Chicken wingdinger

Got to use my new fryer for some chicken wings last night. We had a bunch of people over because the boys were going shooting and the girls decided we might as well make it a potluck, so that gave me a good excuse to heat that baby up again. I forgot to take a picture, but the results were pretty good. I took 10 wings, dried them and shook on a little Pappy's chicken rub. Put the wings in the fryer for 10 minutes at 375, then put them in a bowl and added a cup of Frank's Red Hot buffalo wing sauce. Repeated once more for the other 10 wings and viola - a pile of crispy hot goodness. About the only thing I'd do different next time is flour the wings lightly to give them a little more of a coating, and possible shake the spices on after the frying to keep the oil cleaner.
After we ate, the boys (Jacob, Ernie, Michael, Sam) drove out to the desert to make sure various firearms worked as advertised. Everything worked out just fine except for the hitting what you're aiming at part if your name starts with J....

The Big Pseudo Tournament

Joel and I decided to get a taste of the Bassmaster tournament trail, so on Thursday we got up ridiculously early (only 4 hrs sleep!), drove the 2 hrs to Owyhee, fished hard all day long while eating a variety of unhealthy snacks and drinks, then packed up at dark and drove back home by 12:30a. We were so tired that at one point I blew right through a stop sign while Joel talked endlessly about eating bowls of Captain Peanut Butter Crunch (as opposed to Peanut Butter Captain Crunch). Luckily it was out in the country with not another soul in sight, so we just backed it up and went on our merry way playing 'name that song' to a sweet 80's rocker ballad mix CD.

The sun on the hills is the sunrise at about 6:20a. Sam don't see early morning light very often...
Joel's first smallmouth since a year ago at CJ Strike....
Then some more small largemouth...

Followed up by a couple of really nice largemouth by about 1pm. This one was 2lb 4oz...
Finishing up with a 3lb 4oz fish to round out the 'tournament'. We wouldn't have won any money or got any trophies, but we sure had a good time relaxing, eating pb&j and jumping in the lake every hour to cool off. Oh yeah, we caught about 30 crappie in an hour too. Took a couple home to fry, which turned out to be a pretty good idea.

Cuzins continued...

We had a fun week in the sun with Joel and Cheryl. They arrived in Idaho with that trademark Western Washington Lack of Sun skin condition, and left with a beautiful brown tan. Ok, maybe a little burn, but it was worth it!

I'll take two (islands)

Some people have a guest house. I have a guest island. I wonder if I rounded up all my computer junk and sold it on eBay if I would have enough money to buy this little patch of heaven (45mil) !

Cuz thems yur cuzins, that's why.

Loaded up the boat and headed to Lucky Peak for the evening with Joel and Cheryl, Hunter and Miranda. I mean it was LOADED...

We had a good time just floating around trying to keep all hands on deck.

Peculiar passenger ya got there.

Four kids, three scooters, two bikes and one very peculiar minicar passenger arrangement. Aaaah the joys of summer!

Saturday evening at Lake Owyhee

We wandered (if you've ever driven the road, you know what I'm talking about) over to Lake Owyhee on Saturday afternoon with the kids and Zayne and Sheryl. Had a great time catching crappie and other assorted fishlike critters. Mia caught 3 or 4 fish all on her own, and Cooper caught one with the help of the rod holder. We'll give him credit for that one since he's such a cute little bugger. Sheryl put up a bunch of pictures over here. And more here.

I thought for Old Time's sake I'd throw in a picture of the first time Mia ever went fishing. It was in May of 2004 with Carl and Brenna at Brownlee Reservoir. The most important thing she learned that day was that we don't listen to Kid Songs on the way to go fishing - it's ESPN Radio or nothing!

I'm never gonna hear the end of this.

Idaho Outdoors - The Idaho Statesman - Always Idaho
The caption for the photo should have said 'Real Women leave their Sissy Husband home with the kids'.

Summer is H E R E

Just a relaxing Tuesday evening at Lucky Peak....

ProcrastiNation

I got some things done today that I'd been putting off for quite some time.

-Mowed the yard (11 days overdue). Good thing it's been cool or it woulda been completely outta control. As it was, I felt like I was making hay....make one loop, empty the bag, make another loop, empty the bag, and so on.

-Set the garage door code (6 months overdue). Our door opener broke in the middle of winter, and I wasn't here when the dude replaced it so he just left me instructions for setting the code on the outside keypad. It takes two people and a ladder, so it was just one of those things that isn't on the top of the list until a person locks themself out of their house. Luckily we never did, but with a 2 year old running the garage door up and down like a giant pendulum it's amazing we didn't. Hey Bad Guys - click here for the code.

-Went for a run (2 years overdue). Still as dumb as I remember.

-Got my Hunters Education Card (13 years overdue). To shoot at a ground squirrel in the State of Idaho, you must have a valid hunting license. To get a license, you have to present a Hunters Education Card if you were born after 1975. In addition, you can't represent yourself in the Canyon County Courthouse if you're only 17 years old. So in 1991, I did (shoot a pile of squirrels), didn't (have a license), and couldn't (appear in court). So I had to tell my dad....luckily he thought it was a stupid as well and bailed me out with a $100 check to Canyon County for 'Eradication Services'.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I haven't been able to buy a license because I never took Hunters Ed. Joel is coming in a couple of weeks and he heard there was an excess of varmits that needed eradicatin' so I figured I'd better saddle up and get it out of the way. I had to take an on-line study course first, which looked pretty hard right up until I discovered I could open the web site in one window and the test in another. Things got a lot quicker after that. Then on Saturday I had to go to a field day that combined more classroom with a Field Exercise (walk around in the sage brush with a dummy gun and try not to point it at anybody even though it's just a piece of wood and PVC pipe) and a Firing Range Exercise and then a final test. They didn't mention how to deal with this. Was actually pretty informative and I would recommend it for anyone that is new to hunting and doesn't have a good mentor.

All right gotta go.