Space Platypus

After posting to Twitter about digging in the depths of our freezer for something "random" to eat, I was reminded by a friend about the legendary "Frozen Fishball of Platteville".  Maybe it wasn't legendary, but it did stir up some memories for me.

During the Summer of 2000, my first Summer not living at home, some college friends and I decided to visit another classmate who had gone home for the Summer.  Our friend Kevin captained a fishing boat on Lake Michigan as his Summer job and had invited us up to go fishing.  We had a great time and caught a number of rainbow trout, for the story sake I'll say we caught about 10 keepers.  Kevin filleted them and we put them in the cooler for transport back to Platteville.

Being the only one of us who wasn't living in a dorm (or his parents house) I became keeper of the fish.  All the fillets were placed in a large plastic bag, and unceremoniously placed in my freezer.  The fish coalesced into a large ball of frozen fillets slightly larger than a regulation sized basketball.  When someone wanted to eat fish, we'd take the ball out and chisel off a piece to cook up.  Needless to say this was rather annoying and didn't happen very often, so by the time my Summer lease was up and I was suppose to return to the dorms we still had a very large sized frozen fish ball.  The ball was thawed, then disposed of.  Rather a huge waste of fish, but we were young and didn't have the money or the freezer space to package the fish properly and store it for later consumption.

And thus ends my story.  How many of you can say you had a ball of frozen fish in your freezer?

A new year is upon us, as like many I have a laundry list of things I'd like to accomplish in 2010.  I'm not quite prepared to called them "resolutions" but they are goals I hope to fulfill this year.  So here goes...

Firstly, as I write this and as you read it, I'm on my way to accomplishing a goal.  That is a return to blogging.  I used to blog all the time, starting as far back as 2001.  I even had a year where I blogged every-single-day.  Then I sort of puttered out.  Well, with this new year (and new decade) I'm going to endeavor to blog at-least once a week, with the help of Project 52, the weekly blogging challenge.  This is entry number one.

I've already started my next goal, starting in November, but it's going to be an ongoing process that never really ends, that is to improve my photography skills.  I started participating The Daily Shoot, a daily photography challenge.  I've currently completed 52 "assignments" and know loads more about photography, and my camera, than when I started, and I've only just scratched the surface.  I intend to continue with the daily challenge, as well as focusing some extra time on astrophotography which is my main area of interest.  I hope to upgrade to a DSLR camera (Canon T1i) at some point this year, but until then my trusty Canon G7 will have to do.  You can follow all my progress on my Flickr page, or just see my @dailyshoot photos.

Another major goal, and one that I've been procrastinating on for many years is to start woodworking again.  I have the tools.  I have the space.  I have some time.  I should start making things.  Many years ago now, I loved woodworking.  I took extra independent-study courses in high school so I could have more time in the shop.  Then I went to college and my excuse was I was too poor to buy the tools I needed, and I had no where to set up a shop.  That is no longer true and hasn't been for the past few years, but I haven't really done anything.  That changes now.  I've already started learning to wood-carve, something I was interested in before but never explored.  I have a chunk of wood that's going to be a gnome...or my approximation of one.  I'll post pictures and you can judge.  I'm also going to start doing some intarsia, starting this weekend.  Beyond that, I have a standing order to make a kitchen island for our house, and various other furniture and cabinetry projects I intend to complete this year.

I have many other goals, which are all pretty self explanatory, some of which include the generic lose weight and write a book, but I don't think I need to go into detail on those just yet.

So, here's to 2010, may you and I both complete our many goals!