First day of the new semester

Well it's that time of year again, excited and hopeful about all the new classes, but after one day realize they will be monotonous, nothing like described, and full of busy work.

The past few weeks have been exciting, and somewhat demeaning. You may remember my relatives that decided to drop by and ended up breaking a bunch of stuff, well I guess I managed to maintain my composure and politeness, because they invited me to spend a week at their house. They said they had a "Guest House" I could stay in, so that was pretty cool. When I got there, tired from the drive, they showed me the Guest house, which was really more of a barn/work shop, from the outside it looked like a barn, but it had a wood floor and no livestock, however it was full of wood, old insulation, and power tools. The first night I woke up to the sound of rodents chewing on stuff, and in the morning , there were droppings all over the bedding. You might be thinking that's pretty bad, but it gets worse, I went to the main house which has the kitchen to make myself some breakfast, the silverware tray was full of droppings along with all the cabinets, and that pretty much ruined my appetite for the rest of the week. Towards the end of the week I was starting to feel ill, and after getting home, spent the next few days split evenly between my bed and the bathroom.

I also moved into a new apartment, so packing everything up, and driving it across town and then unpacking took a few days, and then there was some mix ups with the internet. Seems when I called and ordered it for the new place, they thought it was a brand new building with no wires ran yet, so they sent an installed out, who didn't show up. The next day when he showed up he noticed that everything was already done, and that the "Install Kit" he had was only for new installations. So another 2 days and some tech shows up with a modem and such and can't get it to work, so he leaves and another guy shows up, plays around with some wires outside and finally it's working.

Cats

Still haven't been able to try my perch fly, I've been fishing just not for perch, and haven't been doing very well anyway. So on the topic of cats, I have noticed recently that there are a few cats that end up in my yard, and sometimes at night they wake me up with their fighting or whatever it is cats do. Then today I go outside to pull some weeds, it seems they have been using my yard as a litter box. So now I am pretty mad, I mean these cats have collars on, they belong to people, and these people think it is okay to let their cats roam the neighborhood, doing their business where ever they want? Don't get me wrong, I'm not "anti-cat", well maybe a little, buts that's just because I'm allergic to cats. Now I am wondering if there is a way to repel cats, maybe start out by yelling at them, or spraying them with the hose, and if that doesn't work maybe an electrified fence with 25 foot guard tower so I can keep watch.

Environmental Ethics

This past semester I took an Environmental Ethics class required for my major. Previously I have taken Forest Inventory classes which mainly focus on trees, Wildlife classes which as you can imagine involved learning about mostly native species, how to count them, populations and such, as well as a bunch of other what I would consider "Science classes" having to do with natural resources(hard facts not feelings). Going into Environmental Ethics I was hopeful, I thought there would be in depth discussion and analysis of environmental issues using facts and figures to rationalize or justify decisions. I soon realized this was not the case, the reading material was made up nearly entirely of Native American creation stories, fictional stories about unrealistic interactions with wildlife, and several manifestos by radical environmental groups. The discussions were even worse, stuff like "How can we think like a mountain"? Our grades were mainly based on writing assignments, where we were given several topics to choose from, but most of them had no basis in reality, basically creative writing exercise. Every time I picked the one that could be somehow related to documented research or knowledge I had gained from studying natural resources. I think it really annoyed the teacher, he always commented that it was interesting and no one has taken that approach before, however in terms of a grade it didn't end well for me. Looking back requiring that class for any science major is ridiculous.  So I am curious about other people who may have taken Environmental Ethics classes or any other required class that was pretty much useless.

New perch Fly.

So my uncle is doing much better, walking around the house and telling jokes which is much better then when he got out of the hospital. I searched around the internet for various perch flies and found a pretty nice youtube video of one, so I decided to tie something similar, some variations just to avoid having to order a lot of new materials.



In the video they suggested a #1-2 hook I went with a #4 just because we have been seeing smaller perch lately and have had trouble getting them to stick to the larger hooks. For The tail I used craft fur and gold krystal flash and trimmed it shorter, once again because the smaller perch have been grabbing the the tails on the worms rather then where the hook is. For the collar I used an orange hackle just to get a bit for color on the fly, and the wing I used undyed bucktail because I didn't have any brown craft fur.

I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, and unless the fish are biting it is hard to tell if it will work, but hopefully in the next few days I can give it a try.

Still a few more days.

So my uncle is doing good, but understandably it is still pretty hard for him to get around the house and cook for himself and such so I had the day off to get some of my own stuff done, then I will go back for a few days. I did find some wi-fi, either the guy was crazy about torrents or it was to far away, because it was really slow and I kept losing the signal, so it was pretty much useless for anything other than checking email.

Gone for a few days.

I had hoped to make some progress on finding, tying, and testing a new lure, but I haven't had much time  to research. A few days ago one of my uncles had knee surgery and was released from the hospital today so I agreed to spend sometime at his house helping him out. Unfortunately he doesn't have internet, which I find hard to believe but I guess since he doesn't have a computer... hopefully I can get on someones wi-fi otherwise the internet withdrawals might drive me crazy.

New Lures.

Well the relatives decided to stay an extra day, but the cooked so that was cool. They also attempted to play rugby in the yard and broke a bunch of plants, but they needed trimming anyway.I did manage to go fishing every morning for the last 4 days, first 3 days the fishing was great, but this morning there were few clouds and a lot of sun on the water which can mess things up sometimes, and the current was bit slower. Caught a fish my first cast but a wave knocked it against a rock and a shell or barnacle broke cut the line, then no bites for the next 2 hours, so I went home.

I want to start tying flies that look like either a small fish or one of the invertebrates that is around here, then try to catch a fish on that. Kind the the next level of tricking a fish, having it bite something you made yourself rather than bought at a store. So hopefully by the next post I will have something picked out, probably won't have anything made yet since I'll need to order some materials.