Thursday, January 5, 2012

Jan 5 - fishing

Fishing has been on and off.  I got that fish yesterday without the flag being up.  Three times more the flag popped ... and nothing.  Some line went out but nothing attached. 
 
We had the pike for dinner; it was excellent, beyond compare.  Great texture and taste, no "fishiness".  When you get right down to it we like fish that doesn't taste fishy.  Anyone who doesn't like fish because of the taste probably remembers having fishy fish.  For the most part, if you buy fish from the grocery store, it smells and then tastes, fishy.  When you eat it within a few hours of being caught ... wow.
 
I've actually had better luck with these dace minnows ice fishing than I've ever had before, and they're small to boot.  One of the fish that I caught and cleaned had a bunch of minnows inside -- very small ones -- so it must have found a school.  One of these years I should probably try catching minnows in the winter, but that would likely mean bringing the auger to a pond ... or perhaps if there's not much ice ... an axe ... but would I want to walk on the ice in those conditions ?  With four pike either inside us or in the freezer, the $10 that I spent on minnows was well worth it.
 
Today, as I think that I mentioned, Sandy is going to Sudbury.  She's taking Michael home as well.  I'm betting that Kylie will go with them.   I'll have Megan and Lauren to amuse -- but actually they do a pretty good job of amusing themselves.
 
I'm typing this into an email because, as usual, the internet is down.  We have a heavy black cloud in the direction that the dish is pointing, so that's likely the problem.   I went out before light and put pipe wrap around the dish "head" and plugged that in, to see if that might help.  Nope, the signal is still hovering in the 30-32 range. 
 
Speak of the devil, I just got a green.  With the signal strength at 31, however, that won't last.  Whoops, back to red.  C'est la vie in the Great White North.
 
I can see our forlorn tree out on the lake.  The rink is clear, no snow overnight.  The driveway was clear as well. 
 
Sailors take warning -- yes, red sky in morning.  I won't be doing any sailing though !
 
More later ...
 
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Sherbet.  I finally got around to using the ice cream maker that Stef gave me one year for Christmas.  It gets used very occasionally, not as much as it should.  I either don't think of it or don't have the ingredients handy.  Whole milk, for instance, is an ingredient in most milk-based recipes.  We usually only have skim.  I guess that 2% might work, but not skim. 
 
Last night for desert we had orange sherbet and lime sherbet, both very good.  It's time consuming though -- about 25 minutes per -- but we waited.  The orange isn't orange enough, using half of a can of frozen orange juice.  The lime, on the other hand, also calls for a half can but I used a full can.  I used a little less milk and less sugar ... definitely mouth puckering !  I also didn't bother with the green food colouring !
 
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I brought in more wood, using the hand truck.  If I hadn't been taking advantage of the scanty snow and using the hand truck, I'd be hauling it from the woodshed somehow, would have emptied the nearby woodpile long ago.
 
There's been no action at the fishing rigs.  Sigh.
 
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I spent most of the morning p'ing around with the satellite connection.  The clear plastic sealed cover at the head has (had) frost inside.  It's not an area that should ever be wet.  I ran extension cords and used the hair dryer (actually the heat gun) for a while and warmed it up enough to cause the droplets to disappear.  What a difference that made to the signal strength.  Zero.  Yes, nothing.   I then got on the phone with Xplornet for 1.5 hours and got no satisfaction from them either.  Basically they were saying that I had an aiming problem and they'd have to send a tech.  Well, I know how that works.  I also know that I'm leaving shortly and there's no point.  Hopefully it will be ok when we return and/or we'll get the upgrade installed quickly thereafter.
 
I have service now.  As before, the signal strength gets higher as the day wears on, regardless of the cloud cover, regardless of the precipitation ... I'm pretty fed up with this particular service, would upgrade to the other modem if Xplornet wasn't leaving Hughes anyway.
 
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The girls are getting weary of sledding or the sledding is getting weary of them.  Megan banged her leg in the morning, insisted that she couldn't walk but after lunch wanted to go out again.  That time out Lauren ran over her thumb or twisted it, not sure, she's icing it now.   She may have sprained it a little.   Earlier in the week she scraped her chin on the snow when Chase was driving the GT Snowracer out on the lake.  He drove way off to the side and leaned it up on one rail and they rolled off. 
 
Oh, the latest on the thumb is that the ice doesn't make any difference.  It might be one of those things that only hurts when she remembers it, we'll see.
 
The ice rink looks good but it's empty. 
 
Sandy and Kylie just got back, laden with food that's mostly for Florida -- flatbread, canned salmon that I like, cereal etc.  She also picked up a couple of "hugger" light fixtures for the Florida house to replace some yucky old fashioned globe style fixtures.  We have these huggers all over the cottage. 
 
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4:40 p.m.  Signal strength is now up to 42.  I'm having a hard time believing that I have a hardware or aiming problem that manifests itself this way ... but who knows.
 
I took Lauren and Megan out behind the 4-wheeler and then they went sledding.  Lauren's thumb problem seems to be waning.    "Faster Papa, Faster" was what I was getting from behind :).  They took turns steering and then we put the snowracers away.  They continued to play on the plastic magic carpets. 
 
 
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Tonight -- the girls want perch.  Sandy wants pike.  We're having perch and pike.  The girls want sherbet.  We're having sherbet.
 
What do I want ?  I already have it.  A wonderful Christmas time with my family.  No, I partly take that back -- if I had all that I wanted Alexander would have been here too.   
 
Onward.
 
 
 
 
 

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