Lawn care

Planted fireweed in the lawn this year and it seems to be taking off pretty well.

Mowing is going to be exciting this summer. I’ll have to wear my asbestos shorts.

The Giving Away Tree has a special this week on electric ranges

A gas leak blew the knobs off the last propane stove I had in my kitchen. The mini explosion also lifted the rings off the burners and caused ringing in my ears. Too bad, since it was an ultra-cool appliance from the 50’s. I hated to take it to the scrap pile in the sky but blowing up is a feature I decided just wasn’t worth it.

So I’ve been using a free stove I loaded up from some stranger’s driveway. It wasn’t pretty, but worked. Now I have a pretty one again. New. Snazzy. And the free stove is going back into the universe from whence it came. Thanks, free stove, for your service. You heated water and baked things with the best of them. Now you can continue to roam the earth, preparing meals for other people. Godspeed.

So I’ve plopped the old one under the spruce tree at the end of my driveway. The giving tree, I’ll call it from now on. Or the giving away tree, I guess. Swing by and load the thing up. The price is firm and no matter how hard you haggle with me, I will not budge from free. Because, frankly, I don’t want to help load it up. You’re on your own there. Please, no need to come to the house. Free is free. Enjoy it, whoever you are.

Portrait of me with an underwater person

And here we have photographic proof that I am the finest fisherman in all the world.

I caught this one with my hands and got all Mr. Miyagi because normal fishing tactics make me yawn. That flyrod in the background was left lying on the bank by some random dude. I don’t know what his deal was.

Even I Can Catch Fish. Sometimes.

Pursuing steelhead really isn’t my bag. I don’t care for being cold and have a short attention span. Also I’m not a very good fisherman. So. There’s that.

However. Yesterday on the Wallowa River these things didn’t matter. The sun came up, I couldn’t help but catch fish and it was an everlovin’ blast.

Caught six. Two males and four wild females. Broke two more off. Lost track of how many whitefish I caught. A bonanza.

Didn’t start out that way. Note the ice buildup on the guides of my fly rod. And you can’t see it in the photo, but my feet were not working at the time, having iced over from wading in thirty-six degree water.

Gearboat Chronicles has a few more shots and details about riding the fish train. Met a state senator on board and also a guy who runs a blog for Field & Stream. More on that later.

Don’t make me buy this boat. I’ll do it. I swear.

I’m getting a full-blown boatyard. First the sweet Star Craft I grew up being towed behind, water funneled into my nose trying to get up on water skis. Then I got custody of dad’s old cataraft, which was traded for a 26-foot sailboat…in perhaps the sweetest deal to ever grace a bill of sale.

And now I’m presented with this little number. The mermaid does not come with it. Nor the pile of sand. But it’s a cute rapscallion of a watercraft and belongs to a friend who wants it to belong to someone else. I think that someone else might be me.

I will have the first boatyard in landlocked northeast Oregon, or go broke trying.

Updates: subject of this week’s Chieftain column is Chuck Fraser’s tie from the Thrift Store Formal. Read all about it by depressing the mouse feature above that link to your right.

Further update: I am drinking water in the photo to be found at this week’s Gearboat Chronicles. Not beer, as has been suggested. I was on driving duty. That’s tap water. And I normally wouldn’t put a picture of myself on there like that, were it not for that jacket. Sakes alive, I’m proud of that coat and cannot deny the world a look at it too.

Sportsmen's? Really?

Spent some time with Winding Waters at the Portland Sportsmen’s Show. I’ve gone to this with my pappy quite a bit over the years, and we’ve always called it the Outdoor Show. Everybody I know calls it the Outdoor Show. Probably because “Sportsmen’s” sounds stupid.

I didn’t consult Strunk & White on this, because I quit checking with those guys years ago. I punctuate, conjugate and hyphenate however I damn well please and it’s a system that works really well for me.

But it bothers me when other people throw apostrophes around haphazard. Even if they're technically correct, if it looks clunky, there's other words out there. And they're free. Take them for a test drive.

Sportsmen’s looks double-plural to me. It’s not, and I see it’s suggesting this show belongs to the sportsmens, but have you ever in your life deployed the term ‘sportsmen’ when talking? You have not, unless you’re the coordinator of a large trade show catering to outdoorsmen, which is also a word not often used, but slightly better than sportsmen’s.

So the sportsmens cruised around the Expo Center, investigating the many outdoorsmens activities while businessmens sold trips and equipments to their customers’s and I met some nice folks’s and we talked about rafting trips’s and, all in all, I had some good experiences’s.

If this insight into sportsmens and outdoorsmens hasn't satisfied your burning curiosity about trade shows, my Chieftain column this week and the Gearboat Chronicles are what you're looking for.

Pile of Sheetrock

Two photos for comparison. In the one, you have a landscape/still life depicting the crooked stove pipe on my writing shack with the Buick parked next. But notice the landscape part. Blue sky. Snowy mountains. Crisp air. They’re actually filming a Ricola ad far in the distance.

Other picture is the nineteenth circle of Hades. Sheetrock. My current gypsum board to bear. Been catching up with a lot of sheetrocking in the upstairs of Rombach mansion. It’s long overdue. And it’s hot up in that attic. And sheetrock makes me angry.

And whilst I think my log cabin is peachy, there is not a straight plane, nor plumb or true line in the place. And so then I start throwing things. And inanimate objects get yelled at. And noone likes that.

I know a guy who was working in Portland in the sheetrock trade and he was receiving just indecent amounts of money for his efforts. It was a union gig and with the benefits package and all, he was right below Sri Lanka for annual income. I was appalled.

Now I just want to hire him. Here’s a fun game. See if you can spot how many different ways I did something wrong in this one picture. Ah, but that’s what joint compound is for, no? The texture on here is going to be four inches thick when I’m done.