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3143. arkymalarky - 6/11/2005 4:33:59 PM What would be the term for a subconscious fear of periods (those ending sentences)? Whatever it is, I think I have it. 3144. PelleNilsson - 6/20/2005 7:06:39 PM macnas
I read a story in the IHT about the North Atlantic salmon. The hero is Orri Vigfusson, "the square-jawed Icelander, a buttoned-downed Viking in tweeds". The villains are the Irish drift-netters. Excerpts:
The Salmo salar, or Atlantic salmon, begins as a pea-size orange egg in freshwater tributaries from Connecticut to Canada's Ungava Bay in North America and from Portugal to Russia's White Sea on the European coast. A year or so later, it emerges as a silvery, pencil-long salmon smolt ready to head to sea, toward the sheltered, crustacean-rich feeding grounds off Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
When they return to their native streams, the wild salmon must dodge seals and cormorants, leap dams and waterfalls, before finally and mysteriously finding their way home, where they mate and spawn.
These days, few of the full-grown salmon heading back to their rivers in France, Germany, Spain, Britain and Ireland make it past the wall of more than 800 drift nets seining off the west coast of Ireland. Consequently, fewer salmon spawn and the population plummets.
Once Irish nets are banned, Vigfusson says, the potential growth for European angling revenue is staggering. He cites a recent study by Indecon International Economic Consultants, which concludes that in its home nation of Ireland, a netted wild Atlantic salmon sells for €22, but that same fish caught in Ireland on a sports fisherman's line can generate up to €423 in indirect revenue generated by food, lodging and transportation expenditures.
Is this something that is discussed in Ireland? 3145. Macnas - 6/21/2005 8:43:41 AM Are you codding me? (ha! punerific or what?)
Indeed it is Pelle, and any one who angles is dead set against the drift netters. It's a bit of a political football, so it is not being resolved as quickly as it should. The unfortunate fact is that it will have to be banned outright, as no industry is more open to rule-bending than fishing.
The drift netters complain, with some justification, that it is the only industry they can make a profit from, due the way the EEC allowed Irish waters be raped by marauding Portuguese and Spanish fleets. The fact is that time is well up for drift netting, and it will have to go.
Your man Vig is quite right, river caught salmon is worth far more, and is one of those things that draws people from around Europe to bolster our tired tourist industry. Another sore point is salmon farming. It should be done using the Scandinavian model, but instead it is done in a slip-shod and poorly regulated way here.
This increases the amount of sea-lice in wild fish, and is another bone of contention between those who angle and those whose business is fish. The density of the farmed fish is too high, they are not in proper currents, they are too close to shore, and dead fish are not recovered in a timely manner.
One such farm was exposed on television, at the bottom of one of its containment nets, there was a meter of dead salmon, rotting away. The live salmon were rotten with lice.
3146. PelleNilsson - 6/21/2005 6:06:22 PM EU fisheries management is a disaster. Here we have huge trawlers virtually vacuuming the Baltic for herring which is then sold to mink farmers for 0.1 Euros per kilo. The situation this year is particularly bad. The production of rotten herring will be down by a third. Let's not talk about the cod. 3147. thoughtful - 6/21/2005 6:40:06 PM seems fishing is an issue here too...lobsters hit with a deadly bacteria that prevents them from shedding their shells...northeast coast hit with a deadly red tide that makes shellfish inedible...shad in the ct river are the lowest they've been in 30 years...not to mention the mercury levels. Not good. 3148. Macnas - 6/22/2005 8:30:59 AM I know it may sound odd, but I have never eaten a fish that I have not caught myself. Hence not very many fish consumed, but I never was a great fan of it.
Oily fish such as mackerel I cannot abide, herring and anything small and in a tin ditto. Cod I have tasted, but only a mouthful. My fish of preference is brown trout, sea trout a close second and salmon third.
Everything else can go swim. 3149. alistairconnor - 6/22/2005 10:39:17 AM Good rustic philosophy.
Don't eat what you're not prepared to kill.
And vice versa.
Explain that to the IRA. 3150. iiibbb - 6/27/2005 2:04:55 PM So my fiance and I did a yard sale this weekend. Merging households and all.
We made $750 (assuming some of the IOU sales to friends of ours come through). Even if they don't we still made 600+. We made twice as much as most of our experienced yard-selling friends of ours thought we would.
Anyhow... anyone contemplating such a thing.
(1) We did a Sat&Sun sale. We made 90% of it on Saturday. Sunday was almost not worth it. If I had it to do over I would consider doing a Friday afternoon/Saturday/and _maybe_ a couple of hours after church.
(2) We had the gambit of people... the professional yardsale types are some of the most annoying people ever. It got to the point I wouldn't haggle with them because they were so stupid about $1 bidding stuff that's worth signficantly more. I'm not opposed to haggling by any stretch... but they were rude on top of it. Don't bid a $1 on something that's worth 80 and marked for 20. Geez.
The most pleasant people came between 8:30 and 1:00.
(3) Sale I messed up on? $10 for one of http://search.ebay.com/hp-11c_W0QQfkrZ1QQfromZR8">these. My geek friend was very excited. His quit working... these calculators are very popular with electrical engineers.
(4) Most clever sale? My yard sale signs sold for $5.
(5) Hardest sell? A box of old topo maps for $65... I love maps. I hated to sell these, but I wasn't doing anything with them. Some artist bought them and she was going to actually do something interesting with them... which is why I let them go.
(6) Computer stuff does not sell... you can hardly give it away. Couldn't even sell a 17" trinitron monitor that was in decent shape for $10.
(7) If it has the words "Coca-Cola" on it, you will probably sell it.
--- It truely is amazing what people will buy, and won't buy. We had some stuff left over I was really surprised didn't sell at all. Yet some of my 'junkier' stuff went at full asking price.
Wierd.
3151. arkymalarky - 6/27/2005 9:16:07 PM Bob would have loved the maps and probably the calculator.
Good tips. I'd rather have bamboo shoots shoved up my nails than do a yard sale, but we really need to one of these days. We'd have to move all the stuff to somewhere else to have it, though, which would be a nightmare. I'm never up early enough to get much out of yard sales, but I like them.
3152. iiibbb - 6/27/2005 9:33:16 PM More tips
(1) I would tag-team with other families if I were you. I forgot to mention that's what we did. Multi-family sales are a big draw and I think enhance your likelyhood of getting what you want for stuff. In addition, rather than being a painful experience, you get to hang out with friends of yours while you sell stuff.
(2) Mark stuff about 20% over what you'd really take. People want to haggle. If they show any interest you can immediately knock some money off.
(3) You can tell what we didn't mind keeping... stuff that was over $20 is stuff that we wouldn't care if we took home.
(4) Make sure stuff is clean... clean stuff sells significantly better, and at significantly closer to your asking price.
(5) Have a free-stuff box... part of the object is to get rid of stuff... if you really don't care, just mark it as free. If you can't bring yourself to do that, "buy something, and get something from the box for free". 3153. thoughtful - 6/28/2005 8:48:36 PM I eat LOTS of veggies and get tired of eating the same old same old, so I've found the best way to add zip to veggies is to combine them. Last night, I sauted up vidalia onions with garlic, zucchini and plum tomatoes in olive oil. I seasoned it with fresh parsley and basil and of course salt and pepper. Came out yummy. Serve with or without a sprinkling of parm cheese on top. Would've been good if I had some criminis around to toss in too.... 3154. Magoseph - 6/28/2005 9:12:55 PM I’m tired of eating vegetables too and lately I have blended them in the mixer with a little Tabasco sauce and chili powder and drank the whole down quickly. I have prepared vegetables in all kinds of ways and I’m tired of cooking two meals every meal. What are criminis? 3155. thoughtful - 6/29/2005 1:30:52 PM criminis are baby portabella mushrooms...pack a wallop of flavor.
 3156. concerned - 6/29/2005 3:54:55 PM What a dry spring and hot early summer it has been in the upper midwest. I actually have had to water my plantings & some saplings this year to ensure they don't succumb to stress.
OTOH, I have some good news to report with regard to the colorado blue spruces and even some of the western hemlocks I planted this year. Most of the (bare root) blue spruces are showing new growth and some of the hemlocks are also. Also, I am succeeding in keeping the deer away with bitter pellets and occasional applications of Deer Off. Also, my Southern Magnolia is turning it around, having suffered only moderate leaf burn over the winter with no shoot die back and growing six inches so far this year (for the previous two years, it had suffered major die back and leaf burn). And I came across a web forum where somebody not far from me (slightly northwest of me) is having good success growing a Southern Magnolia of the same cultivar as I have (Bracken's Brown Beauty - most others have failed for him). He says his flowered last year and the secret to survival in Zone 5 is not to get them too small and keep them going until they're about five years old. He says once his got established it made it through a northern Illinois winter without any leaf burn. I'm not sure I'm quite ready to accept that yet since even some conifers such as arbor vitae get leaf burn, but it'd be great if my Southern Magnolia actually became that hardy. Souther Magnolias, I find out, are also pretty unique for a flowering tree because they supposedly bloom more or less continuously throughout much of the growing season once they become established. 3157. judithathome - 6/30/2005 1:02:05 AM Good news on your trees, Con'ed! 3158. Jenerator - 7/2/2005 8:12:07 PM Cool wesbite, Jex.
---
iiibbb,
A few weeks ago, my mom and I had a garage sale of mostly my stuff. We planned on having it for two days, but the weather stopped us the first day.
Knowing that the experts hit 'em early, we set up shop at 6:30 am. By 8:00 am, we had made $250. Then the rain moved in and we made $50 more as we were packing up.
The biggest sellers were some old candy/gumball machines that my husband had from his grandparents, circa 1900 and an old rocker. The couple who bought those tried so desperately to not appear as dealers, but we knew. They kept asking us about old tools that we may have had laying around the house.
I know that those are verycollectible right now.
We had a 1960 Broyhill cabinet for sale for $30, but no one even looked at it. We wound up calling Goodwill.
The only time I got really angry was when the females tried to haggle me about clothes prices. I had some beautiful pieces I was getting rid of from St. John and Cache for $1-$5 a piece and they were trying to bring them down to $.50. I wouldn't budge and they wouldn't buy!
I wound up selling them all to other people. Oddly enough, it was the Vietnamese who were trying to bargain the most. Is that a cultural thing?
Anyway, despite the weather closing us down, we were happy to make some money that's going to the baby's room. 3159. arkymalarky - 7/2/2005 8:23:58 PM Mose sells her clothes to a place in Hot Springs called "Nearly New," and it's very handy. I don't know how much she's made, but they send checks when they sell the stuff. 3160. judithathome - 7/3/2005 12:28:23 AM Is that a cultural thing?
Maybe they just didn't have much money.
3161. Ms. No - 7/3/2005 12:33:10 AM Finally found a market where I can get Kaffir Leaves and Galanga. I'm still trying to perfect my Tom Ka Gai recipe and have decided that I don't like any of the "make do" versions that entail using Ginger and grated lime peel.
The checkout clerk at the Bangluck Market looked at what I was buying -- Galanga root, Kaffir Leaves, White Basil --- and said "Oh, you make Tom Ka Gai?" and I said "Well, I'm attempting it. I've been looking for Kaffir leaves all week. If it doesn't turn out right I'm coming back and asking you for instruction." She laughed and told me to bring her a sample.
3162. thoughtful - 7/5/2005 10:05:53 PM Help from another gardner please....we planted our tomaotes and the plants look extremely healthy. They started blossoming in early June and so far all but one of the blossoms have dried up and fallen off. We have one tomato. Any ideas why?
In past years we had a fungus attack the plants and they'd start dying from the bottom up, so someone suggested we plant them in pots instead, which we did. I'm afraid we made the soil mix too rich and that's why we're getting what we're getting.
Neighbor suggested that overnight temps have been largely too cool and it takes a certain amount of heat for the blossoms to set. He also suggested we may not have enough bees pollinating them, but we've not had that problem before.
Any suggestions?
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