Fishing With What?

A guy at work said he was getting his bow out of his truck to go fishing, and I said "what?" (I know, not the most creative thing to say, but oh well), so he brought it out.



Apparently, most any existing bow can be converted to a fishing bow (if that's the proper terminology) by simply adding a fishing reel and connecting the line to the back of a special arrow with a flippable hook on the end (flippable, so you can turn it around and slide the fish off).

He said it was great fun, and proceeded to show me pictures of many fish he's caught that way. Of course, you can't throw a fish like that back, because they'll probably die, but he said the wardens are okay with people catching carp and some other fish that way, since they are "garbage fish".

I asked if you can eat them, and he said yes, but it's tough not to hit the "mud vein" while shooting or cleaning, which, if hit, spoils the taste of the fish. So what do you do with them? Well, the nearby farmers are okay with people throwing a few dead fish into their cornfields. It's good fertilizer.

Gardening Till It's Done

We started a garden about a week ago, but first we had to rent a tiller and break up the ground. This is when having a larger car comes in handy, as well as two long planks of wood. Just for fun, I took two pictures slightly offset, in hopes that I could view them later as a stereogram. Although the results aren't quite what I wanted, it did sortof work.



You have to cross your eyes for this one. (It helps if you sit further back.)

For people who get a headache trying this, the following will likely not help, but
here

is a GIF animation of both images overlaid.

EDIT: Well, I tried to include a GIF animation, but Blogger doesn't like those, and converts animated GIFs to PNGs or something.

Fuzzy Moth

So, I saw this on a window the other day (actually, a few weeks ago. I'm trying to get caught up now) and it appeared to be a fuzzy moth, or a moth with white fur just behind its head.



In real life, it was less than an inch long, but if you want a larger-than-life view (depending on your screen resolution), you can click on the picture. I would have cropped around it and just shown the bug, but it looked too much like a "bug picture", and I'm generally not a bug person.

EDIT: With help from Google, I was able to identify this as an Agreeable Tiger Moth, thanks to this page on learning to identify moths. I don't intend to turn this into a hobby, but, as the page says, it's nice to know how to identiy something. Note that I didn't read every word or look at every picture. I just read a little, and then scrolled quickly past until I saw the one I was looking for. Remember, I am not generally a bug person.

"Before"

Here are the tomatoes that Amy planted a few days ago, before they grow to monstrous proportions by the end of the summer.


From personal experience, I'd expect these to grow big enough you'll never know it was originally four plants instead of one. But we did use MiracleGro once a month, water our garden every day for an hour, and hoe the weeds two or three times a week, so I'm sure that helped.

I hope to take another picture or two during the summer, which I will post here to show their progress. Amy has no idea I'm doing this, but she'll find out soon enough, as she is one of Andy's coworkers.

Putting up boundaries

The island of Winona Lake has recently sold the back field to the people living in the houses touching it, out to the middle on both sides. Most people are still in the planning stage, but some people have already gone ahead and made it clear where the lines are.

For them, the fence makes sense (hey, it rhymes!), because if I remember correctly, they're the ones who have a garden every year, and now they finally can protect it.

Bad Layout! No cookie for you!

I claim to know a lot about HTML, and I have the patience for it, but I don't have the time to fix the way this layout is not a liquid layout. My resolution is 800x600, and I always have to scroll horizontally, but the CSS is defined in PIXELS! Really, who does that? Now I could go through and try to change everything to percentages (or smaller pixels, but I don't really like doing that).

Hmm, have I mentioned this before? (checking older posts, yup, right there last November.) Maybe this is why I rarely post. I'll get it fixed... someday.

Random update (month-old pictures)

So I was doorhanging the other day for work, and I saw this house with a blue tarp over the chimney. I'd never seen that before, but I guess it's to keep the rain out or something. As long as they remember to take it off before lighting a fire. Yikes!


Ah, waiting for a train... in the rain... In a different context, that could mean something entirely different. I have a video of this too, which includes me driving the last block to my house (nothing like waiting for a train when you're a block from home) but it's not very interesting, and probably dangerous to do while driving anyway, so I won't post anything incriminating.

Flooding

It's been raining a lot here lately. More than enough.


This is the scene I saw while delivering pizza one day. The mists coming off the water is what inspired me to take this shot.

Imagine you live in Winona Lake (I don't, but my sister and her family do), and one day you look out your window and this is what you see:


You get a closer look.

Yes, that's right. The entire street is flooded. Here's a shot from about halfway down the street.Is that a warning, or a posted landmark sign? "Winona Lake starts here. Yes, here in the middle of the street."

Here's another shot.

This is the bridge over the canal. Usually there is enough room for a speedboat to go under that bridge, with plenty of clearance.

This one is another angle of the canal. It shows how high the water has reached past its usual boundaries.

Some houses weren't just lake front property anymore, but became islands, completely surrounded by water.

A neighbor brought out his canoe to paddle in the street. Here, Deborah is taking it for a test drive. It's like Venice or something. My sister started singing in Italian: "Fettuccine, ravioli, linguine, spaghetti!"

At last, a post!

A few weeks ago (I know, I'm behind on posting. But here's one now) the transmission went out on my old Beretta (every gear was neutral) and I had to have it towed.

Aww, I've had this car for longer than I expected. Goodbye.

It would have cost a bundle to fix, so I was looking to buy a car for about the same price as it would cost to fix. Word got around quickly, and my sister's friend's husband's... no, it stops there. My sister's friend's husband (brother-in-law's son's mother's friend's daughter's father) was thinking about selling his car. To make a long story a bit shorter, I bought it, and here it is.

1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee. And it's all mine. Ignore the Coca-Cola sign, I have to give that back.

So now I can deliver pizzas again, and start making some money back. Now what to do with my old car...?