My neighbor leases out a couple of corn fields in back of our forty acres.  He is building a new house and has a new shale driveway.  I think he didn’t want the tractors and wagons to mess it up when they picked the corn.  So I gave permission to use our lane to access the fields.  I underestimated the number of trips they would be making and the size/weight of the wagons.  They rutted it up pretty good in a couple of places. Friday afternoon I took my tractor and back blade across the road to try to smooth our our lane.  I was able to scrape the bank gravel fill back in to semblance of a road, but there are a couple of ruts where the hay field runs into the woods that are going to need a lot more work.  Next year I will be wiser.

Saturday morning Kathryn went to Old Forge with her gal pals for the weekend.  They went shopping, drank wine and played cards.  Saturday morning Eric and I went to his basketball skills & drills session and then he stayed in the gym to ‘just play’ for another 40 minutes.  Teaching basketball to kindergarten kids is like teaching chickens.  Everyone in awhile someone moves in just the right direction to be encouraging.  He seems to have a good time – but it is play time – not sport that is motivating him.  That’s OK.

After lunch Eric & I took the lawnmower in for servicing and fix an intermittent starting problem – probably a bad coil and we went to see the Madagascar 2 movie (not as good as the 1st one).  On the way home we went to WalMart to buy Pokémon cards.  Eric had a couple dollars burning a hole in his pocket.  He doesn’t understand the whole Pokémon thing, but a couple of his older buddies are into them.  He & I had dinner at Applebee’s and played our version of Pokemon while waiting for the food.

Sunday Eric cleaned Kathryn’s car – vacuumed, washed all the inside plastic and cleaned windows inside & out.  He worked diligently for about 30 minutes – I was impressed.

In the afternoon Eric’s buddy Trevor came over for a little while.  The boys played inside for about 1 hour and then we went outside.  I made ‘bows’ from ash saplings and bailing twine and we cut ‘arrows’ from goldenrod so they could shoot bows and arrows for a while.  I ended up taking Trevor home early as he complained of being cold.  We went inside and had lunch and he still said he was cold, despite wearing a t-shirt and sweat shirt.  I am not good at feeling foreheads to determine temperature.  He said he had a headache, so I called Ellen and told her I was going to bring him home early.  When I dropped Trevor off Ellen said he had an ear ache earlier in the week (like Eric) and maybe was still running a fever. Later Sunday night Ellen called and said they had found a tick on Trevor and to check out Eric (none found).

Kathryn got home around 4pm with some Christmas shopping done.

We got a little snow/sleet last night.

Last week I came down with the flu. It began on Wed afternoon and the chills crested on Wednesday night. I wore a long sleeve T-shirt and fleece sweat shirt to bed with a comforter and 0 degree sleeping bag as blankets to get warm. During the night my fever broke and I couldn’t shed blankets and clothing fast enough. Since then I have had a lousy racking cough that is problematic during rest time.

Friday night K & Eric went shopping for a new jacket and some clothes for Eric as he is growing out of his clothes from last year. Saturday was a rainy day and Eric’s last soccer game of the year was cancelled with no re-schedule date. Saturday afternoon Billie Jo stopped by for clothing and items to put in the USC thrift store she is setting up. She is currently maintaining a 3.72GPA, President of the Student Association, working full time and scheduled to graduate in May. Who would have thunk it?

Saturday night we went to the Barneveld Horsemen’s Association banquet for year end award winners. Eric won a Reserve Champion Leadline and his buddy Trevor won the Championship. Eric was pretty pumped about the banquet all day leading up to it. Below Trevor and Eric display the Breyer Model Horse, the ribbons and a plaque they got for their award.

Sunday afternoon the school hosted a Halloween Carnival and Jennifer took Eric, the werewolf, to the festivities.

Kathryn worked on the grapes we had picked and made 10 jars of grape jelly.

For dinner we made our own pizza and watched a little TV – ready to crash.

I worked most of the day on re-staging my computer with Windows Vista, which you can judge by this post, was finally successful. I just can’t get drivers for my Microtek ScanMaker 4900 scanner that work with Vista. Darn.

When my brother was about 10 years old he was fishing at Schoharie Creek and came crying back to the house.  He had been fishing for carp, found it boring and set his fishing pole down on a rock while he played nearby.  With his attention diverted a large fish took his bait and dragged his pole into the river.

My mom asked me to help him retrieve his pole, so as the dutiful older brother I donned a mask and flippers and went swimming.  I remember the river being so muddy I couldn’t see past my outstretched arms.  Through blind luck I came across the fishing line and we were able to recover the fishing pole.  The line had snapped and any fish was long gone.

What recalls that moment, you ask?  Last night Eric and I went fishing.  Specifically we wanted to catch a couple of the larger catfish and clean them for eating – to date all our fishing has been catch & release.  I caught a large catfish and was cleaning it when Eric caught a bass.  We returned the bass, replaced the worm and Eric cast back in.  He was intrigued by the fish cleaning and set his pole down on the ground about 6-8′ from the water’s edge.  (You can predict where this is going, right?) With his attention diverted a large fish took his bait and dragged his pole into the pond.

Eric let out a holler, but couldn’t grab it in time.  I thought it would get snagged in the mud and so took the time to shed my work boots before going in the pond.  That delay permitted the pole to get dragged out deeper than wading depth.

Eric and I went to the barn and got my solo canoe, a garden rake and the 17′ roof rake used to scrape snow off a house roof.  After four passes with the canoe dragging the roof rake I snagged the line, retrieved the fishing pole and handed it to Eric who reeled in a large catfish, still attached who benefitted from our regained catch & release philosophy.

I can confirm that much of our pond is 16-17′ deep and the water is getting cold.

Two years ago we took a weekend for a car camping trip to scout possible canoe trips for the next year. We explored put ins and take outs and checked out lakes and ponds as camping destinations.  That lead us to a number of fun trips in 2007.  This weekend we are re-enacting the car camping / scouting trip.

Day 1 is to encompass

• Driving up through Old Forge to Brown’s Tract and checking out the boardwalk/portage through Brown’s Tract.
• Checking out Rock Lake off Route 28
• Backtracking a little towards Long Lake. Checking out Big Brook as a possible overnight canoe trip.
• Going to Long Lake and checking out the Boy Scout camp – depending on the time we may or may not try the hike up the overlook.
• Checking out John Dillon Park as a possible winter camping destination
• Camping overnight at one of the roadside campsite pull offs near Horse Shoe Lake
• Others to be added as “targets of opportunity” during the day

Day 2 –

• St Regis Area access roads
• Meacham Lake
• Santa Clara Tract
• Tooley Pond
• Oswegatchie River below Cranberry Lake
• Grass River