The curtamous page
November 2008 Archived Notes
November
17, 2008 - Jak se maj!!! Howdy all! Well, it’s finally here... Deer Camp 2008 opens THIS week! I can hardly wait... This is, without a doubt, my FAVORITE time of the year! I hope everyone else enjoys it just as much as I do... For all the guys, it’s Deer Camp, and what can be better than that? For the women folk, they get a pleasant break from their ugly sidekicks, so it's all good for them too! I Love November!
We headed up to the cabin on A this past weekend to check things out and get ready for camp. The President headed up Friday night and the SEC-State and I came up on Saturday morning. We got a few things worked out at the cabin and then headed out into the woods to check out stands and see what was up with the logging situation. We found our stands and did some sprucing up. We also saw a couple rubs so that means there is at least one buck back there, which is a good sign. Then we headed back into the woods to see what the situation was with the logging...
Overall, it’s not too bad... I'd say maybe a 40 acre section was pretty much clear cut, but it’s not like its devastated back there by any means. However, the new logging road they put in, the one going right past the SEC-State’s and Comptroller's stands, is going to make access for new hunters pretty easy. So that means more stress, but maybe it will also mean more deer being pushed around too. We will see... Hopefully it works to our advantage and we have a successful hunt.
Saw some other hunters back there looking for grouse but had no luck. But on our way back, we kicked one up off one of the logging roads so I chased it back into the brush and guess what? I got it! I'm guessing that's the first grouse I've taken in over 20 years. Probably more like 30... Dressing it was
easier than I expected so that was cool too... Probably the last success of the year, but so what...
We made a little trip at dusk to check for deer and then canvas the local businesses... All I can say is, avoid the Copper Palace... Sunday was a LONG day...
What a great football weekend. The Badgers, despite looking like doo-doo in the first half, were able to take advantage of a lousy Minnehaha team and came out with a win and Paul's ax to boot! Frustrating to watch at times, but entertaining for sure...
I don't remember ever seeing a kickoff turn into a safety before...
Cool! Sunday the Pack just decimated the Bares... Like the songs goes, "The Bares Still Suck"! Fun game to watch too as I think they needed to get things clicking and just roll someone... Glad it was the Bares... Next weekend the Badgers should roll Cal-Poly and the Packers get the Saints on Monday Night Football... I LOVE it when the Packers play at night during Deer Camp!
Had to take the bike in for repairs a couple weeks ago for that broken throttle cable... It’s still in the shop... Pretty much getting it re-done the way it’s going... New cables, new head gaskets, new timing belt, rebuilt carbs... Hopefully it’s done this week so I can go get a second mortgage to pay for it...
Excellent progress on the gun cabinet... The felt is on and now I'm at the point of getting the doors remounted. Kinda touchy process as I want them as close to perfect as I can get them... and it’s a pain... Hopefully they get done tonight, and then it’s just hardware and the back and it’s done... I might have it done by deer camp yet...
So, what's the schedule look like? Since I won't be posting next week, here's two weeks’ worth:
17 Penance Day (Germany). Now, what would the Germans have to be penitent about?
War All the Time
2 1/2 oz vodka
1 oz Aftershock
3 oz tequila
2 oz beer
1 can frozen lemonade
Pour all into a blender. Blend until smooth.
18 Festival of the Nine Lotus Leaves (Chinese). Controlled by the Goddess of Mercy, Guan Yin.
Nine shots of Maotai.
19 Warlock Day. According to ancient belief, the first stranger you meet on this day dressed entirely in black will be a warlock.
Demon rum.
20 Revolution Day (Mexico). Drink until you have your own revolution(s). Tequila Slammer.
21 Feast of Hathor (Egyptian). The cow goddess Hathor wanted to destroy mankind, but Ra tricked her into drinking beer and passing out instead.
Delicious, humanity-saving beer.
22 Anniversary of the Founding of the Friendly Sons of St. Vitus (1915). Pro-drinking not-so-secret society founded by journalists in a ship’s lounge.
Cape Cod.
23 First jukebox installed (1889). Threatening the piano player no longer necessary.
Boilermaker.
24 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Birthday (1864). Raise one to that lovable absinthe-swilling, whoremongering dwarf.
Absinthe.
25 Women’s Merrymaking Day (Wiccan). Live it up, ladies! Girlie drinks.
26 Casablanca premiered (1942). Strasser: What’s your nationality? Rick: I’m a drunkard.
Gin joint gin.
27 Bruce Lee’s Birthday (1940). Rent Enter the Dragon and take a drink every time Lee’s feet leave the ground.
Forty of Midnight Dragon.
28 William Blake’s Birthday (1757). The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
One for the road.
29 Ice discovered on the Moon (1996). As soon as they discover scotch, I’m building my rocket ship.
Red Rocket Ale.
30 Winston Churchill’s birthday (1874). I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
Churchill Martini (pour the gin and glare across the room at a bottle of vermouth.)
Two weeks and you end up with a Churchill Martini! What a life!!!
Birthdays coming up to celebrate too... My eldest will be 24 and my niece 23 on opening day and my beautiful bride turns another page a week later... Someone else has one coming up too... Happy Birthday all!!!
Have I mentioned how much I love this time of the year? On the way back home yesterday I was contemplating that in my misery and I couldn't put my finger quite on it. I think it’s
really a combination of so many good things... All the guys, the traditions, the outdoors, the hunting, the memories, and of course, The President. All together it really is awesome. I could leave today... But I will be patient and wait...
Just some interesting pics...
Well, I have to work today and tomorrow, and "kinda" on Wednesday... Wednesday is prep day so I'll "work from home"... Get stuff ready, do some cooking, etc...Pack up what I can and then rest well... Thursday it’s up early, pack everything in the truck and hopefully leave for camp by 9am... I think I'm heading up alone but the SEC-State will be up later in the day... We'll get camp ready and meet the boys up the road at the Nimrod for the traditional dinner. Then it’s really on! I cannot wait!!!
If
you need to see the menu, lists, schedule, etc, here it is...
So, I think that's it... The next you'll hear from me will be December... Can you imagine? I hope you all have a safe and happy deer hunt and a blessed and sincere Thanksgiving! See you soon!
But before I sign off, some words of wisdom for our junior membership...
"The only reason I ever played golf in the first place was so I could afford to hunt and fish." ~ Sam Snead
Sam hit
it right on the head!
As Red would say, "Keep your stick on the ice!"...
curtamous
November
10, 2008 - Jak se maj!!! Howdy all! For me it's back to work again! Had another 4 day weekend and enjoyed it immensely. The weather was kinda rotten, but that's fall weather, so you just deal with it... As always, it’s better than working!!!
So with all that time off, what did I do? Not much... With the weather the way it was, I didn't get out bowhunting at all. I can't get my lazy butt out of bed in the morning, and it rained or threatened rain every afternoon except Sunday and I was at a friend’s house watching the game, so that didn't work either. I
don't mind hunting in the rain... It's actually kinda nice, but I won't shoot in the rain ever since I lost that buck
a while back when hunting in the rain. It’s REALLY hard to follow a blood trail in
that weather... So, not much in the way of hunting for me, but with this cold weather, the deer should be moving now...
I did get up north for the day on Friday though and visited the cabin on A. More forecasts for rain so I figured I might as well take a ride. Nice day up there until I left... I warmed up the cabin and had a small lunch and spent some time out in the woods. Bad news up there... They are logging the county land behind the cabin and its going to REALLY affect hunting up there, maybe not so much this year, but most likely next year. The loggers have made some significant new logging roads connecting the back roads, one of which goes RIGHT BETWEEN the SEC-State and Comptrollers stands. They have not logged out behind the cabin yet but I took a walk on the front road and they have logged a significant portion to the north. I assume that they will log the rest next summer... Not good... It's good in the long term, but for the next few years hunting may be even worse back there... We'll see...
FYI...
37 minutes via Parkway from the cabin on A to Kingsbury Kottage...
Woke up Saturday to snow on the ground, so that was cool... Probably an inch on the grass, but it melted by noon...
We had planned on sighting in rifles on Saturday, but with the snow and wet I called it off as I didn't really want to deal with all my guns getting wet... So I stopped over at The President's in the afternoon... I should know better, but the man NEVER ceases to amaze me... All I can say is you'll have to ask him about his Jolly Green Giant/Shrek impersonation...
You make the call...
It ain't easy being green...
Spent a pretty good amount of time over the weekend putting the finish on the gun cabinet and its pretty much done... Now I have to glue the felt on, put the doors back on, install all the hardware, and I "should" have it done... My goal is to have it completed by deer season... It's looking pretty good so far...
If you haven't heard, last week we elected a new president... I really hope this works out, but as I watched the celebrations, I had two concerns... First, young people were "ecstatic" and it sounds like that was a major section of the population that got him the win... Nothing against our young adults as they are
our future, and personally, I think it’s a bright future at that... But, let's face it...
They know nothing, so I am concerned that they have so much faith and hope in this man and feel this is a
victory when this guy has a hopeless mess in front of him that he has little
control over... Second, Hollywood LOVES this guy... So we have two sections of our population, the young and inexperienced and the famous and completely out of touch, completely behind this man... I'm worried... Smells too much like Jimmy Carter... Don't get me wrong... President Carter is truly a great man, but he was a lousy president... So, we will see...
A very significant point of this election? Race issues are behind us... If the majority of the population of this country can elect a black man as president, it’s over. Oh, there will still be issues and racism will never die, and the Jesse Jackson's of the world will keep it on the front page, but for the most part, it’s over as a "general" feeling of the population. Generation X, Y and whatever comes next, they don't
care, which is truly wonderful... That may be the most significant positive social change we will ever
see in our lifetimes... TV and the media can bray all they want about it, but the significance is, "Most people don't
care anymore"... And that is awesome...
Off the soapbox now...
Football... Lousy weekend... There is almost zero participation in the area from the high school playoffs which is really weird... Waunakee got beat
too, so I'm rooting for Hilbert to go all the way... Go Wolves!!! The Badgers are not a good football team... Yeah, they beat up on a hapless Indiana team, but I think they were lucky they lost their QB in the second half... That defense is bad... The Packers? Ouch... I really hate losing to the ViQueens... The Packers had no business being in that game, but thanks to absolutely terrible coaching on the ViQueens side, they
STILL could have won it... Enough... I'm sick thinking about it...
How about getting into this week's schedule?
10 Stanley Found Livingstone, he presumed (1871). Seek out long lost bar buddies.
Gin and tonic.
11 St. Martin’s Day. Patron saint of drunkards.
St. Martin Cocktail
1 1/2 oz gin
1 1/2 white rum
1 oz bitter lemon
Dash Angostura Bitters
Pour gin and rum over ice, top with bitter lemon, add angostura, stir.
12 Brotherhood of Fools founded (1381). Haven’t you put off your membership long enough?
Old Milwaukee.
13 Stenia, the Bitching Festival (Wiccans). Let ‘em know exactly how you feel.
Bitch On Wheels
2 oz gin
1/2 oz dry vermouth
1/2 oz white creme de menthe
1 tsp Pernod
Stir with ice, strain.
14 Moccas’ Day (Celtic). Pig goddess festival. Blind Pig Ale.
15 National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day. Make sure you load it with beer before you begin.
As much beer as you can cram in your refrigerator.
16 W.C. Handy’s Birthday (1873). I think a guy who’s had just the right amount of booze can sing the blues a hell of a lot better than a guy who is stone sober. Charlie Rich.
Bourbon, neat.
What an interesting week... What is bitter lemon? Anyone? I may try that one... Do they still brew Old Milwaukee? Have to check that out...
I have all the "Bitch on Wheels" I need at home, but I DO need to clean out my frig...
So, Deer Camp 2008 is less than two weeks away... OK, its 10 days until camp opens... OK, roughly 241 hours from right now... Or around that... Hopefully we'll get a crew up there this weekend to check stands and get ready... I hope I hope I hope...
Anyway, here is this year's menu and other assorted lists...
DEER CAMP 2008!
Hey Happy Veterans Day!!! Our best and heartfelt thanks go out to all veterans, living, deceased, and presently serving. Unless you served, I think it’s hard to understand just what they mean to us... Thank you!!!
That is all I have time for... One more update until Deer camp 2008... So some words of wisdom for our junior membership...
"It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you." ~ Dick Cheney
Thanks again to all those who have served!
And I don't mean cocktail hour...
As Red would say, "Keep your stick on the ice!"...
curtamous
November
3, 2008 - Jak se maj!!! Happy Monday everyone! For me it's back to work! Had a couple nice days off last week to make a 4 day weekend. Very nice... So nice I'm going to (hopefully) do it again THIS week. Yep, I have Thursday and Friday scheduled off again, and I hope to do less work-work. I had stuff to wrap up on Thursday last week work-wise and then Friday I got called on an emergency, right during trick-or-treating! Oh well, that’s OK...
So what did I do while I was off? Took care of 100 bushels of leaves... That's about half, so I'll have the opportunity to get the other half, hopefully this weekend. Tried to fertilize the lawn, but the new spreader I got at Menards is crap, so that was a fiasco. Extended the "roof" on my wood shed, which was a nice little, and surprisingly successful project. Made some significant progress on the gun cabinet. Got first coats of finish on the drawers and doors, so that's going well, despite my beautiful bride going ballistic about the smell. Did some hunting, but not much... Saw nothing, so that I am used to... Overall, a pretty good weekend!
The Chief also got his wisdom teeth yanked, so that was part of the weekend's schedule... Went well and he's doing fine... Also, the eldest came home from ISU to visit (yeah, we just saw him last weekend down there...),
but that was nice. Halloween was OK... Lots of trick-or-treaters, but it’s not as much fun as when the boys were younger... Oh well.
Football... 0-3 for the local teams. The Denville 11 got busted out of the playoffs on Tuesday by Oconto. Close game, and I hear they had a ton of opportunities, but came up empty and lost 14-7. Good year for them overall though, so congrats. Badgers played a great game, until the last 10 minutes or so and lost to Sparty. VERY bad taste after that one cause they should have wrapped it up... Tons of opportunities and came up empty... The Packers? GREAT GAME!!! But another loss... Certainly was a fun game to watch, but had tons of opportunities and came up empty... Do we have a re-occurring theme here? I think so... Basically the local teams all gave games away... Sometimes that happens.
To make it worse, the Badger hockey team stinks too... They "finally" won a game this weekend... Since they took the NCAA championship a few years ago, they have REALLYY dropped off...
Here's one from the Jack/Ass team with a political spin for the election...
John, the farmer, was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers (hens), also called 'pullets,' and ten roosters, whose job it was to fertilize the eggs. The farmer kept records, and any rooster that didn't perform went into the soup pot and was replaced.
That took an awful lot of his time, so he bought a set of tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone so John
could tell from a distance which rooster was performing.
Now he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report simply by listening to the bells.
The farmer's favorite rooster was old Butch, a very fine specimen. But on this particular morning, John noticed old Butch's bell hadn't rung at all.
John went to investigate. The other roosters were chasing pullets all over the place with bells-a-ringing. The pullets, upon hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover. But to Farmer John's amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring.
He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one.
John was so proud of old Butch, he entered him in the Renfrew County Fair, and he became an overnight sensation among the judges.
The result... The judges not only awarded old Butch the No Bell Piece Prize, but they awarded him the Pullet Surprise as well.
Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making: who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren't paying attention.
Vote carefully this year...the bells are not always audible.
So here's to old Butch and the end of another election season... Remember to get out and vote tomorrow!!!
Speaking of politics, let's see what's on our schedule for this week...
3 Sergio Leone’s Birthday (1929). Perfect day for a spaghetti western boozefest.
Italian vino.
4 Electric blender invented (1910). AKA Annoy the Bartender Day. Blender drinks.
5 Ulysses S. Grant elected president (1872). Fullbore drunkard seizes power.
Presidential Margarita
1 1/2 oz El Presidente Brandy
1 1/2 oz Cointreau
1 1/2 oz Tequila
Juice of 1 Lime
Pour ingredients into a large glass. Add ice and let sit while preparing drinking glass. Rim glass with lime and salt, fill with ice and add a lime slice. Pour contents of large glass into salted glass.
6 Anniversary of Jimmy Carter’s encounter with a UFO (1969). Swears he wasn’t drunk.
Crazy Horse Malt Liquor and a bowl of peanuts.
7 Flying V guitar invented (1958). Like musicians weren’t getting enough chicks already.
Vodka tonics.
8 Elvis Presley’s Birthday (1935). Hail to the King.
Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Luv
6 oz vodka
6 oz water
2 tblsp Cherry Kool-Aid
Combine and shake it like Elvis for 30 seconds.
9 Chingay Procession in Honor of Kwan Ying (Chinese). Best Chingay Procession of the year. Trust me.
Procession of Pink Elephants
2 oz vodka
1/2 oz Midori Melon Liqueur
4 oz pink lemonade
2 tblsp sugar
Mix, drink fast, wait for the parade.
Hmmm... That schedule is just like the election drivel we've had to listen to... It bites!
A bit from last week's diatribe... I had a quiz... NO ONE RESPONDED!!! Either my prizes aren't up to snuff or my readership has dwindled to zero again... I was on the fence whether to publish the answers, and then figured, what the heck... here they are...
1. Boxing
2. Niagara Falls (The rim is worn down about two and a half feet each year because of the millions of gallons of water that rush over it every minute.)
3. Asparagus and rhubarb.
4. Strawberry.
5. It grew inside the bottle. (The bottles are placed over buds when they are small, and are wired in place on the tree. The bottle is left in
place for the entire growing season. When they are ripe, they are snipped off at the stems.)
6. Dwarf, dwell and dwindle.
7. Period, comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, apostrophe, question mark, exclamation point, quotation marks, brackets, parenthesis, braces, and ellipses.
8. Lettuce.
9. Shoes, socks, sandals, sneakers, slippers, skis, skates, snowshoes, stockings, stilts.
Actually, the only reason I posted the answers is it will force anyone actually interested to go back to
last week's update and check out the questions... I find that slightly amusing...
ZERO word from anyone on the Annual World Championship Booyah Cookoff... I'm guessing there was some sort of scandal and the FM was disqualified and banished for life, otherwise he would have chimed in... It’s not like he has a real job or anything...
Can
you believe it's November already? You know what that means...
Deer Camp 2008 is LESS THAN 3 weeks away!!! Three weeks from today, opening weekend will be over but we'll be prepping for a Packer Monday Night Football game. Tuesday WILL be tough, but I CANNOT wait!!!
Not much to speak of this week other than more vacation time. I hope to spend a little more time hunting, but you never know... We will see...
That's about it... Before I go, more words of wisdom for our junior membership...
"Some people ask why men go hunting. They must be the kind of people who seldom get far from highways. What do they know of the tryst a hunting man keeps with the wind and the trees and the sky? Hunting? The means are greater than the end, and every deer hunter knows it." ~ Gordan McQuarrie from "Just Look at This Country." Field & Stream. November 1939
You cannot get enough of Gordon McQuarrie and the Old Duck Hunters Assoc!!!
As Red would say, "Keep your stick on the ice!"...
curtamous
Last Updated: Monday, April 06, 2009
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