Stan’s Blog

At least for today, when I search for “Stanley Turner” on Google.  I appear at the top of the Google list.  At least my LinkedIn page does.  My blog isn’t doing so well in the google list.  Oh well.

OctoberFest went off with perfect weather and everone had a great time.  Great food, PumpKin carving, the raffel, Great BlueGrass Music by Flint Hollow, A performance by the DillPickers and the traditional MarshMallow fight.  The only injury that I was aware of was that Anna took on a  barbed wire fence and lost.

On OctoberFest weekend on Friday night, Laura had not arrived yet and I went to bed about midnight. The night was chilly and it took a while for me to get warm under the sleeping bag. So I was in a light sleep when I was awakened by a noise way out in the woods that sounded like someone yelling something. I tried to listen but started to fall back asleep when I heard a call that maybe was someone crying for help, but I wasn’t sure. I sat up and listened for a while but did not hear anything else. I laid down and kept listening more attentively. A minute or so later It came again. A childs cry from off in the woods saying “Help me“. This woke me up. I got up and while I was getting dressed he called again “I need Hel-l-l-p-p-p-p“. I got my shoes on and found my good flashlight and started walking down the path in the direction of the call. I figured it would be better to find out what the problem was quickly rather than wake up a bunch of people to go find a kid lost in the woods. I had my Cell phone to call for help if I needed to. As I hiked in the voices direction, he yelled some more “Somebody come help me“, this was in a very anguished voice. I yelled out into the night “Keep calm, I am coming“. I hiked on some more and came upon a tent that was lit up from the inside. I called out “I am here, what is wrong?” The kids voice yelled out “I need help, the zipper is stuck“. I went around to the other side of the tent and sure enough, the doors zipper was caught in the storm flap. I asked the kid, “I guess you need to go to the bathroom?”, “Yessss” said the kid. He was about 12 years old. It took me a while to unstick the zipper and open the tent door. I asked the boy if he had any other problems and he said no. I guess that his father was still hanging out around the camp fire. I hiked back to my tent, got undressed and it took a while to get warmed up in the sleeping bag so I could fall asleep.

Bill can rejoice because the hornets at his campsite have been exterminated. Mike and his friends barrage of double barreled blasts disabled the swarm and they were free to shoot at it untill it fell. Yeah.  I also got the nest on the other side of my campsite with some bee spray.  Now Laura will come camping.

What shotguns do to a hornet nest

OctoberFest will start up on Oct 9-14.   I have not received any particular special unique events for the weekend, but don’t forget to bring things for the raffle.  There will probably be a wine tasting and a Pot Luck.  I have herd that there will be Suda-food created on the grill.  If you don’t know what it is, you can know that Turners grew up on it.  Bring your swim suit for a quick splash in the Dry pond.  Bee there.

When we discovered the Hornet nest next to our Camp Site last month I only thought I had to get rid of one Nest.

Stan's Nest

HAH!! I went to the cabin today and sent Faye to go look at our hornet nest. When she came back, she had found another nest on the other side of our Camp site. It was directly over where Laura’s brother Bill camps. Right here.

Later when I sat on the George Pavillion looking over the Field. I saw the following

So anyway.  Three nests at the cabin.  2 of them my problem.  I think I will need to find a new camp site for Octoberfest this year.

Bummer

The Anna Clan is bringing a bunch of Scouts to the cabin the weekend of Sept 20-21.  If you come to the cabin, act like a good scout.

On August 24 My nephew Tony got married at Annapolis. I took some Pictures. They are Here. Enjoy

Can be purchased pre-scented.  Laura accidentally bought a box of scented trash bags.  Since I am sensitive to perfume, it felt really funny to be repulsed as I replaced a stinky trash bag with a smelly one that made me want to sneeze.  When Laura came in the kitchen, she accused me of spraying bug killer around.  So now we have a box of smelly trash bags that we do not want to use.  Maybe we will take them to the Cabin.

Spotted the Following in my back yard. I gotta get Paul to take them out.

Saw some deer in my back yard

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch (Oct. 23, 1960 - July 25, 2008) gave his last lecture  Sept. 18, 2007

It is on YouTube at Randy Paush last Lecture .  It is Over an hour long but it is worth watching.  He had cancer with only 6 months to live and wanted to leave a message to the people who knew him.

The Nest by our 4traks

Laura and I went to get our 4trax ATVs at our campsite and as I was taking the covers off of them. Laura noticed that there was a Hornet’s nest in the tree next to our bikes. It was about a foot in diameter and 8 feet off the ground. There were a large number of hornets going in and out of it and a bunch that were just sitting out on the surface of the nest. These were the ones that would attack anything that tried to disturb the nest. My problem was that I did not know if starting the 4trak would upset the Bees. Laura decided that I shoud be the one to test the theory and that she would watch from a safe distance. There were no problems when I started Laura’s bike, but mine was right next to the tree. I put it in neutral and pushed it away from the tree before starting it. No bee issues.

I went to a luncheon with my Co-workers and told them my hornet story. This got them started telling me about their city-fied experiences with bees. I heard one story about how a bee got into their house which led to everybody running around screaming untill somebody swatted it. Then they carefully picked it up with some toilet paper and flushed the bee down the toilet while every body in the house rejoiced. Another person told us about how he had spotted a 2 inch wasp nest under their deck. So they waited until dark and snuck up on it an sprayed it with some bee spray then ran in the house and waited for the bees to die. I also heard stories about how bees can chase people around in the dark and get you and its very dangerous to mess with them.

This inspired me to tell the story about the gigantic 2 foot tall hornet nest that was about 5 feet off the ground at the Farm that Nick and I decided to mess with. We decided that it would be real fun to attach a string of firecrackers to a stick, light them and shove the firecrackers into the center of the nest so that the firecrackers would destroy the nest and release a couple of thousand angry bees into the night. We prepared the stick with a large bunch of Black Cat firecrackers taped to the end of it and my job was to light the firecrackers. We talked some kid into doing the shoving. One thing about Hornets is that they keep a couple of guard bees awake around the entrance of the nest ready to attack any invaders or disturbers. So we got setup with the Kid prepared to shove the stick into the nest with one stroke. I lit my match and was holding it between my thumb and forefinger trying to find the Fireworks fuse. The light from the match attracted the attention of one of the Guard Hornets who flew out to investigate. It flew towards the light and eventually into my cupped hand holding the Match and was going Bap ,Bap, Bap, Bap between my palm and fingers which were holding the match. For some reason, this startled me and I yelled and dropped the match and ran. The kid and everyone else around me also yelled and ran. No one got stung but it took a while to regroup and setup for the next attempt.

For the next try, we got setup again. I knew exactly where the Firecracker fuse was in the dark. The Kid was ready, He was pumped. I lit the match, I lit the firecrackers and ran. The kid shoved the firecrackers into the hornets nest with all his strength. The kid ran, Every body ran. As I looked back at the nest while running I saw the firecrackers go off. The only problem was that the Kid had shoved the stick all the way thru the nest and out the other side. All the firecrackers went off outside the nest. Bummer. We figured that the Hornets were probably a little riled up and that we should call it a night

The other people at the table started looking at each other and they started mentioning something about the Darwin awards and they felt that people in my family would not survive long in this world.

When I got home from work today. There was about 17 messages on my answering machine. 16 of them were just a long series of beeping sounds. I got a call later and when I answered it, I got a loud beeping in my ear. The call was from some orthopedic place. When I called the number, I got fax sounds. Nobody answered. I figured that the Ortho place had tried to send a fax to my home number and since it was unsuccessful, it would keep trying it every 10 minutes. I was bummed. I didn’t want this to go on all nite. I remembered that the printer I just bought had a fax option so I hooked it up to the phone line and waited. When I got the call, I received a fax from the ortho company asking that some lady named Ruth to pay a late bill. It was only $83. There was a contact number which I called and told them to get rid of my phone number from Ruth’s account. We will see if I get any more faxes from them.

About 2 months ago we found a brown snake in our front yard. After I let it poop on Eddie he decided that we needed to keep it. So we set it up in our terrarium and Laura and Eddie have been feeding it worms, but the snake stopped eating a week ago. Laura was sad because she thought the snake was sick. But it turns out that it was only morning sickness. This morning Laura found at least 3 more baby snakes in the terrarium. They are about 3 inches long and they like to hide under their mother.

7/23/08 Update… There are at least 6 Babie Snakes in the Terrarium now. They are about as thick as a pencil lead and Don’t make any noise.

Baby Brown Snake

The North 60 hosted the 4orth on the 4th.   There was a crowd, the rain drove people under the Pole barn before it got dark, but the weather cooperated and and Foo Foo Fryday occured under pole barn.   Twas fun.

As part of the dry pond improvement project, Nick handed me a box of Grass Seed that he had swept off of a Home Gardening Floor from bags that had ripped open. So I walked up and down the berm throwing out seed. I was a little startled when I grabbed something soft and Fuzzy in the Seed Box.

If you cannot tell, it is a dried mouse. Nick was amused. He claims it was not there on purpose.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye! It is official, Big Ed was witnessed doing a catch and release of 3 different fish from the Dry Pond. Rejoice and bask in Ed’s glory, because he was the first, and must be acknowledged. There will be others. But, For this story to be complete, A frog must be caught there. And a snake or Snakes. And a Newt. And a Turtle.   Ducks and Geese must be seen cavorting. And maybe, just maybe, A deer, with sunlight glistening from its 23 point antlers must be seen drinking from the calm clear waters of the pond. Coyotes will be heard howling to each other across the waters. Someday, a skinny dipper will be spotted hiding behind the Island. Row Boats with couples singing to each other will skim in intricate patterns across the pond. And last, but not least, I look forward to having many many Dragonflies patrolling the waters and keeping us safe from mosquitoes. It has started. Let it Continue. I patiently await fulfillment.

It has been scheduled by none other that Brenda herself on the calendar . It is planned for May 1-5 with most of the activites on Saturday May 3. Currently it will have the Pot luck dinner followed by the raffle, most likely followed by music of some kind.

A Confirmed Rumour has it that Laura’s brother Bill will be setting up some kind of Tiki bar.  It will be near a water spot and there will be Flamingos, palm trees and Rum Punch. Deborah will be in some sort of Hula Outfit. It will be open on Saturday after 4pm and will not be serving Minors.

Let me know of any other plans.

Stan (I will be heading up either Wednesday nite or Thursday morning)

Sat April 19, The Dry Pond is Full. Bring your suits and your boats. Woo Hue.

The thing that we have been waiting for has finally happened. Nick and Ed Plugged the Hole today. If it rains real good, then we will be able to ride the Jet Ski’s for Spring Fling around the Island. I will provide updates as it fills.

The Next big project is to increase the frontage at the Cabin.

For Spring Break the TurnerClan went to the Lake house. Many Lizards were caught.  We lasso’d a snake and I pulled it out of its hidie place.  Then I let it poop all over Ryan. Anna helped to lasso a different snake the next day but failed to get it to come out of its hole.

One day, Nick took Brenda for a ride in his jet boat. While they were using the Electric trolling motor, the steering mechanism for it went out.   Once they came in, Eddie and Zack got Nick to agree to take them for a boat ride.  Nick decided that I had to go along to help.  As we were launching, I got Laura to hop on for the ride.  As we are heading for the No Wake zone, Nick informs us that he does not have much gas so we have to keep the ride short.  His gage is showing empty as we head out into the lake.  So Nick does a couple of high speed circles and then shoves the throttle forward.  The boat starts to accellerate then BAM!!  The boat stops accelerating and the engine revs.  Nick plays with the shifting system but the boat does not want to go anywhere.  Nick mumbles something about a Shear Pen snapping.  After about 30 seconds  of playing with things, the Overheat alarm starts to go off and Nick Kills the engine.  I inform Laura that this is bad.   I dig out a Paddle and start waving at a boat that is about 500 yards away.  It ignores me and speeds away.  We are about a half mile away from the dock with a very light wind blowing us towards the dock.

Nick goes to the front of the boat and drops the electric trolling motor.  He lays on his stomache on the bow and  reaches down to grab the trolling motor.  He tells me to sit on the front seat and push the trolling motor throttle button.  It starts up and we move.  Nick adjusts the motor with his hands so that we are sort of heading for the dock.   Eddie and Zack keep asking when we will make it back to the Lake House.  I notice that our course is drifting away from the dock.  The drifting keeps getting worse and Nick seems to be just lying there staring at the water.  I let him know and he looks up and re-adjusts the motor with his hands and we start heading back to the dock.   After a while we start drifting again and I let him know once we start heading back into the lake.   A couple more repetitions of this and the trolling motor suddenly stops.  Nick pulls it out of the water and starts disassembling it using his Leatherman.  We are about 200 yards outside of the No Wake poles and the water is WAY too cold for Laura to get out and start pulling us towards shore.  We dug up 4 paddles and Zack, Laura, Eddie and I start paddling for the Dock while Nick tries to get the Electric Trolling motor working.  The wind helps a little while I worry that Zack or Eddie are going to drop a paddle and we will have to go after it.  Nick eventually gives up and takes a paddle and tries to order us around to make us paddle properly.  I ignore him and paddle the way that I want to.  We make it back to the Dock and celebrate that our ordeal is over.  Yeah!