Week of November 11, 2024

I’ve been working on other people’s blogs at work all day, time to post on mine.

Downtown Peekskill with Amanda and Charlie on Monday evening. We went to dinner at the Irish place, and we also checked on the Little Free Library and exchanged some books.

We had another tough weekend with Charlie, so I’m trying to remind myself of the high points this week:

Lots of time playing trains, Hi Ho Cherry-O, and Mancala

Charlie won every round for three nights in a row. Incredible beginner’s luck.

Grocery shopping together and Charlie requesting a Pomelo, so we got it and tasted it together at home.

Planting garlic

Cutting up a 2×6

Pumping gas

Learning how to use a chalk line

Reading books together

Going for a 3 mile bike rode together (he sat in the seat attached to my bike for the first time this year).

Charlie, while in the bathtub:
“Daddy, are you finkin what I’m finkin?”
“What are you thinking, bud?”
“We take the garbage and flush it down the toilet!!!”

I’m suddenly pretty glad I preemptively bought that toilet auger two weeks ago.

The rhetoric about non-natural fibers in clothing being “endocrine disrupting” smells like nonsense to me and I can’t find actual proof of it being a problem. It is okay to just say you prefer the feel of cotton or flax. You don’t need to make nonsense claims to position it as morally superior.

I only see hypocrisy, false promises, and contradictions so far from Trump’s cabinet picks and statements. It is amazing how short of a memory the American electorate has. If you are optimistic about Trump’s reelection, I guarantee you will be disappointed. If you are upset about Trump’s reelection, you will continue being disappointed. More of the same.

Sometimes I question whether or not the AI doomers truly believe that AI will kill every human within our lifetimes. If they did, I’d expect more radical (read: forceful) action than talking about it on podcasts.

If you truly believe we are all going to be wiped out anyway, what is the downside? Certainly the EA folks have done a Bentham-esque calculation on this.

It is hard to take people seriously if they have a fundamentally asymmetry between their beliefs and actions.

I am very organized, but I have such disdain for tax and insurance paperwork that I just throw it all in a physical box and forget it. Amanda thinks this is crazy, but it works. When I need one of those papers, I open the box and rummage through it. I always find what I need.

We refer to it as “The Box”, and it is roughly stratified by year. There is at least five years worth of paperwork in the current Box. I hate The Box, but it is an unfortunate necessary part of life.

This came to mind because I rummaged through The Box to find FSA-related paperwork. I found it in about 30 seconds. No need for folders, binders, labels, etc. The Box works.

Dudes talk a lot about how much hair loss sucks (and it does!) but no one prepared me for how horrifying it was when the lady cutting my hair asked me if she could trim my eyebrows.

I forgot to post this a couple weeks ago, but I made an angled cover for Charlie’s sandbox to keep the rain from pooling up in the tarp that was on there.

In the first meeting of a new book club last night we discussed Le Carré’s A Perfect Spy. Next month is Updike’s Pigeon Feathers. We are essentially using this book club for accountability to read books we’ve wanted to read but haven’t made the time for. By knowing we will talk about it together we’ll actually read them. We are a small group and meet virtually, let me know if you are interested!

I tied some flies this week.

Soft hackle pheasant tails, size 14

Killer Kebari, size 14

Zebra midge, size 16

Yarn worms, size 14

The worms are an experiment to see if the wool yarn will work if I seal the ends with resin. I don’t really like chenille.

I know midges are usually tied smaller, but size 16 are the smallest hooks I have right now. I need to get some 18-24. Tried some different beads on those.

I like the look of the partridge feathers more, but find the hen feathers much easier to work with.

What’s next:

Back to tying tenkara flies, both sakasa and jun kebari style.

I want to tie some streamers with yellow marabou. I have a pack of white marabou, which is more than I’ll use in a couple years, so I’m going to try dying some of it. I got a book on natural dyes, and I think I might use some plants from the yard to dye it.

Here are the flies I took out fishing on Friday and Saturday, all tied by me.

I fished the Amawalk outlet on Friday, and explored more of the section below the Wood St Bridge. I hiked a long ways to explore, but I didn’t catch anything. Bummer. I found another scrape, though.

Saturday morning I went to Boyds Corner outlet, the first stream in the West Branch section of the Croton River. Much better day! I didn’t lose any flies despite lots of low tree limbs, the light soft hackle fly landed where I wanted it to most of the time, and I read the water better and found a lot more feeding fish than I did before. I was able to use a single fly the whole time (a size 14 soft hackle pheasant tail that I tied myself).

The stream I fished was super low because of drought, so it was mostly pocket water. The Dragontail Mizuchi triple zoom rod I have is perfect for this situation. I was able to pick apart the pockets quickly and change the rod length based on the surroundings.

I’m feeling pretty good about getting noticeably better, especially on the casting, but I need some help: I had a lot of takes and some of the fish even jumped out of the water taking my line with them, but I wasn’t able to land any of the takes. They jumped off the hook before I got them in. So, I have something to research more and improve upon. I think it might be either how I’m trying to set the hook, or not keeping tension with the rod after hook set.

Don’t get me wrong, it is wonderful to see them jump and to get to watch as a fish takes a fly I tied. I still had a great day, but I’d really like to get them in the net.

I’ll be back to Boyds Corner for sure.

I finally bottled that hot sauce I made.

A nice Thursday morning walk in the woods.

Until next week, I hope for more time to make things and blog about it. I usually do that after Charlie goes to bed, but tonight I had to go back online at 8pm to fix a problem. I’ll try to make up the time in the workshop one afternoon.