We have taken even more steps to fix the internet problem. Cheryl has purchased me a new phone and now I have "unlimied" Wifi and internet Hot spot capabilities. We shall see how long this lasts.
Is this considdered "running"?
For now, though, it appears to be working. I will have to keep my blogging to a minimum as I have to do all the Etsy questions and Cheryl has to print labels and look up orders. In other words, during the stocking time, looks like my blogging will take a hit.
Dont let this happen to you!
Not too big a deal. I rarely feel like blogging after a long day of stockings anyway. I just post a picture or two. Not a problem... for now. We shall see when I have loads of free time and nothing to do by write about my exciting life of mushrooms and insects.
Cheryl tries to keep up with the
"Elites!"
In the mean time, looks like we are heading to Michigan to run a "mountain 5k" with Cheryl's sister. I'm sure it will be more of a walk-a-thon instead of a run up the hills of Michigan. We will find out when we get there. Hopefully Cheryl's sister will keep Cheryl from pulling or ripping something as she competes with those elite children. ( Remember Turkey Trot?)
Here we are at the BookStore, using their Wifi because we, apparently, have used all of ours up with two days left in the month! I guess blogging and downloading pictures for Etsy have really sucked up the gigabytes! I'm hoping we can get the upgrade soon, because I have not been watching any videos, surfing for mushroom information, or any other Internet activity for three weeks!
Stockings are more difficult without the internet.
So this very quick post is to explain to future Ethan and Cheryl what happened and to make a note of it. Also, I have all these mushroom pictures that are BEGGING to get cataloged on the blog. Perhaps I can post a few while waiting for Cheryl, but the connection is so slow, I doubt it. I'll just have to just post a pic of the stockings.
Fingers crossed we can upgrade the Wifi and limit our usage... or at least purchase enough to allow me to blog freely. Cheryl tells me it is the blogging and NOT her Internet shopping. Or it is our computers downloading upgrades and updates at night when we are not monitoring it. Who knows.
Cheryl and I disagree on many things, but one thing that really bugs me is her support for Organic Free Range, Brown Eggs. Since when does the color of one's Shell make one better than the other? Lots of Memes have been made on the "racism" of eggs, but I will leave those to other people's blogs.
Mostly, I wanted to point out the great con game known as "Organic." And "whole foods." The eggs are essentially the same. The only thing different is the color of the eggs and the chickens that lay them. And actually, brown eggs requiremoreenergy to produce. Because they are slightly larger and it takes more feed to produce that brown color. If I were a farmer, I would want to save money any way I could.
Disorganized! Environmentally destructive! Think
about the Children and our Future!
But now lets talk about chickens. The "factory farms" are chickens working under grueling conditions to make sure you get your egg on your McMuffin each and every morning. They work hard to meet the demand... You can't get more American than that! Sure the job is difficult and crappy, but millions of Americans work under similar conditions to scratch out a living. It is something to be proud of.
Imagine if they raise the minimum
wage!
Avoiding white eggs because those are "factory farms" means you are taking a perfectly wholesome egg and overlooking the industrious effort that has been put into producing it. Namely, it is done under the highest standards with the lowest environmental impact at the cheapest price! Hello! American entrepreneurs at work!
Does this look like the guy
you want handling your eggs?
But people think brown eggs are better because they are expensive. As mentioned before, it is because they are slightly larger and brown. (The chickens have to eat more to produce it.) But add "Organic" and "Free Range" to the label and people will now believe that the egg is directly delivered from Mother Earth by Fairies riding Unicorns. Somehow, a slower, less efficient egg manufacturing process is thought to be "infallible!"
Throwing out safety on
junk science.
And let's talk about the "Organic chickens." Lazy free-rangers laying eggs wherever they want, whenever they want. Who knows if the farmer is able to gather them up at their best and freshest. Add in that those chickens eat what ever they want: Bugs, seeds, rocks, garbage, plastic bits, toxic mushrooms... I could go on. They take breaks when ever they want. They are disorganized, lazy, and terrible for the environment. Not to mention, as free-rangers, they are constantly "at risk" from foxes, hawks, coyotes, and raccoons. Who is going to pay for them when they get maimed or killed? You! The Egg Purchaser. Farmers pass off those costs to the customer.
How will I be able to make my Omelette?
Cheryl insists that the "Bug Eggs" taste better and are, somehow, magically "better" for you. But the data does not support this. And I prefer the hard working "Blue collar American" egg produced by the industrious farmers of this country who have invested in their chickens, themselves and AMERICA! =patriotic music begins playing=
So next time you have the choice to pay three to four times the normal price for those brown eggs, just remember that your eggs are from lazy chickens who eat more, lay less, and have no safety standards, and are environmentally destructive. They are supervised by uncaring farmers who think the brown color is enough to charge those crazy prices. I support the white eggs. And the Hard Working Factory chickens that work hard to bring us enough eggs to make our mushroom omelette.
It is fall. And I have been obsessed with Autumn mushrooms because so many cool ones come out this time of year. There is just one small problem... I have never seen many of them in real life.
Honey Mushrooms?
Or deadly Galerina?
I'm now almost certain that we have found many of the species in the forest. But, for whatever reason, they never hit ALL of the marks. Meaning, there is always something a little "off" about them that makes me proceed with culinary caution. I'm not about to eat a Deadly Galerina thinking it was an odd looking honey mushroom.
Cluster of Ringless Honey
Mushrooms.
So, after every trip, I have been bringing baskets of mushrooms home, gathering spore prints and reading up on them. I try to find similar odd looking pictures on the Internet, but that is not always the best way. And books are limited to a few pictures... only of ones that are "Text book" samples.
Chicken fat Bolete, Not really a
Bolete.
In Minnesota, Cheryl and I found clusters of what I am pretty sure were ringless Honey Mushrooms. They are edible, but we were miles from home and our books and work shop. We did not bring any home, but took lots of photos.
But you can see why people call
it one.
Finding new mushrooms is
always exciting though.
While walking through the park, we discovered Chicken Fat Bolete! Not technically a Bolete, not technically inedible... but I doubt I will be trying this one. It causes.... Runny Bottom in many people. It was growing under a pine tree, but I'm not sure it was a White Pine. As the Name suggests.
A Blewit?
Are the gills purple enough?
Blewits have been just frustrating. They are edible as well, but whenever we find "purple or bluegills", it turns out to have a brown spore print (Violet Cort most likely.) and whenever we find a random white mushroom with light purple gills on leaves with a pinkish spore print, the mycelium is not purple. There is always something just wrong with the 100% positive ID. ( Meaning, I'm never 100% on any of them.)
Now they are growing in
our yard?!?
Couch stuffing? No! It's a
Mushroom!
With leaf litter piling up and hiding the ground.... And with the flooding finally receding slightly, there are not many places dry or clear enough to find anything of note. We managed to find a few Shaggy caps, but they are not out in the numbers or at the locations we have found them in previous years ( at least I am 100% about those guys)
=cough! Cough! cough!=
Watch what happens...
Another find are the Giant Puff Balls! We have been late on every single one so far this year. I don't know if the wet summer triggered an early fruiting, or if the cooler weather cut them off short.
I'm always happy to help
Mother nature. Puffballs have a
tough time of it.
Dust? Mist? No wait, Spores!
Re-populating the forest.
They now look like old dusty couch stuffing. I can at least have fun spreading the spores and trying to grow them in new locations next year. Besides, it is fun creating dust in the woods!
Cap is brown, But spore Print is
pink. What the heck is it!?
Another Blewit? Gills are not purple.
As for now, I'm finding what I think are Blewits in our own yard! They lack the blue or whitish caps, but every them else checks them off as Blewits. I could harvest a small lot right now if I knew for certain. ( Pink spore print, bulbous base, growing on dead leaves and grass in late fall, and in small clusters, but not attached o each other. Even have whiteish mycellium on the base....But dark brown caps?) I'll take pics and try to see if I can find a comparison online.
Stockings are picking up.
Stockings continue to sell. This weekend, things piled up to about 12. But with Aqua Blue felt on hold, we could only complete 9 for today. I'll have to cut this post short as I have conversations to attend to. Cheryl obviously has complete faith in my ability to scare away customers. It's a big responsibility.
With only a 45 seconds off from her personal best, Cheryl has once again, completed another successful disappointment. The entire event was rather boring... for me. Mostly because I sat in a port-a-jon trying to stay warm. ( They are surprisingly comfy when it's cold and windy outside.) It was nice having "no major job" on this one. My only job was to take pictures at the start and finish. I was "some what" successful. (People kept getting in the way.... ) Cheryl is small, tiny, fast, and INVISIBLE... So the difficulty factor for me is always up in the stratosphere. Add in that she wore black, along with just about every other female on the course, and you can see why I don't have many pictures. But let's get started.
Very early.
Where is the light?
Another early morning race in the dark. And Cold! A chilly, frosty, windy morning this morning, and we arrived early to find the best possible parking spot. After waiting in line for he Port-a-Jons, Cheryl headed into the gates and disappeared into the crowd. =POOF!= Gone.
Cheryl gets ready to enter the gate.
Say goodbye. Oh! There she is...
Thankfully, the race started on time and there were no announcements. A simple "GO!" and they were off.
And there.
Just outside the start zone.
Snapping random shots of the crowd, I managed to capture Cheryl by accident. I got lucky!
Behind the guy in blue.
Mile 1 watch her disappear
But at mile 1, my fortunes were blacked by some guy in a blue and white shirt. Cheryl disappeared behind him and I only nabbed this one shot.
Check out those legs!
Muscular legs!
I walked back to the finish line and waited for Cheryl to run by an hour and a half later. She forced me to download an App to see her on the course. It worked surprisingly well, missing her exact finish time by only a few seconds! I think more and more races will begin adopting this App in the future. ( I hope, it was handy.)
Sexy legs?
She is really keeping up with that
guy stride for stride. Go Honey!
As she turned the last corner, I could see from a distance and started snapping blurry shot after blurry shot so I could at least point to the blob in the middle and say that was her. But the camera finally focused and I was able to capture those sexy legs... (That is all Cheryl is really concerned about... "How do my legs look?")
Cheryl races to the finish.
She is the dark shadow on the left.
And then she disappeared again. Finding Cheryl in a cluster of 4000 runners is like searching for a needle in a stack of needles. But eventually we did find each other and we went on to sample the Sam Adams 26.2 beer. (It was $5! Crazy!) We were both so cold and ready to go home, that I forgot to take the "after race photos.... So I snapped these ones in the driveway. Even Cheryl was wondering why she wanted to run a week after that Marathon. Runners do crazy things.
But, by far the BIGGEST event was the national Anthem singer. 2018 has been a hit or miss with the National anthem. Forget the NFL protests. I'm talking about the races. Some were awesome. Others... not so great. Bemidji did not even have one to kick off the marathon. Firecracker had a girl who could not sing the notes. BUT.... Des Moines has them all beat. They chose someone who did not know the song!
Not the greatest talent?
I don't know much about this person, other than they were on "The Voice" ( I gather this is a reality show?) You might assume that if you are on national TV, then you must be able to sing... And if you know how to sing, logically, you must know the words to the song you are singing.
Perhaps it was stage fright. Perhaps it was a momentary lapse in the US education system. But she forgot the "land of the Free..." Part. After an awkward pause... either she started singing the "ramparts" again, before someone helped her out. What ever the reason, I'm sure she will remember the song from now until eternity. One does not forget an experience like that and fail to learn something ( hopefully...)
It reminded me of the Naked Gun. Check out the video.... Kinda Like that.
Cheryl also noted that other people on the course could just show up with their karaoke machine and sing anything they wanted. Some people were pretty good. Other... really really BAD. One lady was singing "I need a Hero." It should have sounded like this....
But ended up sounding like this:
So other than that bit of entertainment. The race was simply normal. Cheryl missed her PR by just a few seconds, clocking a 1:39:26. Averaging a 7:35 minute mile pace. Kinda good for a normal person. But we all know Cheryl is abnormal. Maybe next year she will wait two weeks after the marathon to run a half-er. We can only hope she learns from her mistakes. In the mean time, three stops for donuts should help alleviate the depression.
