rampant curiosity--how do you waste time?

Amateurs.A disciplined training regimen can eliminate that problem.

Indeed.Hailing from a family of heroic drinkers, I early on had to choose: drink myself to perdition fast and hard, give it up entirely, or learn to drink within the limits of my health and socially acceptable function. I had family exemplars of the first two courses, but, sadly, none of the latter.I do not suffer from hangovers, so that physiological negative feedback was missing; I truly don't care what the world may say about my pleasures, so that social inhibition was inoperable as well. I plumped for a course which maximizes life-time intoxication, finding the sweet spot between restraint and excess. Of course, liver function tests showing enzymes outside normal parameters should never be ignored, nor should liver enlargement or hardening.Only an accident of birth can grace one with the stomach enzymes and liver efficacy to laugh at strong drink, but attention to methodological details can accomplish wonders: remember to eat (a common amateur oversight), fortify oneself with the vitamins and fluid alcohol depletes, avoid noiseome and stressful companions and settings (brawls are so déclassé), and never drink "too much" at one's own or one's spouse's office Christmas parties--unless everyone else does first, in which case it may be a matter of self-defense. Still, it's best to pass-out at home.Besides, proper management of intoxication methodologies is crucial to maintaining cognitive liberty. Otherwise the Puritans will lock you up.Approaching 55, with a 40-year history of enthusiastic drinking, I enjoy a sound liver and an iron stomach. Bacchus grant I have 40 more!

It has certainly spoiled my taste for pie in the sky.

Just as long as it isn't held up too long in Customs.

I, too, took robin's brief message as referring to serious drinking, not sip 'n spit wine tasting. I hope I was right.BTW, schraf, what's up with your quoting? I noticed the other day the weird doubling--first the partial quote without qs box, then the full quote inside the qs box.Er...not a nip of gin so early, I hope?

Correlations are often misleading.

Hi, robin.My wife is a devoted birder; I have always loved them, but did not watch them in any systematic way until I fell under her influence years ago. Now, by a slow osmotic process that penetrates even my stupor, I have managed to absorb a surprising amount of knowledge--my favorite way of learning.One fun activity for bird lovers: get a dummy and dress it in a raincoat and hat (or stuff those with straw), and put it in the yard with sunflower seeds in its "hand."After a week or two, put on the coat and hat, sit quietly in the same place with seeds cupped in your hands, and enjoy watching the Usual Suspects (our term for the mixed foraging flocks of chickadees, titmice, sparrows, juncos, etc.) come to eat. With patience, you can soon have them eating out of your hand when you walk about the garden or yard, though the coat and hat may remain useful .Without fail, they make my heart glad even on the worst of days.

Good morning, Flies.We have been discussing participating in the watch--your post is a useful nudge.The Cornell center is a fantastic resource--we surf there often, just to explore what is new, or to use their audio clips to identify a mysterious call, or to admire the online exhibit of fine bird art (I collect vintage and antique illustrated bird books and prints).We moved into our current home four years ago in a quiet cul de sac near a remarkable amount of open space (for Connecticut)--walking trails to state forest, watershed land, 200 acre town park with swimming pond. Determining just how protected all this is from development was probably the most focused research activity I have undertaken in many years. The house probably should have been a tear-down, but we spent our money on location and the 2.5 acres of hilltop, and we are piecing the house back together as time and funds permit. We are within a 15 minute walk of more than 1000 acres of protected open space and can enter parts of it within five minutes: I'd live in a hut for that!Our "yard" is mostly oak and hickory, some maple and sassafrass; we are gradually replacing what lawn there is with wildflowers and mosses and reestablishing native berry-bearing shrubs and trees.By providing copious food and leaving dead tree snags standing, and fallen brush scattered about, our bird population and diversity have burgeoned. Now we have several nesting species of woodpecker (downy, hairy, red-bellied, an occasional pileated visitor), and they tap on the windows and cock their heads to peer inside when the feeders are empty--esp. if we move about near a window so that we are visible. We hop to it; they have trained us well.We get occasional sharpshin and Cooper predation, but the crows and jays pretty much mob them off. It is fascinating to watch the crows and jays, accompanied by the smaller birds, chase off the hawks--then the smaller birds turn on the crows and jays and run them off.A week or two ago we exited our back door to find a red shouldered hawk perched on a garden post just 10 feet off our deck--magnificent. We froze and shared her regard for 10 minutes before she soared away.Last year we had nesting red tails and were treated to the fledgling crashing and keening through the upper branches as he learned to fly--both comical and majestic.We have ravens nesting in the nearby state forest, but we don't post it on web bird lists--sometimes birders descend in hordes in response to such reports, and we hope these wolf-birds will become well established before that happens.Did I mention that I like birds?

All your belief in God, and you don't consider the rapine of the natural order an action priority. Sheesh... I love life, iano: furred, scaled, feathered, micro, macro, cold-blooded and warm...even you. This world, and a natural span of years in it, is heaven enough for me.By nature (pun intended), I would probably be a pantheist, but the pervasive, oppressive, kill-the-unbeliever insistence on an anthropomorphic, Mean-Old-Man deity keeps me acutely aware of the lack of evidence for one.Despite primarily identifying myself as a poet, and a metaphysical one at that, I cannot will myself to believe in something of which I see no sign or necessity. The world's "great" religions have too much blood and misery on their hands to make a persuasive case for suspending my disbelief.Even so, I remain more agnostic than atheist.Life, beauty, love, truth...beer I do my best to do as much good and as little harm as I can by what light I have. If that's not good enough (and I know you don't believe it is), so be it: I will stand and answer.

Sold, Flies.I'll do it tonight so my better half can enjoy the sign-up with me.Your location sounds wonderful. We, too, have most of those understory trees along with the dominant oak and hickory--even a couple of ironwoods. Imagine how majestic the Eastern forest must once have been!Down the road about half a mile we have (forbidden) access to a 130 acre black cedar shaking bog, a rarity in these parts, complete with carnivorous plants. It is owned and managed by Yale, and we sneak in sometimes in the early morning to get glimpses of kinglets, gnatcathers, and such, careful to avoid the mosquito trap collectors: the skeeters are pretty much unavoidable.The entire community conspires to keep the bog off maps of all kinds (road, hiking, etc.) and generally below the radar.Our real estate shopping matrix:1. No more than half hour commute to New Haven without using interstate highways, via a route that allows us to share one vehicle. Check.2. Very low population density. Check--lowest in New Haven county.3. Very high proportion of protected open space. A source of great grief to the tax collector, much of the town space is tax-exempt watershed land for New Haven. Check.4. Surviving local farms, orchards, herds. Check--horses and bridle trails, too.5. Mandated lot sizes that preclude suburban development. Check--2 acre minimum, and rocky glacial till that precludes building even on many eligible sites.It still amazes me that we managed to find something that fit the bill and was also only 1.5 hours from New York City, though it took us several years. Eventually, though, we hope to raise a four-season cabin on our woods (66 acres of isolated hardwood forest abutting the Blue Line) in the lower Adirondack foothills, and retire there.The Adirondack land will go to the local conservancy in our estate. In the spring I go there often to play Omni Tree&Ginsengseed.

Yeah, that's the demarcation line for the Adirondack Park. Hiking north, it's 25 miles to the first transecting road.No trout streams on the 66 acres, but there is much fishing in the area: fishing and snowmobiling are mainstays of the local tourist economy. I grew up hunting and fishing, but now I mostly don't.The google map is here: our woods are about two-thirds of the way up the road you see running north--a faint yellow line at center image that first dog-legs right, then straightens. We're near the ending "e" in the faintly overlaid "Google." As you can see, we're on a fairly gently sloping hillside, chosen for good drainage and healthy hardwoods; just to the north you can see things getting more rugged, with many streams, ponds, and lakes.Come stalk skeeters with me sometime

At times, yes: in the spring the skeeters and black flies are a plaque--but they also keep casual trespassers away, which is nice.I have a bug suit that I prefer to chemical repellents. Fall is indeed the best of times there for beauty and comfort. I also get fairly immune to skeeter bite effects, but alas, my poor wife (whom they prefer) does not. The road I centered in the image is a gated, private gravel road; it is pretty much impassable in a snowy winter, but we can snowshoe the 1.5-2.0 miles up to our place. As you can imagine from its just east of the Great Lakes location, the snow pack can become immense. A neighbor once managed to drive an SUV over frozen pack, and overnight the thing settled into almost 5 feet of snow It's not as remote as it appears, but the area is very thinly settled once you are north of the highway. The town plows the roads up to the start of the private access road. The lots average around 35 acres each, though the largest lot is 200+--that contains the brown areas you see in the Google image, where the current owner (damn him) is logging: most owners there want to keep their portion pristine. There is a page-long set of covenants in the deeds which forbid more than one cabin/home, impose height restrictions, limit any business activity to logging, etc.When we went to look at the lots, we were treated to scores of red spotted newts crossing the road; after a quick huddle, we told the salesman, "We'll take two!" This was long before we bought a home: a matter of priorities, you see... Thanks, Flies. I'll hold you to that invite some year soon. My struggles with the car-accident leg and spine injuries have largely kept me away from the woods the past three years, having been unable to hike, pitch a large tent, chop wood, etc.: visits were depressing, actually, because they highlighted what I could no longer do but longed for... But now that my knee and cervical spine have been reconstructed, and I am making progress on returning to decent physical conditioning, I look forward to returning in the spring. We have a few stands of timber-sized black cherry (the most rot-resistant tree growing in the area), and my plan to raise my own cabin with them has been on hold; I may or may not regain the physical capacity that once made me confident of the job. The dominant trees there are beech, maple, ash. Yep! Waiting on our super-duper starter kit now; also took the opportunity to subscribe to Bird Watcher Digest (with half the price going to the FeederWatch Project).I haven't been this excited since my Decoder Ring shipped...

Single malt? Good beer? Chainsaw? (not necessarily--or esp. not--in that order...)Hired! I, too, am sometimes a summer bachelor, most recently when my scholar wife spent two months researching Renaissance herbals and women's "recipe" books (i.e., remedies) in London. This could work, even if we don't get past the malt and the fish.We've always contributed what we can to green causes. When we came into a few thousand extra dollars years ago when we were just scratching by, a gift from an elderly, childless aunt, we immediately thought of using it as a downpayment for forested land, and we both worked extra jobs to pay it off.When we realized we could protect it via our estate, making it truly "forever wild", it took our breaths away. I suspect we will do more of that as time goes by: we aren't wealthy by any (American) standard, but we live simply, don't have children, do have good salaries, and care a great deal.We still contribute what we can to conservation, but it doesn't compare with becoming intimately acquainted with unspoiled land you have the power to save--very heady stuff. Our deed covenants are so strong, I would even be comfortable gifting it to an organization that would sell it for funds to protect more important habitat.Scouting--O the memories... I made it to Life Scout with an embarrassingly high number of merit badges: I don't do things in half measures. I was working on my God&Country and preparing for the Eagle board when the scoutmaster came home early from a troop meeting I had skipped and caught me necking with his nearly-naked 13 y.o. daughter (I was 12, so it was okay--besides, it was her idea :rolleyes...that pretty much put paid to my scouting career.I regret nothing.Scoutmaster Kadel, bless his outraged father's heart, was a great guy and a good man. I grew up in a white trash ghetto called The Bottoms (flood plain--regularly did), three houses from the first block of black ghetto, surrounded by all the most noxious industries: dump/incinerator, stockyards/slaughterhouse, sewage treatment plant, creosote plant, pharmaceutical plant, truck depot, polluted rainbow-hued creek, etc.--none of these were more than a mile away: that's why pollution is so clearly a social issue for me. The favored activites were alcoholism, wife-beating, and child abuse, usually in that order.Mr. Kadel was the first scoutmaster in the city (in the late 1950s!) to open his troop to African-American kids (who comprised most of my friends at the time), and we camped on weekends once a month, every month, right through the harshest of winters, and did several 4-5 day jamboress in the summer. To this day I am puzzled by folks (including my sweetie) who cannot fathom the urge to camp in winter. There is no stillness like a winter morning in camp, nor a cup of coffee so good...I earned money to attend scout camp by directing cars parking outside the Indy 500, a primitive summer festival where I learned amazing things about men, women, and beer.Scout camp is where I learned to drop and roll when on fire: our safety merit badge counsellor took this extraordinarily seriously, and we were duty-bound to drop and roll if he suddenly shouted, "You're on fire!"--he would even do this in mess hall lines or, on one occasion, in the middle of the night. Once, during a five-mile swim, he shouted, "You're all on fire!" then collapsed with laughter beside the pool when as one we dove for the bottom and barrel-rolled there.Who knew it would serve me so well years later, when the thought, "I'm on fire!" triggered that trained response and saved me from much greater misery, if not death?I found that counsellor after I was released from the hospital and thanked him profusely: he cried, I cried, and we stayed in touch until his death.The scouts made a remarkable difference for me. My father had only 6 years of formal schooling and was put in an orphanage at age 10 by his father, but escaped with the help of a 13 year old brother: they hopped freights together during the Depression. He was a hard, heavy handed man, but more restrained than his own father, never using his fists on us, only open slaps and razor strops. I honored that by never striking my children or spouse, though he had taught me anger: it can take generations to put out some fires...Through all these times, the woods were a refuge, a haven, a place of almost mystical delight for me. I often went to the nearby wooded creek alone as a kid; though my father would beat me whenever he found sand in my shoes, he couldn't get me to stop. I vividly recall our mutual puzzlement: he couldn't understand why he couldn't beat it out of me, and I couldn't understand why he kept trying.Well, that's my who-I-am installment for the night: I fear I type too fast and lack a verbal censor, a volatile combo. There is a direct-circuit from my speech center to my tongue (and fingers) that seems to bypass inhibiting circuits others enjoy; it has caused me great grief and gained me wonderful friends.Lucky is a relative term.Mr. Kadel's daughter got pregnant at 15 and dropped out of school.My greatest refuge is still the woods.You just never know.

Very sorry to hear that, Flies. It's always a sad event, but especially with an old friend. We occasionally lose fledglings to window collisions, but rarely a breeding age bird.A few years ago we gained a breeding pair of cardinals in our yard. The male attacked every window and vehicle mirror for weeks the first two seasons, defeating every attempt to discourage him. We feared for his life, but he seems to have at last figured it out.The only noteworthy event this weekend was that the shyer groundfeeders--juncos and cardinals--reacted to the snowfall by coming to the window seed and suet feeders: we consider that the real start of winter.