Stepping on a Bee's Nest, Part II

As i'm sure you know, I've stepped on a bee's nest. What you don't know is the story of how the weekend ended. And it ended as oddly as it began.
The last day of the trip, we decided to explore an abandoned train tunnel. And yes, it was just as cool as it sounds.

After our trek, we made it back to the car. Which of course didn't start. Now keep in mind, we were hiking towards an abandoned train tunnel, so we were in the middle of nowhere. And before you ask, this was before cell phones. But even if it was today, your cell phone would have been useless. We were that far off the beaten track.
So we hoofed it over to the nearest person's house. Which was a couple of miles down the road. And a nice old lady answered the door, and said we could come on in and use her phone. When we walked in, I was immediately fascinated by her decorating theme. Firepower. I think she could have shot it out with special ops, and not even have batted an eye. This is roughly how I remember her looking:

Finally, we got in touch with a tow truck driver, who said he could be out to us in a little bit. So we walked back to our car, and waited for the tow truck driver. Which is what you will have to do too. Because the tow truck driver is a story for tomorrow.

About Damn Time

It's about damn time. A SEAL team took out Osama Bin Laden. In Pakistan. About damn time we got him. And Pakistan, what the hell? He was apparently in a luxury compound, only a few miles from Pakistan's West Point.

Score one for the U.S.A.


Gotta love the seals.

100th FOLLOWER

asterroid1991


Congratulations buddy! You've won! now all i need is for you to email me your info(god willing US info) and I will ship you your homebrew, and you can enjoy your beer. just shoot me an email.


Congrats and thanks guys to everyone who followed. It means a lot.

100

I seem to be approaching that threshold. 100 followers. So I'm going to have a giveaway. If my 100th follower is from the continental US(sorry foreign folks) I'll send you a couple of my homebrews for following me. Nothing fancy, just a couple of beers from one friend to another.

Good Luck!

And thanks for following.

Have You Ever Stepped on a Bee's Nest?

Well, have you? Because I have. Let me tell you all about it.

We were hiking, my Dad, Laura and I. I was probably 6 or 7 at the time? Maybe 5. Young. Anyway, I had just gotten my first camera for my birthday, and I was itching to try it out on this camping trip. You know how it when you're young, you get something and you want to use it.

Well, it was a 4 hour ride to the campsite. Which is long enough of a wait for a young kid. Then we had to hike to the campsite. I can't be blamed for what happened next. I made it maybe 300 yards from the car before I asked to take a picture of my dad and sister. Of course they agreed. I stepped off the trail a couple of yards and turned around. This is when the trouble started.

As I prepared to make photographic history, my Dad looked down and asked me a question that will stick in my mind forever.

"Phil, why is the ground moving underneath you?"

Turns out, I had stepped on a yellow jacket nest. Something resembling this.


But in my mind, it looked more like this.


We all ran, terrified, from the literal hornets nest I had stirred up. I got stung 3 times, as did my Dad. My sister, however, came out squeaky clean.

Lucky girl.

Decorating Tips

So I need some decorating tips. I currently have, in my bedroom, pencil sketches hung up that my grandfather gave me. It's a pretty classy set up if I do say so myself. And here is where my dilemma comes in.

I recently came into possession of a certain tin. It's a tin of a Miller Lite Nascar, obviously with a big Miller sign behind it. It kind of looks like this.

This one is currently going for $59.95 on Ebay. Exciting stuff.

But when contrasted with pictures that pretty much solely look like this:


My question is, can I hang up that sign? Or would it just look silly next to all of my other pictures.

FLYERS WIN!!!

Last night was a great game to watch if you were a Flyers fan. Everyone got in on the action.





Even this guy scored. I know the all the other goal scorers look like functional members of society, but people assure that Dan Carcillo is in fact a human being, and not just a goon.

But I mean, come on. He has to be an idiot. Look at him!! And he really is just a goon who got lucky.

But I digress. The Flyers made it past possibly the best goaltender in the Eastern Conference, Olympics hero Tim Miller. He let in 4 goals before being pulled yesterday. Now the Flyers await the results of 2 game 7's. Bruins-Habs and Penguins-Lightning.

Who will we play? Who cares, we're still playing. And that's all that matters.

Flyers, Phillies, and Sixers, OH MY!!

So yesterday, in spectacular fashion, the Flyers game back in an elimination game against the Buffalo Sabers, and won it in overtime.

Ville Leino's overtime goal forced a decisive game 7 back in here in Philadelphia. A great sports day for Philly, right?

It get's better. Doc Halladay went 8 and 2/3 innings, and threw a career high tying 14 strikeouts in a 3-1 win over the San Diego Padres. A great outing by the Doc, and the Phillies in general, as their record improves to 15-6, and they remain in 1st place in the NL East.


O yea, and the Sixers beat the Heat. But who really cares about the NBA in Philadelphia?

So did your city have a better sports weekend than mine? Come at me, but I doubt you can take me.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter fair readers. I hope the Easter Bunny brought you a nice basket of candy and whatever else the Easter Bunny brings.


Enjoy the holiday, and I'll post something a little more substantial on Monday.

It's Spring Again

You can always tell when Spring is really here. At least I always can. You can have your warm days, your rain showers, and plants growing from bulbs. Maybe you even see your first dandelions. But it isn't really Spring until you break out one tool.

The lawnmower. And I had to mow yesterday, for the first time this Spring. The first of what I'm sure will be many times this year. I used to absolutely hate mowing the lawn. What is there to like about it? It's hot, sweaty, dusty, boring work. But somebody has to do it.

Now though, I really don't mind the whole mowing the lawn thing. Well, I mind it in the heat of August. But yesterday it wasn't too hot or dusty. And I listened to the radio while I mowed, so I wasn't that bored either.

And besides. It's always nice to know Spring has finally sprung.

Homebrew Club

I had homebrew club last night.


I brought and IPA and an American Brown. And for the first time, I got good reviews!

My IPA was a nice hoppy IPA, that has stood the test of time pretty well, it has a nice hoppy nose, with a little hint of caramel. The body of the beer is good, and the hop flavor is nice and strong. And the swallow and aftertaste leaves hops on your palate exactly the way I wanted it to.

My Brown Ale went over well too. Despite a small lactobacillus infection.

It tasted great and I had a couple return visits to that bottle. So i'll have to put that on the brew again list.

All in all, I was pretty pleased with the meeting. After going to meetings for year, and constantly having things wrong with my beer, it's nice to know that I learned the lessons I had to learn to make good beer. Only one problem.

Now that I've made good beer, I need to make great beer.

National High Five Day

Let's all take a moment to celebrate a holiday that is very important for our national psyche. National high Five Day.

I think everyone knows how to celebrate this day too. Of course it's with lemonade and high fives. So get out there and celebrate! Friends, strangers, it doesn't matter, just go give out high fives!

And, Hey there Internet Friend, come on, you know you want to...


Bam. Happy Holidays.

Stephen King

I feel as though I haven't written any book review posts lately. So, after realizing how many people read Stephen King, I have decided to put up a Stephen King post.

Stephen King has written some pretty famous stories. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Cujo, It, Pet Semetary, Salem's Lot, Carrie, The Body(Stand By Me). The list goes on. But in my opinion, some of his best stories are his short stories. In anthologies such as Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Stephen King writes some of his most suspenseful work, and many of these tales only last 8 pages.

A prime example is the short story, The Ledge. In the 8 page Ledge, Stephen King puts as much suspense and fear in your mind as he does in the biblically long Salem's Lot. And in Nightshift, a short story about cleaning an abandoned warehouse, Stephen King strikes terror into your heart in 10 pages. It took 100 pages of Pet Semetary to start getting scared.

And not all of his short stories are scary. The Body, though tense at parts, is not scary. Neither is The Green Mile, and yet both of these stories sold well as books, and went on to be turned into classic movies.

So if I can offer a piece of reading advice, go read some Stephen King. And if you don't want to read a terribly long book, or get scared, there are still options for you.

Enjoy, and as always, have fun getting scared.

Recently, at my House...

First off, let me say, I hate ellipses. I mean, really, who even uses them anymore? I don't know any real application for them...

But in other news, an exercise machine was just purchased and put in the Schwarz basement. This is what it looks like.

Essentially. Now, upon viewing this you probably realize that the whole point of this machine is to exercise your abs by placing your knees on the black cups, holding on to the handles, and swinging back and forth.

You would be dead wrong.

The true workout from this machine, and it is harder than you would imagine, is getting on and off. It is not exactly the most balanced machine, and the knees cups swing side to side. So getting on and off is like trying to kneel on top of a horse and getting your knees in the stirrups.

I suppose you could try to exercise by swinging back and forth, but only if you have the endurance of a marathon champion, since it takes about 3 hours to get on and off this thing.

Or does it....

Hip Hop Marmalade spic And span

Met you one summer and it all began


Ahh pop music. Some people criticize the lyrics being written today as garbage. For example, let's examine a sone by some name kedollarha.(I refuse to spell her name with the $ sign she uses).
Wake up in the mornin' feelin' like P- Diddy (Hey what's up girl)
Grab ma glasses I'm out the door I'm gonna hit the city (Let's go)
Before I leave brush ma teeth with a bottle of Jack
'Cuz when I leave for the night I ain't comin back
Kedollarha "Tik Tok"


Shakespeare would be proud of the place that this:

has taken the English language. I know when Shakespeare was writing Hamlet, he envisioned a time when people would be putting the beautiful act of brushing your teeth with bourbon to song.


And it doesn't end there.

God knows why she decided to go out wearing a bunch of London Broils. Maybe she eats raw meat. And I refuse to put down lyrics to poker face, because frankly, it is musical vomit.


But the whole reason I put these "artists"(their words, not mine) down on this page, is because I want to contrast them with my favorite pop band ever, LFO.


LFO was terrible, I have no idea what they looked like, and to the best of my knowledge they were laughed out of the music industry. But instead of brushing their teeth with hard liquor, or ruining a perfectly good steak by wearing it as clothes, LFO wrote this:
You're the best girl that I ever did see,
The great Larry Bird Jersey 33
When you take a sip you buzz like a hornet
Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets


and later on, in the same song:
There was a good man named Paul Revere
I feel much better baby when you're near
You love fun dip and cherry Coke,
I like the way you laugh when I tell a joke


Come on people. What happened to us? Now we have to listen to a crazy lady sing about god knows what, and some girl talk into a microphone about bourbon toothpaste. When we could have LFO!!! Or similar lighthearted pop!!! 


I ask you, youth of today, When did you lose your innocence?


I'll leave you with this:
Sometimes its black
Sometimes its white
Sometimes shes wrong
Sometimes im right
Sometimes we talk about it or we figure it out
But then she just changed her mind

My First Trip of the Season

I guess enough time has passed since my first fishing trip of the season to post an update. Here is essentially the results of my fishing trip to Lake Hopewell.
Dad-4
Philmin-0

Yea, I got handed a good oldfashoined buttwhooping by the denizens of the deep. Got to see some hunting Ospreys though, and they always came out of the water without a fish too. So my Dad not only bested me, he bested the 3 or 4 Ospreys flying around.

We got to see the new Beaver lodge the beaver made. I don't know why he abandoned the old lodge for the new one, but he is cutting down some trees I don't approve of. On this particular lake, there are two small islands. And on these islands, there are some really cool trees. The stereotypical horror movie trees you only see on islands in the center of lake. The kinds of trees that have legends about how the devil strikes down anyone who attempts to cut them down. Unless the cutter is a beaver, and then he is good to go.

In short, we saw some birds, some beavers, and some bass. Well, my dad saw some bass, I didn't see any. But there's always next time.

Something Big Happened 150 Years Ago Yesterday

So i forgot to post yesterday about this, but it bears mentioning. 150 years ago yesterday, this guy:

fired a cannon at this little fort:

And thus began the bloodiest conflict in American history. Over the next four years, millions of men would fight, and hundreds of thousands would die. 2% of the population died in the war. Slaves were freed. Many historians call it the most pivotal time in our nation's history. And it turned 150 years old yesterday.

Needles

A post by a follower of mine made me think. I have been pricked by a lot of needles in my day. I mean, besides the normal flu shots, that time I needed a tetanus shot because I got a fish hook in my eye, and generic needles everyone gets as a kid, I have had a lot of needles.

I had allergy shots for 4 years. My mom would take me to allergy shots once a week, and I would get 3 shots. Turns out, among other things I'm allergic to, I'm allergic to dust mites and grass pollen. And cats. But I guess cats are a lot harder to put into shot form compared to grass pollen and dust mites. Anyway, those shots were small, and didn't really hurt that much.

In college I started to donate blood. At first I just donated the normal way, one pint at a time, every 60 days. I donated somewhere between 15 to 20 pints before I moved up to the big leagues of blood donation. I started doing apherysis(I have no idea how to spell it). During the aforementioned procedure, you have a needle put in each arm, and lay there for 2 hours while they pull plasma from your blood. Though this takes longer than average blood donations, the Red Cross will let you donate 20 times a year this way. Which is a lot more than the 6 times you can donate whole blood.

So in summation, and staying completely on topic, donate blood with the Red Cross. It helps out your fellow man, doesn't take very long, and is a generally good thing to do. So get donating!

A New Fear

I realized today that I am quite frankly afraid of heights. It seems that this fear is directly related to my relative height as well. As a young kid, I remember racing my neighbor up the blue spruce in my side yard to see who could get higher. We could both make it up about 20 feet of tree in roughly 3 or 4 minutes. Not bad for 9 year olds.

But now, when I climb a ladder at work, I climb this:

But I feel like I'm climbing this:

I realize this is silly, but today at work, as I was trying to change a light bulb in a ceiling fixture. I started sweating, and I felt like I was about to fall. I almost dropped a fluorescent ligh(apparently a bad thing) and I managed to put in the new lightbulb. 

I just wish I knew why this fear started to manifest itself recently. Ahh well, can't win em all.

Fishing Stories

Seeing as fishing time is right around the corner, and as my fishing buddy so perfectly put it, it can't come soon enough. So, for the next few days, I plan on regaling you readers with some of my greatest fishing stories. And why save the best for last when you can use the best first?


THE BIGGEST FISH I'VE EVER SEEN
What follows is the story of the biggest fish I have ever seen. I didn't catch it. My Dad, however, did. Well sort of at least. He got it right next to the boat. I could have hit it with a canoe paddle, which in fishing terms, means that we caught it, and have accurate measurements for it.

Let me set the mood. It was a dark and stormy night, and my father and I were fishing underneath the 219 bridge on Deep Creek Lake. We were using live bait, and fishing for walleye, just to see if we could catch something. And that is when the night took a turn for the adventurous. My Dad hooked into a MONSTER.

I'm not kidding, it had to be about 7-8 feet long and weigh probably 200-300 pounds. Or thereabouts. It was a Northern Pike, the state record pike in fact. And as my dad coaxed the fish in on the light tackle we were using it swam into view. And when we saw the 12 foot long, 500 pound beast, it shocked us with its pure size. Let me use common everyday objects to demonstrate it's sheer size.  The snout on the leviathan was about the size of an aircraft carrier.

It's back was about the size of a tractor trailer.

And I have to believe the teeth would have made a T-Rex jealous.

Anyway, we managed to see the 1000 pound, 20 foot long leviathan a couple of times before it snapped my Dad's line. Ahh well, if only we had a net, or for that matter a boat, big enough to hold this toothy beast. But we didn't.

Needless to say, we have since remedied this, and gotten a slightly bigger net. We can now handle 4 to 5 pound bass with no problems. Oh, and I know you want to see a picture of the fish itself. Here's a picture of the beast from the night in question.

Pretty big, right?