joke that only one other person will get). The other side is that I want to go to Chicago over memorial day, maybe poultry days, definitely Mars, ahh so many tournaments and so limited in the travel options. Maybe I should take up a minnesota sport like field curling, now that would be sweet.
So apparently I can't write with brevity, which would imply the absence of wit, which means this was doubly painful, my deepest apologies gentle reader(at this point still me) though I think I'll let the world know about this blog tomorrow or wednesday , and then unsolicited political punditry here I COME.

More burning

So we burned quite a bit of land the last 2 days. Apparently thursday was a local area record of 160 acres, it took about 6 hrs to do, which is a long time to be standing in smoke. It was mostly boring from my end as I was charged with patrolling a stretch of firebreak to make sure the backfire didn't jump. Eventually I was positioned next to a tree that was smoldering a good 20 ft up and given a radio and a water pump pack to deal with it in case embers blew across the road and lit the dry grass which burns suprisingly hot, even if it burns briefly. As I was worried about the tree falling I was a good 30 ft away on the other side of the road. Around this time they lit the headfire (for those who don't know as I didn't, the downwind portions of a plot are burned first along the firebreak, here that means a dirt road, and when that has burned against the wind a good distance out they light a "head fire" which spreads with the wind until it meets up with the backfire and both are extinguished) now the smoke from the head fire was at the time blowing directly into my face causing me to get all teary eyed and basically blind, despite the goggles "they do nothing". At this time embers from the tree jumped the road. I did not see this initially being somewhat blind, but fortunately steve did, steve was the head fire guy, and after drawing my attention we each put out one of the two minor flare ups. At this point steve left to continue to patrolling and I was standing right on top of the extinguished spots suddenly very alert. About 15 seconds later 3 more spot fires flare up within 3-4 seconds of each other. Even being right on top of them I can't get them out fast enough and they combine and start to spread and generate heat at an alarming rate. So there I am, trying to radio for help, flee the very intense heat (basically unbearable for more then 2-3 seconds at 5 feet) work the pump on the water dealy, when I wasn't carrying it (it should have been on my back), to fight the fire all at the same time, and all to ill effect. Fortunately two other people were chopping down a tree about 200 yards away and noticed the situation, they drove the pickup truck with a hose and water tank over quite abruptly (breaking a side mirror in the process) and fortunately with them positioned in the primary direction of spread for the fire and me finally using the pump sprayer with more aplomb than clumsiness we put out the fire. The whole episode lasted about a minute and a half, it took the truck about a minute to get in position after the fire spread, but it was quite the adrenaline rush.
we're burning to restore a savannah (basically grass land intermixed with individual trees, even in minnesota it looks surprisingly like the landscape in all those cool lion videos from africa) I guess savannah used to make up a major part of the state but gave way to affordable tract housing and farms, especially when fire began to be suppressed. Essentially the burns blacken the ground, and eliminates any sort of ground litter, most trees and even very small saplings (anything with a fair amount of water in it) survive. Trees that burn generally have a strip of bark ripped off near the base that allows the fire access to the inner woody material, or so I gathered from 3 days of observation so its not like every tree burns. Anyway, have seen a bit of avian wild life already, numerous cranes, cardinals, blue birds, a dove, several hawks, red-headed woodpeckers and turkeys.
I also ran quite a bit this morning in a very light drizzle, unsure about the distance or exact time but I'd guess it was 6-7 miles in 50-55 minutes. It felt good, was my first decent run in some time..

Cedar Creek

So, Greyhound from Milwaukee to Minneapolis went ok, no crazies, boring,and an hour late all in all not too bad. On the way to Cedar Creek stopped at a grocery store to buy food. A few quick points,
-I have no car
-The nearest grocery store is far enough away that its a daunting task to get there by any non-motorized means
-The next intern won't be arriving for 3-4 weeks, hopefully by car
-I need to supply myself with a lot of food to last that long, and the kitchen as far as food goes is bare, just some cookware, no spices, no salt, not a thing.
Long story short I dropped $190 dollars, and while I embellish the difficulties slightly, I will probably be able to use a truck here to go buy food if I need to, part of me wanted to see if I could make it though. If you care I wound up with not enough meat (it was not a cheap store) , a lot of staples (4 lbs pasta, 8 lbs potatoes, 5 lbs rice, 5 lbs carrots), no soy sauce, no black pepper, and the store had no shaving cream, lots of veggies (a good part frozen), a lot of cheese, a lot of fruit (nanners, apples, oranges, grapes to be frozen) the essential baking ingredients, and a few other things. I think I could make it if I have to, but living without soy or stir fry sauce is uncivilized in my opinion. But enough about food, except to say this. The kitchen I'm in has 3 long tables 2 stoves and 4 refrigerators, I have replaced the HP apartment problem of not enough space, with the new not enough food to use it dilemma, Oh Dinner Club, how I long for thee.

When I got to cedar creek and plugged in my clock/radio I discovered an 80s channel in 2 stations so things were looking up. Woke up this morning at 6 am to billie jean is not my lover. Then I went and burned stuff. But first I had to work a flapper which is a rubber pad on a long stick that puts out small fires, we also had 3 jerry-rigged pickup fire trucks which were doing most(all) of the work in containing the fire. We burned maybe 20 acres with a drip torch, basically mix of diesel and gas (turns out that it burns rather well). And may I add that dried grass, say 1 meter square and 2 feet high can generate a lot of heat very quickly. Tomorrow we'll burn something like 200 acres of savannah, I'm a little excited to see that.

Went for a run after work, took a shit in the woods in the middle of it because I had to and was left with last year's leaf litter to wipe my ass, it took my mind back to a very memorable sprint down a rather prominent mountain once upon a time. All in all, good run, saw 2 deer, 4 cranes?/herons?, found one turkey feather, and the shower at the end was most enjoyable.

General thoughts, Every one here seems friendly, and I really like the feel of the place, although maybe not a fair assessment as the weather seriously could not have been better today, which is good because I'm somewhat isolated, at least for the moment, but I think I'll be able to fill my time with some pretty cool stuff. I think I'll let people know about this blog in a week or so if I think its interesting as opposed to painful. I think in the future that I'll try to be a bit more concise, which will help. In any event good night gentle reader (at this point me, I guess) and hopefully thy slumber will be broken only by the melodious strains of "Don't Stop Believing"

man I am still king of the run-on sentence.

Name

For those who don't know, crazy nomad was my nickname for ultimate before a different, slightly less accurate moniker supplanted it. It was gained from wandering around oberlin ultimate fields with a shirt over my head, because of the heat and sun, and making odd comments. Anyway, thank god that is out of the way