The Tejas Experience

So, last monday eve my father picked me up and I helped him work a food show in Minneapolis tuesday. This was my 3rd food show, second that I've helped at, and it was a little eye-opening. About 200 booths hand out samples of food to entice restaurant owners to buy their company's products, its pretty simple. The food trends toward the easy to prepare and good tasting, meaning deep-fried, fatty, or a delicious combination of both. After being there I'm impressed by how little most run of the mill restaurants actually do in the way of preparation. I would venture that most of the appetizers, a lot of the non-meat portion of the meal, almost all sauces and dressings, and many of the desserts are not actually creations of the restaurant at all but of regional food distributors. I worked primarily on selling salad dressing. I should mention that oil, salad dressing, and gravy provided a good chunk of the finances that allowed me to attend college, and since nursing provided the other major portion I like to feel that it preserves the yin-yang balance in my life. It was kind of funny actually because I believe I was a better food salesman at the tender age of eleven when I was working gravy. I had a pretty good pitch, "Hey mister! you want to try some gravy? its delicious." It somehow worked, my pitch this time was a little subdued. There were two minor highlights of the show, the first was selling about 200 tubs of shortening to the mexican restaurant that does the $.50 tacos that I mentioned semi-recently. Its good to know that they go through loads and loads of the cheap stuff. The other was that in a universe-makes-sense kind of a thing, the hottest girl at the show was selling the sweetest product: ice cream. In other news I really like to invert words like ice cream, or popcorn into creamed-ice and corned-pop, it just amuses me for unknown reasons.

The next day found me in a plane headed south to houston. Milwaukee's "favorite" prognosticator of meteorlogical events was with us to cheer on his hometown houston astros. I was happy to see the white sox win though I generally kept my peace, with the exception of some vigorous fist pumping, when the white sox did well as I was surrounded by starry-eyed astro fans. We were down there for my stepmother's father's 75 b-day party. I'm fairly close to him and so was glad I could make it down. Aside from the rather touching birthday celebrations the other highlight of the trip was the second coming of the whiner bowl. years ago when I was nine(?) we played a game of football with all my brothers and uncles. In retrospect it was funny because all the youngsters started crying at some point. The game culminated with me hiding one of my uncles favorite hats behind a electrical power dealy because I was angry with him. There was less crying this time around but we still managed to have a good time.

Since houston i've been in hyde park the last few days staying and drinking at jason's. Yesterday he and I made a declicious lunch of pita bread, bacon, tofu cooked in bacon grease, bell peppers, hummus, brie, olives, and a type of cheese that I can't remember, it was delicious. Played some ultimate, though I didn't play particularly well, and hung out. I'm off to the city of the rebirthing bird tomorrow for a wedding that apparently will be at Hohokam Park which is where the cubs go every spring to train for a season of broken hearts and dreams. Hopefully the wedding can alter the juju of the place.

More pictures and recent events

So I hope everyone enjoyed the above, the snake was a rattler, the plant was a jack-in-the-pulpit I believe, and the random brown 'burb is brown burby and was extensively talked about in an earlier post. I should clarify though that it is not me taking these pictures, but rather other employees of the area, I like to think I would take pictures if I had a camera, so suffice to say that these are the pictures I would take if I could.

The previous week was fun. Had to fill out four separate timesheets as I was being paid through four different grants for various work. That was entertaining, I can see why accountants are needed now. This past week we started clearing pines, oaks, and brush in some of the old fields to help them remain fields rather than early successional forest. This involved a lot of sawing, clearing trees, and a class on the theory of chainsaw use. While this was interesting and I did use the chainsaw briefly I don't forsee myself using it very much if at all in the future. Frankly because its a little scary and for a few other reasons. Anyway saturday I went over to someone's house for part III of helping him put up a fence for his horses, sheep, and very aggressive (at least with the horses) geese. I used a drill there that was probably designed and manufactured when dual dorsal fins on chevies were in vogue and with the amount of stainless steel it had on it, it weighed about as much as one of those cars did. So saturday night my right forearm was really sore and tired. I couldn't even hold up a book and read it with both hands.

Sunday I spent most of the day reading, making cornbread (something I love doing because its easy, good, and almost good for you) , packing, and walking around the woods with a fellow named Joel. Now Joel is really into the outdoors and plants and such things so it was cool to hike with him. We tried out some wild wintergreen mint, hiked through a golden swampy tamarack and cedar bog, picked some labrador tea (it's a plant), and smoked cigars on the bank of cedar creek and talked about life. While talking about life a walking stick crawled up on his thigh which of course is really cool. He mentioned that since dragonflys landing on you are a sign of fertility he wondered what the walking stick was. I told him that the walking stick on his thigh was a sign of fertility. We then rode our sweet bikes back and talked about how you would fight a bear with a sword, though he stipulated that he wouldn't fight it unless he was protecting someone: Joel's quite noble. We then got back and discovered that a badminton net had been erected in our abscence so we played. I should emphasize that again we were playing badminton five minutes after having a conversation about fighting bear's with swords. We then made labrador tea while watching the early and middle innings of the White Sox game. The tea tasted quite unique and good, though this afternoon joel used the word "carpet" in trying to describe its taste to someone; I have no idea what he meant by that.

To those astute ones who wondered in the last paragraph what I was packing for, well I'll explain. My father is currently inbound to pick me up, I'll work a food show with him around the twin cities tomorrow and then fly off to houston for my grandfather's 75th b-day. Then I will return to the milwaukee-chicago metro area for a couple days and then I'm bound for pheonix for my cousin's wedding. Depending what day I get back ( I can't recall at the moment) I may hang around chicago for a few days before coming back up here to continue to help with restoring old fields, putting in fire roads, and helping with the savannah restoration. If anyone really cares my chart of movement goes as follows MN->WI->TX->WI->IL->AZ->IL->MN.

Finally Bryan I just got through reading Snow Crash, I enjoyed the beginning and middle, was a little confused by the whole lingual/physical/computer virus thing and Sumeria but overall enjoyed it. Also Eric, are you really done with UPA sanctioned ultimate because in my random perusings of various utlimate-themed blogs I find your evidence of your recent visits? I refer to postings on Jim P's and some-tall-skinny-kid's blogs. Or as you briefly mentioned in your own web journal, is this just a general interest in ultimate theory or the happenings and goings-on of the sport? Anyway that's all I got except that I really smell like pine right now and everyone should go to dinner club. Lyrica I hope your enjoying Chi-town.

Photos from the creek

Thought I'd try to give Eric an image of fall amongst other things.

With apologies to easya, I'm sober...oh well.

So back from the chippewa forest. The leaves changing colors, the weather, and the work made the trip quite enjoyable. Although it was predominantly a coniferous forest there was still a quite a bit of coloration to be seen and enjoyed. In one section it was particularly nice because oaks, maples, birches, and aspen were changing to orange, red, and yellow beneath a canopy of dark green pines. It looked like an abstract representation of a forest fire. Also this morning there was a hard frost and white trim formed around a lot of the ground vegetation which gave it an almost magical or fairy tale aspect. Keeping with the fall theme we drove through a lot of tamarack forests on the way back, which is a conifer that loses its needles, but first they change to a stunning gold color, whenever these were interspersed with still-green-evergreens it looked like what I imagine lambeau field does on 8 sundays of the year.

For lunch the first day we ate near Lake Winnebegoshish or something like that which is actually part of the mississippi river and at one point we saw two bald eagles flying overhead calling to one another in cries that seemed a little high-pitched for such stately birds. We also saw one on the side of the road pecking at a dead porcupine, its funny how porcupines and eagles take the place of racoons and crows up there.

We stayed at the Gosh Dam motel which was adjacent to the Gosh Dam bar, which is where we took our meals and recreation. Saw the last 5 minutes of the USC-ND game and was a little disappointed, bryan please extend my condolences to the brothers, I imagine carlos would take it particularly hard, or at least kind of hard for a few hours. Then watched the south siders inch closer to the WS.

The bar was crowded with grouse hunters. It was sort of disconcerting to be working in the woods while hearing shotgun blasts every few minutes, some far and some near, but I took comfort in my orange vest and that I wouldn't leave any orphans in the care of the state. Our first night there three of us got the question, "So y'all up here for grouse or fish or both?" To which we responded with some sort of gibberish about resin bags in stockings, nitrogen and saplings, I didn't really understand it myself. After this incident I, familiar with these situations from eating out at ultimate tournaments, decided we should change our story. We were now first-time hunters; with guns bought in warba (pop. 187 whose major commercial enterprises centered around guns, liquor, and leather); hoping to shoot birds, with the follow up query, "do you know any good spots." Sadly we never got to play out this fiction as no one else cared what we were doing, oh well.

Before we headed back we took a side trip to the Lost Forty Acres, which is a plot of forest that since its initial surveyors listed the area as underwater, managed to escape the woodsmans' axe. It was filled with enormous white and red pines whose size in my experience was only dwarfed by the redwoods. Sort of daunting to think how much lumber was taken out of the north woods of this country knowing that norm now was the exception back then. Was enlightening to be in that after walking and working in secondary forest all year. They were probably around 200 feet high, I sadly tried to estimate their height by imagining high up them I could throw a disc, and were said to be ~400 years old. Was also cool because only the second time in my life I've been over the Laurentian Divide, which means if I went tubing on a river I'd wind up in the artic ocean rather than the seas I and my readership are more familiar with. There was also a good deal of balsam fir there which reminded me of maine and my balsam fir story.

So it was my first day of work in maine and a fellow named ben was showing me the differences between red spruce and balsam fir, the two coniferst that we most often measured. He explained that balsam fir has nodes or warts on the side that are filled with sap, he then demonstrated with his thumbnail how if you punctured them sap would squirt out. The effect of this was that a gob of sap shot right into his eye and caused him no small amount of discomfort. Now I was standing there trying to not laugh too hysterically because I had only met ben a few days before, but that was hands down one of the funniest things I think I've ever seen happen to someone.

Anyway, hope this didn't bore anyone to tears. As far as any sort of return to Chicago it will probably be sooner rather than later, though I'm not sure myself yet when it will be.

headin' north

So I'm headed to the chippewa national forest this weekend to pull pantyhose out of the ground among other things. I've been well recently, played yahtzee last night and did some shots of baileys while makin' pizza. Monday I should hopefully get a bottle of wine that I helped crush the cherries and grapes for so that's exciting, will have to break that out at some sort of social dinner event. And in the wha'ts joe saying department the word leptodactylous has been getting some play around here. It means having fine, slender digits. I may, or may not have a prize for the first person to use this as a pickup line. well gotta go cheers.

DC isn't dead yet

Just wanted to give a shout out to those who partake in dinner club part deux, and mad props to rachael for getting it started again. I'll be ok though, while you enjoy delicious home-cooked food in celebration of columbus being lucky and canadians giving thanks for whatever it is they can give thanks for, I'll be enjoying subpar $.50 tacos in great abundance. The cheapness makes them good.

Sat. mornin'

So this morning was interesting. Woke up and walked to the lab where the resident naturalist was smoking rather furiously. This isn't abnormal or unexpected as he was giving a public tour and he seems to not like large groups of strange people. He expressed concern over the fact that there were several senior citizens in the group and as his planned tour called for walking 4 miles he asked me if I wouldn't mind taking some people on a smaller walk to cedar bog lake. Initially this caused a wave of trepidation to fall over me, as I've only been to the bog lake twice and the second time couldn't find the trail there for 10 minutes, I would also be ill-equipped to answer specific questions about the trail, like "what's that plant?". But for all that I said "yes, i'll do it." So myself and 5 happy adventurers went off on our journey, and it wasn't that bad. I only had to say, "you know, I'm sure what that is," or "I don't know" about 10 times. The toughest question I got being, "so labrador tea, I noticed you have it here, is it unusual to have it in bogs this far south?" yeah, I didn't have much of an answer to that one. But the tour turned out ok, I mumbled things about islands of mature trees and told my eagle and otter stories, and one woman talked at length about her fears of global warming and such. It wasn't too bad.

Got back and had cholestoral for breakfast in the form of 3 eggs and andouille sausage, then noticed a group of people in a red van. Apparently some student taught college course that will spend the night, though I won't be able to interact with them much as I'm going to mccallister college tonight to see some friends. I then went and walked my supervisor's dog nolly, threw sticks in the air to it, and tried unsuccessfully to make her stop eating grass.

Well that's it for this morning, I know that recently I said I would post more, but instead went the akira route of telling people I would post more and then did almost nothing at all for 2 weeks. Also former denizens of harper house will be pleased to hear that I spyed RA-extradonaire Mary Geherz in the twin cities marathon last weekend at mile 24, so we can assume that she finished. She seemed healthy though tired, though that might be the marathon's influence. I actually saw her a few weeks ago on I-94 on my way down to CHC. So hopefully we'll be able to catch up sometime and discuss things as they stand in our respective lives.

A friends art part deux

This one is called Assumption and shows Mary ascending into heaven. I should note that what makes these really cool is the fine detail, like the fact that the moon is made of cheese, which you'll probably need to go to his website to see. Again the artist is Dan Mitsui and his website can be found here http://danielmitsui.tripod.com/

a friend's art,

Above is a friend's art from highschool. It is called Chi-Ro Monogram and when I first saw it I spent 15 minutes looking at it to get all the fine detail work. I thought initially the the large X symbol might be an ascending dove. My friend Dan mitsui, and the artist, pointed out that is in fact just the symbol Chi or the greek letter for X, which just goes to show again that I'm an idiot. Anyway, if you want to look at more, buy, or whatever go here http://danielmitsui.tripod.com/