brand new outhouse!

yeah, yeah, maybe YOU don't get excited about such things. i do.


i arrived on wednesday for my old fashioned thanksgiving and trudged up the hill to the outhouse only to find that IT HAD NEVER BEEN USED so i went off to pee in the woods so i could come up the following day with a camera and document it properly.

so here you have an actual photo shot down the hole of the pristine outhouse. that dark spot in the center is some kind of black fiber, like a construction material of some kind.

but seriously. how often to you get to see a clean and shiny fresh outhouse?

the campings

ok, so at this point i have pictures and videos and stuff and it's just honking pointless for me to try to put this stuff in any kind of sensible order for you people, so i'm just going to post is as it's ready.

by now i am home from my thanksgiving campings.

i stayed for two weeks on site 4, which you can look up on the map if you want.

i chose site 4 very carefully, since at thanksgiving you can pick any campsite you like, because nobody is camping but you, not even on the popular sites.

i wanted to stay somewhere close to a boat launch, because in cold weather things can go very bad very fast and i am still sort of experimentally camping in this way. none of the sites near the moscow launch were suitable because some poor sites to begin with, some are a forty minute paddle from the boat launch, and at that end of the reservoir it gets dark mighty early in the day on account of the placement of the mountains, and many of the sites offer very little protection from the wind.

also you never know when the channel will freeze. and how much would that suck?

yeah, and the sites off the dam boat launch are either poor sites with no outhouse, or a pretty far paddle over the widest and choppiest section of the res, so even though site 7 had good protections from the wind, it was not a top choice.

which really narrow down the practical choices to sites 3, 4, 5, and 6.

4, 5, and 6 are pretty well sheltered from the wind, but a little slopier than i like in a tent site.
. 3 is acceptably sheltered and the prettiest site, but it poses some difficulty for making dry foot landings with the boats, and in november and december you really WANT to be able to make dry foot landings.


only sites 3 and 4 have outhouses. ok, so site 4 it is then.

site 4 is less roomy than a lot of the sites. to compound this closed in effect, it has recently had a large amount of blowdown to the extent that the crew that built the outhouse had to go in with a chainsaw and make a path.

they did not really clear the blowdowns, nor the brushpiles.

this was actually an asset in my eyes.

first, i love to have a project.

second, that is a LOT of free firewood, even if you have to work for it.

ha!

i had MEANT to post a video as the PSA and say i had no excuse for it, but then i left the house to continue camping and somehow forgot to post the video.

i was going to correct the oversight, but decided it was funny just the way it was.

here's the video.

PSA

 i have no excuse for this.

yeah, enjoy that.

on the most miserable day of my late OCTOBER camping trip, i happened to open up a teabag and read the words thereon.

i immediately consigned it to the fire, and felt much better.

if i seem slow and uncommunicative

...i mean, more than usual-

i am camping. i have been camping since a week ago wednesday and i am only posting through the magic of scheduled posting.

well, actually, i am home right now. today is sunday. LASY sunday. don't bend your brain too much.

anyway, i woke up this morning and realized i needed a charging cord for one of my little appliances, so i put on my paddling gear and went out in the frigid predawn only to realize that the needed cord was AT HOME.

suddenly this is not a problem, because going home to get that cord means an opportunity to shower and put on clean clothes and eat food and fully charge my everythings and consult a detailed long term forecast, which suggests that with the exception of parts of tuesday and wednesday, it's going to be nice out.

so yeah.

december camping is totally a thing.

alarming advertising trend

d'ya notice WHAT consumer items are being hawked on television ads? which products are shown with ribbons to be given as gifts?

yep. work boots. power tools. mattresses.

what finer way to say "the economy is so screwed that we can't afford these necessities AND gifts, so merry christmas."

and on top of that, according to the commercials, if you don't put yourself into debt (men only) to buy A DIAMOND, you do not love your female partner.

also, "here is some cheap crap you can get your grandkids because you have no idea what they want and this will only use up half of your grocery budget this month."

happy shopping.

flask's menu planning protips

people are always asking how to cook like flask.

so here are my menu planning protips:


have chewy food
have squishy food
have crunchy food
maybe also have juicy food.

alternately, pick a letter of the alphabet and eat only things beginning with that letter. if you decide to do this as a progressive alphabet exercise, you get a pass on the "d" day, because you can affix the word "delicious" to everything you eat.

haven't mastered it yet

ok, so BACK IN AUGUST i was simmering a pot of shiitake mushrooms in master sauce, which is a thing i do. it is a lovely dark brown sauce and you just keep using it, only you refresh it every time with more broth and more spices and then you strain and freeze it until the next time and it last years, only getting more and more delicious.

only this time i let it go and burned it right down, losing not just the mushrooms, BUT THE SAUCE.

i dried my tears and i decided to look instead at what in interesting little disc it had made in the pot, and how with only a little soaking it made a satisfying little splorch sound and came right to the top and i decided to take a picture of it for you and of course didn't do THAT for a number of months and have therefore had this thing sitting on a plate in my dining room for a rather embarrassingly long amount of time.

but here it is.

consternation

i got a lovely box in the mail, with treats in it.

why am i making this face?

because this box comes with a lot of instructions for sealing it, but not for opening it. i know, i know, right?

but it was HARD.

/whine

so this happened in my house...

i had a houseguest for a couple of days.

the first night MS17 was here, i got her all set up on the sofa with pillows and blankets and such and i headed upstairs.

i hadn't but brushed my teeth when i heard her ask up "uh... do you have paper towels or paper napkins or something?"

so i was on my way back downstairs and she said "because there's some kind of bug in the sleeping area."

"oh, is that hernando? does he have five legs?"
"it has a lot of legs."
"it's probably hernando."
"hernando?"
"he's kind of staying here for the winter."
"oh. i didn't realize he was a friend of yours. can you maybe...?"
"is it ok with you if i just relocate him to the dining room?"

the dining room is two rooms away. i also don't tell her that the dining room is close enough for him to find his way back to where he likes, which is the window by the sofa.

"nando? come on, nando." and he climbs onto my hand and i put him into the dining room.

he's one of these, by the way.

two short films

a couple of years ago i saw these at a short animated film festival.

MB helped me find them online and i want to share them with you.





Miss Todd from Kristina Yee on Vimeo.

Damned from Richard Phelan on Vimeo.

you can tell i had a houseguest...

...because this bag was in my house.

no kidding.


you know *I* wouldn't have one.

glasses holder thingie

a while ago while i was out camping my friend barb came out to stay some and she had a cute little cord that a friend of hers had made to keep her glasses from falling off her face when she falls off a paddleboard.

and i looked at that and thought i should maybe make something for myself for that purpose, especially since i have become all knotty.

i made mine adjustable do it holds my gasses on, but also is a holder i can hang them from if i take them off.

handy.

conversation

here is an actual convesation i had with MB last week:

goes to find some fontina to wipe up this pasta sauce

MB:  You use cheese to wipe up sauce?!?
flask: yes.

          that way, more cheese.
          you make that sound bad.
MB:   I've just never heard of that
          It's like a whole new world. I just use bread or my tongue

flask:  it's sort of like wiping it up with bread, only cheesier.
MB:   YOU CAN USE CHEESE TO WIPE UP SAUCE
          mind blown
flask: yes, you can. ​laughs
MB:  bows to the master
         I am not worthy

farewell

loading the boats

i know you are both DYING to know how i got all that stuff into the boats.

so.

buy nothing day

i don't buy anything on thanksgiving or black friday. not in stores, not online. i reserve these two days for the NOT BUYING OF ANYTHING.

i recommend you do, too.

why?

because we have to stop enabling this nonsense.

we have to stop enabling the commercial culture that equates thing buying with being smart, being loved, and being acceptable to our loved ones.

more and more our commercial culture takes family holidays (whether you keep a birth family or a chosen family) and makes them into a death spiral of consumption, competition, unreasonable expectations and- get this- thanksgiving shopping and black friday shopping TAKE US AWAY from our families and our meals in favor of buying stuff we largely don't need.

think: we have an economic model based on exploiting the NEED of the middle and lower classes.

think: we have a culture that promises if we only spend MORE, we will feel secure.

think: maybe you DO enjoy competitive crowded shopping, but maybe your kids / spouse / relatives / friends would like to just sit down with you and enjoy your company.

think: some person, probably working for low wages and hovering near poverty, is now required to go to work whether s/he wants to or not on one of the few remaining days that was left to them.

did you really need to go shopping on thanksgiving? do you suspect there won't be BIG SALES later?


but those stores will be open as long as we keep showing up. those businesses will exploit your fears and their workers as long as we make it profitable.

so i don't buy anything on thanksgiving. not gas, not groceries, even if i run out of toilet paper. and i don't go black friday shopping. i suggest that you don't either.

old-fashioned thanksgiving

i am having an old fashioned thanksgiving this year.

...by which i mean that i will be arriving by boat and eating limited food under temporary shelter in the dark.

i'm feeling the darkness kind of sharply this year, and one good way to drive it out is to go live in it, alone.

so camping.

chop wood. tie knots. try to make yourself comfortable and you won't notice so much the gnawing.

breaking camp

thanksgivings past, volume two

so after my parents divorced, we had a general sense of relief that we were no longer required to show up as an ensemble for the annual parade of crazy.

but then my mom got a job that required her presence -and ours- on thanksgiving.

it was kind of a cool job. the university used to partner with IBM to bring guys (always guys, somehow) here to get a one year accelerated master's degree in electrical engineering, and they didn't just bring the guys. they brought their whole families to live here for the year.

only about a third of those families were from the US, the rest coming largely from france and germany, with a smattering of japanese and the occasional lithuanian.

and the program was kind of geniusly set up to include support systems for the families, because it can be hard to be plopped down in a foreign country for a year and have to rent a house and do the shoppings and get the kids to school and one of the parents is ALL THE TIME STUDYING.

so my mom's job was coordinating of the living parts of the program. she ran the weekly coffee/support group and the social gatherings and helped make connections and paperworks and all that.

and part of the experience was the good old fashioned american thanksgiving.

it was held at a local retreat center with an dining area and industrial kitchen. the americans would argue over which kind of stuffing / cornbread / pie was the best and how to properly prepare side dishes and we would assure our european and asian friends that these arguments are, in fact, part of a traditional american thanksgiving, especially when regional differences come into play.

it was a potluck thanksgiving. everybody brought things. american families brought all of the traditional regional dishes. the german women (some stereotypes exist for a reason) can loaded up with all kinds of german breads and pastries and bustled about industriously. the french women provided much of the soup and much of the wine and stood around smoking and criticizing the kinds of wines available in the US. the japanese women typically had the least command of english and the least understanding of european culture, and were most likely to bring dishes that looked most obviously japanese, for which they were apologetic.  they seemed to feel the least comfortable and the least like they fit in, but i loved them and i loved their delicious japanese thanksgiving potluck foods.

it was a splendid way to have thanksgiving, and a thing i would not trade for, but when the program ended and we no longer had to go anywhere for thanksgiving, my family largely stepped back to staying at home, not answering the phone, and pretty much doing nothing.

my mom started going to the cape. i took up thanksgiving camping.

when people ask me if my family gets together for thanksgiving and i say no, they typically express some kind of regret that my family is not close.

well, no. we get together for birthday celebrations in late october, mid november, and early december, plus christmas. we just don't do a big thanksgiving usually. we're ok with that.

the backbone of my camp

later on i'm going to show you a timelapse video of me striking camp.

but while i was tearing down, i got to this moment where is was sad about striking this one line, which i realized was the backbone of my camp. it's a simple length of 550 parcord, anchored in a tree and tied to another tree across the site, but with a couple of lineman's loops, it made a secure and reliable ridge to the rest of my shelter.

not flashy, but important.

thanksgivings past, volume one

there's a sort of crazy that only comes from family, and family holidays are good times for that crazy to manifest brightly.

in my childhood, thanksgiving with grandma and grandpa was a minefield of shifting rules and bizarre disapprovals.

i'm going to paint you a skeleton portrait:

my father's brother was obsessed with new zealand (where he had lived for a year or so), mad magazine, and trotsky-era russian politics, which he talked about as if it were current events. he also had a GIANT LIFE SIZED portrait of JESUS at the head of his bed, which you might think would make his catholic parents happy, but it did not, primarily because my father's brother had converted to russian orthodoxy, nobody knows why.

you know how old guys mumble and they don't hear well and they blame their failures in communication on you because you're inattentive or too lazy to speak up and you are disrespectful? yeah, well, i suspect that my grandfather was one of those guys even before he had his stroke.

putting up the thanksgiving leftovers in my grandomther's slovenly kitchen was s difficult task to which her sole contribution was the valuable effort of retiring to the organ to play hawaiian music for the duration of the cleanup. nevermind that nobody in his or her right mind likes hawaiian music played ineptly on a console organ.

with televisions blaring. from two rooms.

you know how some people say they don't watch a lot of teevee and then they ask you about how you like THEIR favorite shows and when you say "i don't know, i don't watch a lot of tv" they say "neither do we, but we just like (insert names of a half dozen shows you don't watch here) and hint darkly that they can't imagine why you don't have an opinion on them because you're only putting on airs. you've seen the way they "don't watch a lot of tv", and it involves two televisions being on at maximum volume all the time.

and you cannot talk while a show is on.

you should also not show disinterest in a show by reading or playing a game, either.

for thanksgiving, one television was set to the macy's parade in new york and the other was set to the gimbel's parade in philadelphia and my uncle and grandfather locked in a dead serious and unspoken contest over how many people were in the room watching the superior parade from the superior city and by proxy, deferring to the superior person.

also, children may play poker and memorize the odds for drawing to a straight, but children should not ask "who dealt this mess" nor refer to a "lousy hand", because children do not use language like that.

children in particular are targets for broad disapproval, and it was easier for my parents to try to correct the behaviors of us kids than to drill us in the wildly shifting rules.

and it was some years before my parents were able to explain this to us: "sweetie, grandma and grandpa are just fucking nuts and we just want you to pretend to be apologetic for breaking rules that weren't in existence ten minutes before."

i remember the fantastic night on which i decided to join my parents for their walk after an evening meal. i had never been interested in the walk. why were they so wild about walking around the neighborhood after every meal? we didn't do this at home.

and then: ohhhhhhhh.

"did you HEAR the thing he said about bagels?"
"did you SEE him lift a hair off the lip of the milk bottle WITH HIS HANDKERCHIEF?"

it was an escape. all the unreasonable things were out in the open. my parents KNEW about them. they knew *I* knew about them. and now we all knew.

and before we rounded the last corner to go back in the house, my parents turned to me very solemnly and explained that NONE of this conversation had happened, and that when we got back in the house, we were going to start talking about all the nice lawn ornaments we had seen.

so we did.

random scenes from camp 20

bright sun, snowy morning

you wouldn't see it until the leaves fall

camel's hump from open reservoir

morning from my beach. mind the duck hunter.

up by the boat launch

high chair

duck, duck, goose

you've seen the pictures of camp 20, but maybe it hasn't really sunk in for you that it is a high spit of land with water on three sides. what you maybe do not know about his is that it is about the right height that birds low-flying over the water are just about level with the ground on the campsite.

one morning i woke up to the sound of a large flock of geese flying south right about at ear level before they wheeled about JUST OFFSHORE FROM MY TENT to fly north up the other side of my site before they winged up and away for the day.

THAT was quite a wake up call.

in the mornings and the evenings, you'd hear a few rifle shots, because it was duck season. one morning i saw this gentleman come by my point:

he was so stealthy that at first i wasn't sure he was even there.

love letter from camp 20

comforts of home

you realize, don't you, that by the time i get done posting about everything i wanted to show you from my last camping trip, that i will probably be out on my next one?


yeah, well.

i spent some time this year on campsites with outhouses and campsites without. and the state-issue composting toilets are very pleasant, as far as outhouses go. they are sturdily build and protect you from the elements while you enjoy using an actual toilet seat. oh, my, that is the very lap of luxury.

...which is what prompted me to send this picture via text to various friends:

...which prompted one of them to write "you did NOT just send me a pic of you in the outhouse, did you?"

no, not at all. i most certainly did not do that.

flask's camping protips

Q: which water jug should i pour from?

A: the one that is least frozen.

also, later in the day when (if) the sun comes out, you can put all your water on the silver blanket and maybe thaw them a little.

lumberjane

ok, so i'm STILL not done telling you about my october camping trip, and at this rate, i will not be done until i leave for my november camping trip.

anyway, i get weird about the woodpile.

i like to leave a site with more firewood than i found on it. that amount is usually "any", but sometimes you get lucky. also, if when you are camping it has the potential of being cold out and you have the potential of NEEDING that fire to sty warm, you want enough wood to last you through a number of hours incase a storm rolls in or some other thing happens and for some reason you have to go a day without cutting new wood.

also, i sometimes do not know how many days i will be on a site, so i want to be prepared.

this leads me to be almost obsessive about my wood cutting.

plus when it's chillly out, cutting wood is a good way to stay warm. it's also satisfying in a kind of primal way.

on vermont state lands unless you hold a lumbering lease you amy not cut live or standing wood, but you're welcome to all the deadfall you can get for purposes of camping. i get weird about it. when i see a big piece of deadfall with saw or axe marls on it that suggest that some other people tried to take this and then gave up because it was too hard, i sort of interpret that as a challenge TO do it.

so anyway. some pictures.

it's a challenge, right?

yep, woodpile.

hey, let's talk about kevin macleod.

the other day i was in a skype conversation with MB and she was playing a cute little game and even through her phone i thought i could identify the music as by kevin macleod. if you've been watching my videos, you have heard his work. i really wish my own music suited the purpose as well, but it doesn't. sad for me.

the good news is that kevin macleod has a huge archive of music suited to scoring projects which he makes available FOR FREE on the internet. you should go there and look.

"but flask", i hear you say. "i do not need music to score projects with." i don't care. kevin macleod is both very talented and very funny, and you should go listen to some of his music and read his descriptions which are both useful and entertaining.

"Action-y intense like percussion based piece. Need to defuse a bomb while riding in a pedi-cab? This should work well for that. Or anything where tension needs to be maintained."

"Lots of little sections ending with soaring horns. Who doesn't like that?"

"This piece is actively painful. It is ugly and nasty and dirty - about as much as you can be using exactly one orchestra. Seriously, there are occasional bits where there are notes - but mostly, it is just... uhh..."

and besides, some of the numbers have available sheet music and some have cute little youtube flicks of the sequencing animations, which are cool to look at.

plus graph paper.

seriously. this dude has a lot going for him.

as for identifying the piece from MB's phone over skype while she was playing a game on her desktop? i am very proud of that, because kevin's catalog (can i call him kevin?) is kind of diverse. he has a lot of sounds.

what tipped me off?  cheap little game. rich scoring. anytime you're looking at a low budget project that has really good music, you check the credits.

--

oh, in case you are wondering: no, this is not a paid endorsement. even if i had the kind of readership that would support paid endorsements, i'm not about that. i'm not above giving honest reviews of gear just in case some bicycle company wants to know my opinion on the latest, but we get back to my readership just doesn't support that kind of thing. you're both very kind, but not really commercially viable.

also, i have never met kevin macleod.

i may, however, send him a link to this because now i've gone on kind of at length about how awesome his work is.

augh. fangirl.

PUSH

on the fifteenth of october i went paddleboarding. it was a beautiful day, but not so warm i didn't need longjohns, or neoprene booties.

i'm doing a thing i only discovered by accident one day in the summer, which is to paddle up into a headwind and then turn and sail back, being pushed by the wind and steering with my paddle in the wind. it doesn't work against the rudder in the air as effectively as it does in the water, but it does work and you can steer it, with some planning and some patience.

i did this three times that afternoon, paddling up and sailing back to camp. you will notice how low the sun is in the sky, even though it's only three o'clock in the afternoon. i am coming to the end of light in the day. i am coming to the end of my time at camp 20. i am coming to the ends of things i cannot fathom but feel in my bones.

we are all of us parting ways.

paddle up, sail home.

the chair

if you're following the story, you know that i've been building camp tables and such at remote campsites on the res. i'd like to stress to you that these are remote sites and not primitive sites, because on primitive sites, it is poor manners to build stuff.

on the remote sites on the waterbury reservoir, people build a wide variety of structures intended to make camp more comfortable. there are steps, benches, tables, fixed ridgepoles that can be used for tarps, and shelves to keep gear off the ground. one site even has a pretty functional little lean-to.

anyway, camp 20 has a lot of table, benches, and table like things, so i kind of thought i would like to build something in a chair, maybe something adjustable.

i know how to build basic things, but past the odd tripod and such, it's all kind of experimental for me. one day i'll be good at it. not yet, but one day.

meanwhile, i am learning a lot about how pieces fit together and one day i'll be a right bushcraft queen.

here are some little movies from my chair building on camp 20.

coal bowl

paleolithic handicrafts, coal bowl edition:

full tour of camp 20

of course i do not know right from left.

open letter to hillary clinton

dear secretary clinton,

i know this is hard for you to understand, but as a likely democratic voter, i am not voting for you. i am not voting for you even if you are the democratic nominee.

it isn't about senator sanders. it's no secret that i love senator sanders, but if you were an acceptable candidate, you would have my vote if sanders failed to win the nomination.

but you don't have my vote, so in the event that you are the democratic nominee, i will have to choose between voting for the republican nominee or not voting. maybe a write in? i don't know. that feels a lot like not voting.

either way, you don't have my vote.

let's look at at why.

clearly you have the chops to be president. you're a democrat, and democrats scare me slightly less than the republicans. several election cycles ago when it became apparent that one day YOU might be an actual viable presidential candidate, i was really excited. i thought you were going to be a candidate i could really believe in.

but then i looked at your record.

sure, you support civil rights for gay people NOW, and i'll give you the benefit of the doubt that maybe your views DID mature and change with the times, even though i am more likely to think that your views changed and matured along with the focus grouping.

basically, you are a shape shifter. you appear to be whatever the large donors want, and you say whatever you think you need to say to get votes but when it comes right down to it, you leave a trail of acrimonious power politicking everywhere you go, and at the end of the day, you are still in the pockets of the investment bankers and corporate leeches who are stripping the wealth of the united states and the world.

you are not an agent for change, and you are not the ally of regular people. i trust you about as much as i trust chris christie. heck, even ted cruz must occasionally do something that benefits his constituency every now and again.

in short, you are not the solution to the problem. you are not even a warrior in the cause. you are the problem.

love,
flask

cc: DNC

forest light

i wanted you guys to see this.

return to camp

here's a video of my return to camp after my night at home.





i was kind of worried that someone might have come in the night and stolen my boat, but it was right where i left it.

the snowy day

snow on tent

on the 18th of october i woke up to snow in my campsite. it was not a surprise to me, because a) it had been snowing on and off the entire previous day and b) i had heard the forecast.

i needed to go home and get some cold weather gear because although i had some, when i'd left the house it was late summer and i had needed to bring warm weather clothes and so didn't have all the cold weather stuff i would have liked.

plus that ONE PAIR OF  jeans i own that fits well over tights, midweight longjohns and fleece longjohns really, really needed to be laundered.

and i needed to buy groceries.

i could have done it saturday, and i could have done it monday, but why NOT do it on the most cold miserable day, if i'm going to leave camp for a few hours?

so i made a bottle of tea and a bowl of oatmeal in the leisurely way you can if you know you're not going to have to sit out all day and i gathered up the laundry, warm weather clothes i wasn't going to be needing anymore, and i got in my boat.

if was a pretty paddle, with a little bit of sunshine breaking out.

i got home, had some food, did some laundry, packed some things.

camp with snow 

i watched the afternoon storms roll in. snow and snow, wind and more wind, grey, heavy skies.

and those jeans were taking forever to dry. sometimes you can wear them damp, but you really shouldn't when you are out in the cold and you depend on them to keep you warm.

so waiting.

and at some point, jeans not dry yet (soon!) i looked at a clock and realized that if i left the house NOW (nevermind jeans or gathering the things i had packed) i was arriving back at the boat landing around 4:30 in the afternoon.

view from camp. pretty.

that maybe does not sound very late to you, but up there, even before the clocks changed, even in the middle of october, 4:30 was the time that the sun disappeared behind the mountain and the long cold twilight of the day began.

and i looked at the snow, and the wind, and the clock, and the fact that my jeans STILL weren't out of the dryer and i decided to sleep indoors for a night.

paddle out

first snowy morning

yah- boo, it was COLD out there a couple of them days, i tell you whut.

here's video from the first snowy morning.

fixed for ya.

i got this email:

now, i've asked to unsubscribe, but they keep making me watch political ads and THEN throwing up an "unable to process your request at this time" message, which totally does not surprise me.

but i'm in a pretty good mood this morning, so i decided to play along and check NO.

this is what happens:

seriously?

ok...

fixed for ya.

you're welcome.

early scenes

here are some pictures rom the first part of my time at camp 20.

morning from my beach

don't tell me these don't look like weird boobs.

just before rain

when the morning sun clears the mountain

cloudy paddle

returning from milk run (note pizza box)

i got other eggs to fry.

you know how hard it can be to fry an egg?

i mean, even if you have skills and you know how to fry it just how you like it, there's rather a wide margin between "how you like it" and "oh, my goodness, this is perfect." there are a lot of variables.

and then you also want to time your toast right so your toast is done but warm, and then there's the whole other sport of timing the consumption of the eggs with the consumption of the toast so that you run out of toast right about as the plate comes clean.

MB says she likes a little extra toast because that's what lovely jam is for, but i can't be arsed to carry jam to and fro in case i don't get my egg mopping right.

anyway, on friday i nailed it on both counts.

little pleasures.

at this point it gets all chronologically messed up

i've been trying to show you things from the camping trip in some kind of chronological order, i have no idea why. let's just say i spent approximately five weeks out of september and october and i went camping.

stuff happened, and i took pictures to show you.

here's a little video from the day the first snow of the season fell.

field trip

earlier this week i was on my way to the grocery store by sort of the long way so i could buy eggs at the farmstand, and at the bottom of my road there were two festively parked vans with official looking designations, even though one was white and one was red.

now, here's a tip for you: usually when you are near a big roadcut and you see two or three 18 passenger vans with some kind of official crest on the door, it will turn out to be a collegiate geology department field trip.

and what's there not to love about that? so i did what i typically do in this situation, when i can see the group and i'm not in a hurry: i parked my car and marched right over there and started asking what we were looking at. i have never once done this and had the professor or TA or whatever not be happy that a passerby wants to learn about this here roadcut.

and sure, i've read some papers about these rocks, but if you're anything like me when you read geology papers, you end up having to look a lot of stuff up because for some reason geology papers seem to be written for geologists and not your average joes who happen to like rocks.

so it's super educational to be out on this huge rock with a nice young geologist who is trying to explain all this stuff to entry level undergrads.

true story: i pull up and i'm looking at the rocks with these kids and one of them says "are you a geologist?"

"no, just a rock fan."

open letter to internet advertisers

dear internet advertisers,

internet advertising, for some reason, is a big topic these days.

i love the internet. i love to read on it, chat on it, play games on it, shop on it.

and advertising on the internet is big business.

and so is adblocking.

look, you NEED advertising to pay the bills, or else people consuming content need to pay for it. some sites give you a choice. some sites try to play both sides of that, though, and if you pay them for ad-free content, they try to give you ads.

no, no, no.

you get what you pay for.

and advertisers? if you are paying for spurious botnet fake eyeballs on your ads, how is that helping anybody but the brokers of fake views?

so ok, advertisers. let's talk about my consumption of advertising and how maybe you can develop a model that will work for you and not be obnoxious.

i'm not opposed to ads. they keep the lights on at my favorite content providers. i do not like cheesy no-escape ads for dubious products, or ads that are offensive to me.

here's the thing: if the ad is for a product i am interested in, i will happily watch it all the way to the end, and not just the five seconds i have to wait to escape. if the ad is compelling or beautiful in some way, i will watch it simply because it's interesting, even if i have no intention of buying this product. if your ad is interesting enough, i will click right to your website.

and that's what you want, right?

you don't really want to annoy me and have me make a mental note to skip every ad for every product you make, ever, and not buy anything of yours just because your behavior is annoying? you probably don't even want to make me sit through thirty seconds of ad time for, say a pickup truck i'm never going to buy (i've never owned a car that wasn't a subaru wagon, and i don't really need to watch subaru ads, either, because i'm already buying subarus.) i don't care about shampoo (have you seen my hair?), and i find weight-loss product ads downright offensive.

i would like you to consider my attempts to escape your ad to be a declaration that this ad does not interest me. if you make it hard for me to close your ad, i assume that you and your product are not just bad company and bad product, but that your business practices are probably fraudulent as well.

so here's what i want: i want the ability to look at the ad or not. i actually do read and sometimes click sidebar ads and banner ads that don't stand between me and content. it helps me find goods and services i actually need and want.

failing that, i don't mind a popup that asks me to watch a few seconds of that ad before i close it or not. if i don't want to see the latest action movie (i have not seen a movie in theaters in YEARS, nor do i buy or rent movies, and rarely do i watch them on tv), i'm not really your target audience anyway and i don't need to keep seeing that trailer.

you might, i don't know, use your awesome data collection to discover which products and kinds of ads i am REALLY NOT INTERESTED IN and maybe don't try to ram those into my eyeballs.

also, if your ad is interesting and i didn't mind seeing it the first four or five times i watched it, at some point my attention is taxed and i don't want to keep seeing it anymore.

i also do not mind if i answer a couple of questions about products because clearly a marketing firm is paying some of your bills. i don't mind telling you which brands off that (short) list i've heard of or have a favorable impression of in order to support content i want to see.

i do not mind at all allowing you to make contact with me at my convenience about stuff i might buy.

in short, instead of finding ways to force me to consume your commercial messages, i would like you to do your jobs better. you have the data collection going already. i am an actual money-paying, ad-watching consumer. when you give me that chance to say "no, thank you, this ad does not interest me", you earn goodwill from me and you gain valuable information about how you should better target your advertising.

so how 'bout it? let me have control over what i want to see. i promise to keep buying stuff.

love,
flask

visitations

campsite 20 is one of two remote campsites on waterbury reservoir that are accessible by land.

and by "accessible by land", i mean there's a trail that goes right to it. and by "trail", i mean that if you look at the historical map of the area surrounding little river state park,  you can see that these campsites essentially sit right on historical roads that are now considered to be cross country ski-trails. they're just a hop and a skip off of the multi-use trails, and they're one of the loveliest ways to go down to the water, so if you're going to camp there, you're going to have visitors.

the thing about it is that if you start off with your dog on the trail and you decide to go down to the lake by that route, you have to already be there before you learn that the campsites are occupied and let's face it, in cold weather those campsites are less likely to be occupied, so you're rather a surprise to the visitors.

most people are polite when they come through your campsite. most people, when they realize you're there, call their dogs back to them and they holler a greeting or come respectfully through and make pleasantries because they're aware that they are walking with their dogs (and they nearly always have dogs) through your current living space.

these polite ones, i like. i always ask them if they will stay for tea and cake. they never do, and i don't know what i would do if they did since even though i have plenty of cake and plenty of water and a good selection of teas, i only have the one cup. two, if you count the one in the rain bucket.

the couple from connecticut, they were nice. they were also a little lost and did not really know how to get back. i couldn't help them much, because i have never been to the site by trail. it's pretty straightforward if you go by boat.

but the man, he was from here.

not like i'm from here. i have only lived here since 1973, which makes me most definitely from AWAY. but even though he lives away, he is FROM here. his grandfather's old farm was one of the ones bought out when they built the dam, and lies under the lake. his father worked on the crews that built the dam.

the reason they would not stop for cake, they said, was because the purpose of the walk in the first place had been to exercise off some of the cake they had already been eating and maybe feel less bloated.

fair enough.

but boneheads visit, too, although out of all the people who came through my camp with varying degrees of politeness, only one pair were real boneheads.

they were preceded by their three large and completely uncontrolled dogs, after which, when they saw they were in my campsite, they could only be bothered to holler "they're friendly!" this was followed up with "we're just going to the beach."

then they threw my collected driftwood into the water, which the dogs declined to return. "GOOD BOY!!!" they yelled. "who's a good boy? who's a good boy?"

i simply went ahead with my in-progress activity, which was washing up and changing shirts. you HAVE to do that in the window of the day that's warm and dry, else you're miserable later. plus get bent. if you charge into my living space like that, you are damn well going to be aware that it's my living space.

so then when they were done throwing my collected wood into the water and in general making themselves obnoxious on the/my beach, all three dogs came charging up into my site, unaccompanied, with trailing cries of "GOOD BOY! GOOD BOY!"

and then one of the good boys came under my tarp to pee on my gear.

the woman tried to call him back.

"oh," she said, delicately holding up the edge of my garbage bag as if she did not want to get near to dog pee, "he peed on your garbage".

yes, he had, and that's bad enough, because even if he peed on my garbage, he still peed on the outside of my garbage bag, in my tarp area, where i live. you know, right next to my food.

but she was too dainty to touch it.

i had to, though, because i still had to live there and i had to get it out and rinse it off so i could keep using it without getting her dog's piss on MY hands, and they weren't even gone from my site before i discovered that he had also peed on my lifejacket, my boots, and my spray skirt.

the man acted like it was a terrible imposition on HIM when i called this to their attention.

you know that gesture people make where they put their hands up near their ears like they're going to cover them? yeah, he made that gesture. and he turned and walked away, saying "i'm sorry. i'm SORRY. i'm SORRY." until they were all out of sight.

he did not sound sorry to me. he sounded like i'd had a lot of nerve putting my stuff where his dog could pee on it.

i fished my gear out from where i had stowed it to be protected and dry, and i rinsed it off and hung it all up to dry.

boneheads.

my things, up to dry

critterpated

so maybe you're paying enough attention to my ramblings to know that i came home from my stay at casa quince, cleaned and repacked my gear, and headed back out to the res to live on site 20.

site 20 it kind of a primo site with a lot of amenities, including that it is a spectacular location. it also has the drawback of being accessible by foot or bike, and it is a popular destination for people who want a nice view of the lake.

more about that later.

anyway, for the first half of my stay i had a neighbor at site 19: tom from connecticut, which is not at all like tom of finland. google it yourself. i'm not linking it not because i don't approve, but NSFW.

anyway. tom was a good neighbor. i like having neighbors (which i define as people occupying campsites close enough that i can see their lights at night), but not too close. tom was the kind of neighbor that you might stop by his site on the way into town to buy ice to ask if he needed anything and he'd come down with a short grocery list and some cash and then later on when you come by with his stuff he meets you at the boat landing with a tasty apple and a freshly made thermos of hot chocolate.

the morning he packed up to go i helped him move, which seemed to me to be the neighborly thing to do.

and i got a lovely picture of his dog.

and while i was having him hand stuff downslope so i could pack it in his boat (i was already wearing water shoes), i saw this little lady swimming by and we harassed her long enough to put her on tom's paddle and get a picture of her.

i won't bother to label which picture is which. i hope you can sort that out for yourself.

rain bucket

my brother in law has a knack for buying me gifts that when i open them i feel lukewarm about because i cannot imagine how such a thing will be useful, but then later on it turns out to be just the thing i needed and when i say to myself "i wish i had a ...", it turns out i already have one.

such was the case with this bucket. the first time i used it, in august, i figured you needed something to hold it up by its handles. you know, because it has handles.

but no. you can just fill it up and it just sits there and holds ten liters of water for you. the surface you put it on doesn't even need to be all that level or smooth.

when i was living on casa quince i filled it every day with stream water for washing with, which is nicer than lake water, especially if it hasn't rained in a while.

more recently i was staying on site 20, which has no conveniently situated brook at the back of it. i wondered if the bucket only works if you fill it and then schlepp it to where you're going (the convenient carry handles let you carry it like a briefcase), or if you can just leave it empty to catch rainwater.

luckily i had an opportunity to test this on my second full day in camp, when the sky opened up and rained buckets and buckets of rain, so i stuck the bucket underneath the downspout of my tarps and in twenty minutes i had ten liters of nice fresh rainwater.

it's kind of magical the way it just fills up and plumps itself into shape. i sort of want to know what genius mechanical engineer figured out what shape to make this thing.

empty

fifteen minutes later

meet the smiths

here are some people i met on a sunny afternoon while paddling the res.

i stopped to talk with them because of their beautiful little boat. it's quite an eye-catcher. turns out it's a 2009 aristocraft torpedo, which is hand built in the style of the 1956 aristocraft torpedo, on the same jigs and everything.

sweet, yeah?

and they have a vintage '56 mercury outboard on it, too.

we were drifting along talking about this and that and life on the res and the rangers pulled up and joined the conversation about wild times and bad behavior and we laughed and drifted and then eventually went along our ways.

nice people. very pretty boat.

political differences

a lot of our political process seems to be about image and focus grouping and marketing these days.

i am going to tell you right up front that senator sanders is my favorite candidate in every race he enters ever since i became a convert. senator sanders is my senator. i didn't like him in the early years of his political career, but the more i hear him talk, the more upright i realize he is. he does his own shopping. he flies coach. he answers his mail thoughtfully, and he tells you what he thinks, instead of what he thinks you want to hear.

how do you want your candidate to appear? hillary will appear that way in your district. she will shape shift faster than you can focus group. (and i don't mean to pick on hillary. most major candidates will do this.) she'll disavow her voting record, tell you she was taken out of context, and you very much get the idea she wants to be elected and will say anything, do anything, be anything until she gets your vote and then it's back to bizzness as usual, which is lining her pockets and the pockets of the rest of the wealthy lawless class.

senator sanders doesn't care about what you think of his hair. he never once made an attack ad. not once. he doesn't believe in them. he's been saying the SAME STUFF his whole career: income inequality hurts us all. opportunity inequality hurts us all. sustainable profits are much better than stripping companies and land and people of all its value and letting the wealthy amoral few walk away with everything. quality of life is important. fair treatment of prisoners benefits you whether or not you are in prison or someone you love has ever been incarcerated. the obscene unjustified war is too damn expensive and why aren't the wealthy paying for it if they want it so much? why are the poor paying in money and blood?

some candidates want to be president and will say anything to get to be president. senator sanders keeps saying the same things because he believes them and he wants a better life for us, regular people. he wants you to understand what's at stake and why it's important. he hopes enough people will agree to get things done.

ask your candidate. ask very hard, in a lot of ways. ask and keep asking: what change do you want to bring? show us what work you've done. how do we know you mean what you say?  why do you want to be elected?

if their answer is glory or strategy or party politics, toss them right out.

and yeah, i know y'all call him bernie. and i know he doesn't stand on ceremony. but bernard sanders is my senator. he answers my letters and my calls. he's earned my respect. we're not on a first name basis.

i'm actually not wild about him being president, because i'm worried about losing his effective advocacy in the senate.

but he's a good man, a regular guy. listen to what he says. don't think about his image. he doesn't care about hillary's email. why should you care about his image?

old and new

are you sick to death of hearing about the venture vermont outdoor challenge? i sort of hope not, because i'm not done talking about it yet.

i will  tell you, however, that i have completed this year's challenge and am already wearing my shiny new medallion. i got it last week on a day that i came home to check my mail and while i was here have a hot shower and probably later i'll talk about that, but meantime, here are the two medallions , one having just come off my lanyard, and one about to go on.

i love pretty shinies.

rain configuration

early on in my stay at site 20 there was a day of rain.  a lot of rain.for now i'll just give you the video.

i have things to tell you.

really, i promise. i have pictures and everything. it's just that i'm out camping rather longer than expected.

it's cold out.

why yes, i did send this to a state office.

department of forests, parks, and recreation DOES rock.

flask and DFPR sittin' in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
first comes love
then comes a clustertangle the secretary of state just doesn't even want to hear about...

cake

flask's camping protip:

make cake ahead of time and freeze it. it should be a sturdy cake, like this. once it is frozen, cut it into slices and wrap it in single portions which you can eat frozen, defrosted, or toasted on your campfire.

you're welcome.


also,

 

i've eaten off worse

this is the pavement or the parking structure at the hospital.

why yes, it IS shiny and clean. it has some kind of resin coating which i imagine can be hosed down with disinfectants in cast of some kind of spill.

and who doesn't love a sparkly clean parking garage?