Catching Up

It has been a bit since I have written a blog, the winter seems to be well past and a few things have happened I thought I would share.

Most important to Andrea and I was the just concluded visit of Jessica, “her man” Chris and their beautiful 21 month old baby Alisha. We spent a glorious week with our granddaughter, and it has been the highlight of our years in Manitoba. We truly enjoyed our time with Jessica and Chris, this is the first time we have gotten to spend more than a few minutes in passing with them in years, and it makes us very proud to see the young woman she has grown into. There is a touch of sadness though as Johnathan and his Andrea have two beautiful children we have not had enough time with either. It is a wonderful thing how much joy grandchildren can bring to your life.

On another note, I am just about done my time at Monarch as the Safety officer at the foundry. I have been struggling for a bit with the position and some stuff that has happened. An opportunity came up for a new position at a very large company in this area named Décor Cabinets. They have created a position for a Safety Manager and intrigued I applied. There was a real good interview where I was able to offer my vision of a safety program and obviously there was something there they thought was worthwhile. To make a long story short I was offered the position and accepted starting Monday may 11^th, which coincidentally is also my mother’s birthday so I take that as a positive sign.

In other news both our fish tanks are doing well, we do enjoy spending the evenings watching them, it was quite interesting to see how much Jessica and Chris enjoyed spending time watching them as well.

We did something very unique for us this year; we never bought a golf membership. This is the first time in a dozen years but we intend to play a bunch of courses when we want and enjoy other things like our boat a little bit, although given the lack of water in this area (a few small lakes) and the length of drive to any decent size lakes we have tossed the idea around of selling the boat and buying kayaks, we will try the boat in a couple of more lakes first though.

The other thing that will distract us is the motorcycles, I have been out a few times and will be riding most days once I start at Décor as I will be able to park the bike there without the residue in the air from the foundry eating up all the chrome. Andrea is a little more tentative until the spring winds stop howling, better safe than sorry. It is hard to explain to someone that has not experienced the wind on the open prairie what it is like to drive in it, so being cautious for a new rider is a wise thing.

Getting Harassed

Yes really, I am being harassed by my darling daughter on the dreadful facebook to post another blog showing pictures of my aquarium and my mother is liking it!!! Well I guess its working because here I am writing again...this will be all about my beautiful aquarium and what we have done so far.

The aquarium is 135 gallons for the display tank and 35 gallons for the sump that is where the cleaning takes place. It normally takes a couple of months to prepare a tank to support aquatic life but because Andrea had been storing rock in her tank and I had another separate tank preparing rock as well I was able to start off quickly. The rock houses the essential bacteria to stabilize the water. Therefore I was able to start using my tank immediately, so here are some pictures.

As you can see it is a different style than Andrea's, hers has the back wall blacked out and is designed to be viewed front on. Mine is a see through  or peninsula style with all the gear on one end. Because we are able to see through it we chose to place it in the doorway from the dining room we do not use, into the living room. (Yes there is a separate entrance into the living room) This way we can see it from the kitchen and great room as well as the living room.

Some of the contents are:

Regal Blue Tang

Yellow tang

Two Blue Green Chromis (third is hiding) and the RBT. The chromis appear different colours depending on the light, I am still waiting for a special order of Blue Reef Chromis as well.

Keyhole Angel - sorry the picture is blurry but this guy is FAST and I have not figured out how to get him to pose. As you can see from the Regal Blue Tang in several pictures, he is a bit of a showoff.

This is the most colourful attractive fish in either tank, a Coral Beauty Angel, he like the keyhole Angel is extremely fast and not given to posing. His true colours are a deep blue frame with brilliant markings vertically along the sides.

I also have some very cool corals, first up is a Devils Hand Leather, it is the only somewhat mature coral I have.

This is my bubble tip Anemone, very nice white that picks up great colouration from my lights.

This is called a Feather Duster, it is actually a worm. It has a long tube in the rocks and the feather duster waves in the current to collect food. When it gets a special morsel it instantly just disappears into the tube for a few seconds until it devours it and pops right back out.  In the background upper left there is a Gold Tip Hammer, it really is golden coloured but my tank light setting makes it look odd in this shot.

Here we have a gorgonian, very young that was gifted to me by the live fish store we frequent when I expressed interest in the sea sponge it is attached to. The sea sponge is in very poor health and the two brothers that run the lfs (local fish store)are marine biologists expect it to not survive. This likely because someone exposed it to air at some point, that is a death sentence to a sea sponge. They gave it to me so I could try and nurse it back to health, so far it is stable, no further loss of colouration but it is not advancing either. You can see little spots of brilliant red, those are the live spots, the whole thing should be that colour, we will see what happens.

These are just some of the very colourful soft corals I am starting to grow, several pictures in a row. There is no way to describe how they look in the evening when we have the deep blue LED lights on in the aquariums and that colour spectrum makes everything seem to glow. You have to see it to appreciate the colouration these produce. Luckily we are able to trade for most of these because some of the more colourful ones are priced from 40.00 a head and up. They reproduce in the tanks and once they start spreading they act like a weed. We then get to frag them off and trade them for other stuff or sell them. The ones in the top picture actually came from Andreas tank.

This is one of my mushrooms, it actually came from Andreas tank as well, it was a good size and splitting so I fragged a piece for my tank and it is thriving and growing right off its plug (plugs are ceramic disks you glue frags / the pieces of coral you harvest to so they have a stable base)

 The next three pictures are of another mushroom, I captured some of its colours fairly well in the first shot, the others I tried some different camera settings. There is a large snail on the top cleaning off all the algie, in the first picture you can see a single polyp growing, it was just a hint of a dark dot on the plug when I bought the mushroom, looks like it will grow into a nice red one. The second picture is a lighting shot for the fun of it. The third picture has a zoomed out shot that will show several colours of soft corals.

For a splash of colour, see my red cardinals below, I bought three but only two made it to my tank (Andrea!!)

I mentioned when I first talked about getting this tank that I ordered a light, well the light came and all my soft corals liked it but it did not have enough power to grow hard corals so I sold it and bought another more powerful light. I am still learning to make the lighting do what I want as it is a four channel controller instead of the normal two channels. As you can see in the pictures the brushed aluminum looks very nice on the tank.

One of these nights Andrea and I will do a night shoot on both of our tanks and try to capture some of the brilliant colouration.

Until next time, stop harassing me Jessica Lorraine :)

Happy Anniversary Dad and Mom

First, Merry Christmas everyone, hope you were all blessed to spend time enjoying family and friends. We were blessed by some great weather if you like temperatures in the freezing range, they are quite enjoyable except that they were accompanied by days of freezing drizzle. The temperatures are now back down into the -20 range with wind chills forecast at -40 the next few days.

It is Mom and Dads anniversary this week and I know they will not see this until after they get home from spending the holidays with my sister. Happy Anniversary to my wonderful parents.

Speaking of anniversary - Andrea and I have been together for 12 years this month, still a lucky man I am.

Next up is my birthday, we never really had any plans to do anything special but that changed I guessed. I have been running a 20 gallon salt water tank for a while and have been looking for a larger tank that will support more fish. It seemed every time we found something that would be the right size it was way over priced junk. There was one decent tank for sale, the guy had bought it from the same place we had bought Andrea's so we knew it was an amazing quality tank. He is selling it because the overflow is one the end so it was not the style he wanted and he had only had it about a month. We decided to buy it and use it as a room divider between the dining room and living room. The new tank will be 54 inches long, 24 inches wide and 24 inches deep. It is rated at 130 gallons (US) and like her's is made from starfire glass. We went and looked at the tank yesterday and it was literally mesmerizing, I had to literally pull Andrea away. The plan is to pick it up on the first, it is going to take a few days for the current owner to empty it out and get it ready to move.
Here is what it looks like in his basement. I will be using a different type of lighting, I ordered a light bar made by Orbit Marine that will be a bar that basically is almost the full length of the tank. As you can see it is meant to be enjoyed from both sides and we will be able to see it from the kitchen, dining room, great room and living room so it will be a great show piece much like Andrea's.

We are really excited to see how our grand children like the tanks, it looks like Ally will be the first to get to see the tanks but she should find them fairly entrancing...

In the meantime my little Christmas vacation is over, back to work in the morning, there is some really big projects going on as we are doing a major expansion of our production capacity and more modernization. With everyone from the production side on vacation it is time for our projects department and maintenance crew to get things done - of course that means I get to do what I do best: watch other people work LOL.

Andrea and Noah are on holidays until the 5th so they will get some nice time together. We have had several plans to go ice fishing but every time they have fallen through, but we will get there, likely not while we are getting -40 windchill's.

IMPREZA

Well after taking a weekend off from writing, I am back. A lot has happened since I last wrote. To start with I guess the big news is no surprise - Andrea replaced my VW Golf with a 2011 Subaru Impreza WRX. I mentioned she was looking at it last time, well she took it for a test drive (I had to go to ensure the passenger seat was adequate) and she quickly bought it. I guess it is safe to say Merry Christmas Andrea, it really is quite a car. We have made two trips to Winnipeg and is very impressive, rides solid and comfortable but is so sporty!!! The AWD system is amazing, we have constant ice patches on the road here and as much as in some ways I hate having traction control it is the only thing that makes driving easy in the truck, in the Subaru it does not seem to matter it just pulls and tracks like crazy. The leather seats are an adventure, I need the seat belt to stay in place when she touches the brakes...anyway it is good to see her having fun driving. I guess buying a bike woke her out of here slumber!!!

The VW will not be going to waste, I will drive it occasionally over the winter to keep it in good shape and then Jessica, Chris and Allie are flying up the 25th of April, they are driving the car home and it will give them a quality family vehicle for many years. Of course they will be here for Andrea's birthday to so that will be pretty exciting.

I had a great conversation with Johnathan last weekend as well, Andrea and I are planning to fly Mom and Dad up next summer if Dad is up to the trip and John, his Andrea and the kids would like to come up at the same time...it would be so very cool if that can work out.

On a personal note I am about two days from being windows free, (at home at least). I had to make a hard choice when I went back to school - I needed a quality fast light laptop, I went with an Asus Ultrabook and it was a great laptop for the purpose but I was very torn between that and a Macbook Air. I did hope that the touch screen and windows eight on the Asus would make it worth sticking with windows. I can say I just do not use the touch screen and I do not like windows eight any more than the other versions. Andrea has bought me a new Macbook Air for Christmas and I will be very happy to get it (I am getting it early) and move everything over to it. I am not a huge Apple fan - I do not think that Apple does anything special, but my Apple devices do something my Android and windows devices do not do - they just plain work, simple efficient and effective. Not perfect but reliable...and if Apple develops a new operating system they give it to you for free...

The downside is I ordered it online, Futureshop had it on sale for cyber Monday so a good price and free shipping..I decide to pay the extra 20.00 for express post, two day shipping means I should have it fast...right...NOT. I am hugely disappointed in Futureshop, it basically took them three days to get it moving, and then of course to expect Canada Post to actually give you what you pay for, duh, I guess I should have just drove into the city and picked it up, would have cost well under 20.00 in the VW and been faster by at least a week...I have ordered from several other retailers including Best Buy for electronics, several times and never this issue. I have ordered golf clubs from California and had them faster several times. The firearms dealer where I order the majority of my hard to get stuff from has it to me from Alberta in two to three days...anyway enough whining about futureshop, I do not have to buy from them again.

In other news, the twenty gallon aquarium Andrea had bought me for my birthday a couple of years ago was essentially going to waste. It had a couple of fish left but it was really just sitting in the basement being ignored, we sold the remaining fish and emptied the tank. I decided I wanted to use it as a miniature (properly named Nano) saltwater aquarium so I cleaned it carefully to get rid of all the left over fresh water algae and residue. Andrea had a left over bag of live sand so we moved everything upstairs and filled it with saltwater, added the sand and let it settle. Saturday we had to go find Andrea a new dress for my Christmas party at work next weekend (she will look GORGEOUS) so I bought a cheap wave maker, a couple of fish and some rock to place corals on once the tank is ready. The initial setup looks very sharp but I will need a much better light to grow corals so I will be watching the sales, I know which one I want. In the meantime I have three blue - green chromos in the tank with a couple of pieces of Andrea's rock to "seed" the tank faster.

Until next time...Geoff and Andrea

Well its over

Well the 2014 whitetail deer season came to an end. None of us shot a deer this year, not from lack of opportunity but from lack of quality. We are not sure how many of the deer will make it through the winter but we can feel good that we left some quality young deer and never seen any of the mature deer we had on camera during daylight hours.

There is a strong rumour going out here that the only reason they never cancelled the season this year was because outfitters already had bookings confirmed when they understood the devastation from the severe winter, they also claim outfitters have been told not to book anything for the 2015 season..we will have to wait to see how that plays out. Worse case scenario we will put a lot more effort in duck and goose hunting next year.

Winter is well underway already this year again, last year we had temperatures in the -25 -30 range plus windchill. We had lots of deer and deer sign, there was a couple of inches of snow on the ground and lots of deer movement. This year it was cold right up to the weekend but never as cold as last year, Saturday it hit +3 and was damp. Sunday morning we woke up to -5 and ice fog, followed shortly by snow flurries and high winds. Needless to say, we never seen a deer all weekend, not even a bit of fresh sign.

It was easy to pack it in midday given the weather and lack of sign.

Monday will bring a new adventure, Andrea has been looking to replace the VW golf for a while, she finally decided on a Subaru Impreza WRX, we looked at few over the last few months and - we seen one Saturday at the Honda dealer where we bought our bikes this summer and although I almost got away with driving by, well not really I had to go back. There is now a hold for Andrea sign in the window...a 2011 with 33,000 Kmh.

all wheel drive and fun,should be good if she decides to go that route. I guess we will know soon.

One weekend Left in Whitetail Season

Well where to start LOL, I am not sure. Last weekend we went to camp for four glorious days, went up Friday night and hunted Saturday and Sunday for muzzle loader season, then Monday and Tuesday for center fire rifle season.

Saturday was a cold morning without much wind so I went to my "honey hole" stand for first light. I was there for about 90 minutes when this little fellow came out to play around in the hollow.

The picture actually makes him look a lot larger than he is, I doubt he would have field dressed a 100 lbs...but he spent 40 mins entertaining me that morning. Just after he left a large bodied deer ran through further up the hill through the heavy brush. Could not tell if it was a buck or doe but it was not hanging around to tell me.

Andrea never found a thing around her stand so we went in for brunch and a nap lol. Those 0500 wake ups are hard on the body lol. We went back out at 1430 and sure enough the young fellow came through again. Again Andrea's stand was a bust.

Sunday morning I was back in the "honey hole" and I had a treat as this fellow came to play around...

Even though he is a fork horn he is actually smaller than the spike above. Take note of the nice sunny weather and dry ground. Saturday evening the spike came back to see me. Still not convinced he was worth shooting, a .50 cal muzzle loader at 40 yds would put holes in him to large to leave him one piece. I had him back again Monday morning for the center fire opener, my new marlin 3030 with its Bushnell legend 2 X 7 X 32 had him all lined up and all I could do was count ribs. I am not sure there is enough there to bother with so again I passed.

Andrea had another opinion, she figured the deer was worth shooting based on the pictures, so, she has taken over my stand in the honey hole effective Monday afternoon. I moved to a stand on top of the hill above the honey hole. I have seen a lot of deer there and it is where I shot my deer last year. The issue with the stand is that it is no good in the predominate west winds. I was able to enjoy a nice evening in that stand Monday afternoon and hoped I would see another big deer cross in the brush between me and Andrea...sure enough we both seen it, no chance for either of us to get a shot though the heavy brush though. We went to bed that night with great intentions, the weather gods however had other ideas. We awoke Tuesday to bitter cold, high wind and of course this,

We walked around and not a track to be found, we decided to make a shooting lane down the fence line so that if the wind cooperated we could possibly get a shot at the big deer that has been ghosting the brush...

One of our water jugs had broke so we had to run to Baldur and get extra water Monday and come Tuesday with the bad weather and lots to do before work Wednesday we decide to call it a trip and headed home at lunch time.

Three days later we were back again, things are a little different now, the ground is covered in snow, the wind has a vicious bite and the temps are not reaching pleasant highs. We started Saturday morning the same way, Andrea went to the honey hole, she was going shoot the spike horn if it was foolish enough to show up.  It showed up, Andrea of course put her cross hairs on it, then she to started counting ribs...the spike horn entertained her for a bit and then departed.

Monday I tried another area on the property but I think that particular area is only used at night and I never seen a thing. Andrea never seen anything Saturday afternoon either, but we did find that it was nicer in the afternoon as it was only about -15 as opposed to -25 in the morning.

Sunday morning brought brutal wind chills and a damp NW wind, we went down to the honey hole and Andrea took the stand while I went a couple hundred yards east to the fence line. We sat out in the brutal wind for a couple of hours but decided that no deer worth shooting would be out in that crap. We called it a weekend.

We got out just in time, we hit the secondary road that is two miles east of camp and the snow was crazy. By the time we were to the secondary highway it was near whiteout, snow squalls driven by 70 Kmh winds were great fun as there times we had to drive 10 kmh just trying to see the road.

We will be back next weekend for the final try, not sure about the deer thing. A couple of guys told me they are all herding up already. I am not sure we will take anything but a decent bodied deer, there are enough on camera at night...

On another note, I know I mentioned the Winchester 7mm WSM I picked up last time I wrote, but I did not have it in hand...I received it and was quite surprised, I thought I had bought a basic M70 classic, I actually got a M70 ultimate shadow...

It is the most balanced easy handling bolt action rifle I have ever found, I can't wait until the weather cooperates to start load development.

Til next week...

Finally Hunting

Well we have had quite a couple of weeks. Not quite sure where to start, I have been busy playing with my gun collection but first let’s talk muzzle loaders. We bought muzzle loaders a few years ago but never actually used them so after my shoulder surgery and not being to hold my bow at draw we thought maybe we should try out the muzzle loading thing to extend our hunting season as rifle season is only two weeks and we have to shoot a buck with antlers more than 4 inches this year.

Last weekend we sighted in our muzzle loaders and learned how to use them. This weekend we hunted for the first time with the muzzle loaders. We never had an opportunity to take a shot but it was great to get out hunting again.

It was a hard week waiting to go back up but I have been suitably preoccupied with my rifle collection, additions and subtractions. I first decided to let go of my 308 – I bought the rifle last fall with the idea I might use it for a tree stand rifle and never even fired it. Gave up on the model 7 260 experiment and I ended up buying a Marlin 3030 as I have always loved a lever action bush rifle. 

I do have an affliction with highly accurate flat shooting stainless steel rifles as well. I do have a couple of blued rifles, a 243 carbine Noah is using, and of course the 3030. To replace the 308 I bought a Savage Weather Warrior in 270 WSM. I had a savage 270 WSM last year and foolishly let it go, it was a super accurate rifle and fun to shoot so I am hoping the stainless model with the improved stock will be even better.

The Savage 270 WSM

I have also been daydreaming about having a high quality rifle in the nearly extinct calibre of 7 mm WSM. I have had a thing for 7 mm Magnum rifles ever since I bought my own first center fire rifle, I have had many over the years (a disease I inherited from my father according to Mom) but not a 7 mm WSM – I love the idea of having the 7 mm Magnum performance in a short action non-belted cartridge. The idea that it is such a ballistic treat but yet not embraced is hard to comprehend. Many writers tend to blame it on the “American” effect – if it is named in a metric convention it will not sell, yet the standard 7mm Rem mag does quite well year after year. I think it has more to do with mass media, the writers that “know everything” and write like they do have much more influence than common sense or useful application. The idea that improving a cartridge from a belted long semi efficient cartridge case to a short un-belted cartridge case that is more efficient and equally useful.  A lot of words to say I found one I really like so I snagged it and sold my 708AI. The 708AI is a great rifle but is has largely been supplanted by my 260 Rem in a Tikka stainless Hunter that will literally shoot one hole groups with 120gr Nosler Ballistic Tip Hunting bullets. 

The Winchester Classic in 7mm WSM

The Winchester Classic in 7mm WSM

The Tikka T3

So enough about my toys, we went up to camp Friday night and arrived just after dark. It was quite cold and windy so we lit the fire and made supper. Up early and out for our first hunt of the year. It really seemed like we had gone a year without hunting as confusion reined but we got out there. I spooked three deer on my way in and we never saw another one that day or Sunday morning. The wind was very harsh, actually shaking the camp Friday night and remained high until after 5 pm Saturday.

Sunday morning brought cool crisp air, just a breathe of wind and nothing but squirrels and bluejays making a racket. Oh well next weekend we have four day weekend as Andrea and I both took Monday the 10th off and the 11th is a stat holiday for all three of us. It will give us an extra opportunity to try and get a shot at this guy...

or maybe

if we get really lucky then one of us will get a shot at this

Yes that is off our trail cams, all them are...til next time.