Nov 1 - post halloween

Guess how many trick-or-treaters we had .... you guessed it ... none. But that was news (or not) from the day before. I just couldn't come up with a better title for yesterday's blog.

I went fishing in the morning and got ... nothing. My very active minnow must have scared the fish away. I did get cold though, sitting out there for a couple of hours in the sub-freezing temperature. Back home, warmed up, I busied myself with some yard cleanup, burning the rotten pieces of hemlock and re-piling the 4x4's and 4x6's from the Normerica skids. I'm saving them for something, not sure what.

Alex arrived mid afternoon and we went fishing at 5pm. He caught a keeper pike on the first cast and that was all we had. I did not even get any bites on my combination of minnow, salmon roe and fake worm. Perhaps the sight of that gave any potential fish indigestion ? Or perhaps, now that the water temperature has dropped to about 47F the fish are automatically programmed to move to deeper water so that they are not frozen to the bottom in some little bay.

For dinner we had one of my favorite meals (actually, I just like food !) -- ham, scalloped potatoes and green beans. Every fall when Alex and I came duck hunting my mom would cook ham and scalloped potatoes, knowing that it was my favorite meal.

Today's plan is fairly simple. I'm going to Mass in Britt for 10:30 -- leaving at 10:00 and returning at noon. We'll then have some lunch and Alex and I will check out the ATC trails to see if they are passable. I'll carry the chain saw just in case we need to clear any areas or build any bridges. In this context 'build bridges' might simply mean cutting up some deadwood and lying it in a water-filled depression. There is one real bridge that we repaired last year that hopefully is still in good shape.

While I'm at Mass, Alex will probably walk the road with the shotgun looking for partridge. We may very well carry a gun with us when we go back with the ATCs too.

Welcome to Standard Time -- I changed a couple of clocks before going to bed last night but there are a number of others still to be addressed. George Cederholm, in Arizona, is now two hours behind instead of three.

That's about it ... it's cold this morning, inside and out -- 20F out and 65F in -- I obviously should have put wood on the fire when I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. The fire is on now but it takes a while to warm up the place.