and now for something completely different....

[wesw]

...a nice and pleasant topic.

I m curious, what do you guys do for fun?

it could be as simple as a crossword or as extravagant as a French vacation.

it all counts. if it makes you happy it counts.

lately, I ve been crabbing.

I had gotten to the point where I couldn t bend and dip handlines anymore, not enjoyably anyway, so this year ive come up with a new method.

I have a couple hundred feet of trotline rigged up (soon to be three hundred feet)

I have a couple of buckets that I drilled large holes in and and made floatations rings for out of floaty noodles.

I tie chicken necks or eel or bull lips about every 8 feet using snood knots.

there is a small piece of chain a rope a float another small chain and then the trot line and then the same chain and float set up on the other end.

I wade out with my bucket and feed out the trotline and then I walk it every once in a while and net the crabs and put them in my floaty bucket which is attached to my belt with a short rope.

no bending, and im kinda weightless in the water so it doesn t aggravate my sciatica too much.

walking thru the water is good exercise too, it is a good workout for my waning muscles....

I have been sore, but a good kind of sore, not the insidious type of sore that eats your soul....

I m loving it.

it only costs about 20 bucks for the days outing and yesterday I got about 2 dozen hard crabs, andone soft crab.

I think that crabs are selling for over 30 bucks a dozen right now, so I m ahead of the game.

I like to do try to grow and catch things cheaply, it makes me feel like a man.

all my garden cages are made from tree trimmings and I fabbed my own crabbing rig.

fishing weather will be back soon!!!!

anything float your boat?

[Burning Petard]

Near-by volunteer fireman have scheduled an all-you-can-eat crab feast for 40 bucks a head in September. Sounds like a bargain. Includes beer and some other stuff as well as crabs. But not for me. Crabs are just not worth the effort and the sore fingers, IMNSHO.

For fun--I read: real books, kindle, and stuff online (like here) but no social media. I walk in the woods, which are so very different from the woods of northwestern Missouri. And I talk to people, some fiends, [later edit: What A Freudian Slip! some are friends.] some strangers.

snailgate.

[wesw]

I have two dozen crabs to pick BP.....

I ate most of the claws last night.... they re easy.

I prefer to just pick them all at once and save the meat for crabcakes...

picking and eating is just a pain in the ass to me.

I rip them all apart, and rinse all crappy mustard off, (yuck!!!!)

then its not too bad. I m no expert picker, but I m passable in a pinch.

my better half turned allergic to shell fish about two years ago. she enjoyed picking crabs so I had it easy.

unfortunately for her, crabs were her favorite food.

it is hard on the fingers tho, as I get older.

my hands are still fairly hard from years of steel fab, and guitar playing, but my finger joints are not worth much.

[wesw]

i miss reading.

i grew up walking to school with a book open before me.

i ran into a lamppost once.

i need readers now, and they give me a head ache.

i can read fine on the computer, but it isn t the same as getting comfortable with a good book, huh?

i wish that there was a decent newspaper left in the land, i gave them up. they all suck.

breakfast and a paper was a simple pleasure for most of my life.

[Big RR]

If you're having problems with commercial readers, see an eye doctor and get a pair made. They can be adjusted to fit your eyes, and it is possible that there is a difference between the correction needed for each eye. In any event, use of readers should not be a problem--you just need the right pair.

[RayThom]

"Squirrel Hunting"

[Scooter]

Ripping the wings off of butterflies.
Drowning puppies.
Cooking live cats in my microwave.
Running down small children in the street.
Eating sausages made from aborted fetuses.
All the things that we freedom-hating socialists enjoy.

[BoSoxGal]

Libraries carry large print editions of most books to accommodate the failing eyesight of older patrons; I often check out one of the LP editions of books on my library list even though I have prescription glasses - which I need exactly because I have two different strength eyes and use of readers alone would give me headaches and according to the optometrist, exacerbate the age-related weakening of my eye muscles.

Walmart does glasses very affordably, and if you can’t bear even that cost, reach out to the Lions Club - they’ll assist anyone in need of vision aids. Nobody should do without the love of reading because of uncorrected vision problems.

[MajGenl.Meade]

i miss reading

That's fairly obvious.

I had difficulty finding the best reading glasses. Squint as I may in pharmacies, I could never read the magnification promised on each pair. Trial and error eventually yielded 2.0 was best for me.

[Joe Guy]

I enjoy buying live chicken necks, eel and bull lips and setting them free.

[Guinevere]

I grew up crabbing off my grandparents dock, with chicken necks on a string. It’s an old tried and true method.

And I love picking crabs. It’s not for the end product (a pile of meat) but the process. It’s a social thing, eating crabs in a group. At my grandparents eastern shore place - a private “club” they owned with several other families —we would always have crabs on Saturday night. After a day on the Bay, out in the sun and air and water, or working in the gardens, it was fun for us kids and I’m sure entirely relaxing for our parents and grandparents - to sit back and have a slow social meal. We spent hours on the crabs. Always had crab soup and corn and tomatoes and probably a casserole or hot dogs, too. Beers for the adults. You have to think about the setting - a warm Maryland summer night on the water, no rush, the chance to sit down and visit and not move for a while. Kids running around totally safe. I appreciate how special that time was, even more so for the adults then for us kids. So yeah, picking crabs is totally nostalgic for me. I’ll never say no to a crab feast.

[wesw]

yep, guin, good memories....

the crabs scurrying around on the kitchen floor as the young kids squealed and stood on chairs....

my grandmother always made crab soup too....

and we had lima beans corn and tomatoes....., and cucumbers and onions...., and if we were lucky some nice soft cornbread......

[Scooter]

Was that before or after y'all piled into a rusty pickup and went to a cross burning?

[RayThom]

Was that before or after y'all piled into a rusty pickup and went to a cross burning?

Funny stuff, though.

[Econoline]

yep, guin, good memories....

the crabs scurrying around on the kitchen floor as the young kids squealed and stood on chairs....

my grandmother always made crab soup too....

and we had lima beans corn and tomatoes....., and cucumbers and onions...., and if we were lucky some nice soft cornbread......

You lost me at "lima beans"...YUCK!

[wesw]

baby limas, corn and tomatoes..., succotash was what we called it....

it ll stick to your innards.......

[rubato]

Lima beans! They're not beets but they're not exactly edible either.

yrs,
rubato

[wesw]

you have to cook the baby limas til they are buttery soft...., plenty of salt and pepper.....

butter beans are one of my favorite beans, and black eyed peas..., not sure if they are beans tho.....

navy beans and ham...., yummylicious......

[wesw]

....and I think that you can make tie-dye out of beets, but they ain t for eatin'..., 'lessen you got you some hogs.....

[Econoline]

Lima beans! They're not beets but they're not exactly edible either.
rubato

• THIS.