On my recent trip back home for Christmas I noticed that I was constantly asked the following question by friends and family: "So, what do you actually do?" Now this wasn't just a general question, rather it was in reference to my job. I guess I never thought about it, but it makes sense that if you tell someone you're working as a Naturalist they may not know what the hell that actually means you do. Before I became one, I wasn't even completely sure. Often times people nod as if they understand but then they think about it for a second, and out comes the question. I laughed many times (to myself) at the irony of the situation: my boss and most people at work have a hard time grasping what it is I do as well, and I constantly feel like I have to justify my work and even the existence of my position, which is frustrating to say the least, and now I felt as if I was doing the same thing to my family and friends. Not that this question was in any way mean spirited, people were honestly interested in what I did, but the correlation in my mind was unavoidable. My actual job title is Interpretive Specialist, but I long ago gave up telling people this because the confusion and absurdity of responses I received quickly went from amusing to monotonous (Ex.- "Really??? That's cool, how many languages do you know?"). I asked my boss if I could change my job title to Interpretive Genius, but he did not find this very funny, so we agreed to change it to Naturalist, though they still haven't found money in the budget for a new nametag. Anyway, to dispel many peoples' first notion that I am running around the woods naked eating bark and conversing with birds, I found a great video that helps illustrate what I do. Let's just say my guided hikes and presentations are very closely modeled after this video, so if you can't make it out here anytime soon you can still experience the wonder and amazement that I bring to visitors each day during the summer as I guide them through the forest. As a side note, if you don't have time to watch the entire video, at the very least it is well worth waiting for the dancing girls to emerge...

Even for non culinary person like me, Google recipe search is super cool. I decided to take a shot at the greatest meal in the entire eastern block, Shashlik. Here it is:
www.google.com

Russian Shashlik
Make 4 servings
Categories: Main Course Ethnic Low-fat Russian
Ingredients
2.00 tablespoon Corn oil
1.00 large Shallot, minced
2.00 large Garlic, cloves, fine-minced
1.00 tablespoon Parsley, freshly-chopped
1.00 small Onion, finely-minced
1.25 cup Pomegranate juice, unsweet.
1.50 lb Lamb, cut from leg
4.00 dash Cayenne pepper

Preparation
Tart-and-sweet and slightly astringent pomegranate juice the base for
the marinade in the recipe for this popular dish. True Russian style?
Da! Russian overabundance of calories? Nyet! Trim away all fat from
meat. Cut into 2" chunks. Place in small bowl together with onion,
garlic, shallot, parsley, cayenne pepper and pomegranate juice. Cover
and refrigerate overnight. Remove meat from marinade and pat dry.
Skewer the meat, using four substantial skewers. Brush with oil.
Broil under very high heat, turning often until done. Some prefer it
slightly pink (12 minutes). Well done will take about 20 minutes.
Remove from skewers and serve on a heated plate with Kasha.
VARIATIONS: Include 2 green peppers cut into 12 chunks, 4 tomatoes
cut into quarters, and 4 small, white onions, peeled and cut in half.
Skewer alternate chunks of vegetable and meat chunks. Proceed
according to recipe.
www.ecuisine.org

Here's to 69 years of making everyone else look weak.

Evel Knievel, the hard-living, death-defying adventurer who went from stealing motorcycles to riding them in a series of spectacular airborne stunts in the 1960s and ’70s that brought him worldwide fame as the quintessential daredevil performer, died yesterday in Clearwater, Fla. He was 69.

www.nytimes.com

The low pressure area that will become a major winter storm this weekend is beginning to make its move into the Desert Southwest.

The low that has been sitting off the coast of Baja California for the past several days is beginning to pump moisture into Arizona and New Mexico. The full impact of the low will initially be felt on Friday, when heavy rain develops over the Desert Southwest.

Over the weekend, the storm will move through the Rockies onto the Plains and into the Upper Midwest. By Monday, cold winds behind the storm will spark a major outbreak of lake-effect snow across the Great Lakes.

According to Western Expert Meteorologist Ken Clark, the low will create the potential for flash floods in Arizona and New Mexico, while little rain is expected in Southern California. "If you live in Arizona, expect rain and some locally heavy rain" said Clark. "If you live in southern California, the farther south you are the better chance of rain there is."

As the storm system drops onto the Plains, it will run headlong into the bitterly cold air that has been spreading across the northern Plains and the Upper Midwest.

Temperatures across the region plunged Thursday morning:

* Williston, N.D.: -10°
* Grand Forks, N.D.: -8°
* Thief River Falls, Minn.: -8°
* Minot, N.D.: -7°
* Warroad, Minn.: -4°

Strong winds made it feel even colder. The low in International Falls, Minn., fell to 3° below zero; however, the RealFeel® temperature in "The Nation's Icebox" was an icy 23° below zero.

The Winter Weather Center reports the cold air in place over the Plains will create a band of heavy snow this weekend from northeastern Nebraska into southern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin. Farther south, the snow will change to a wintry mix and then to rain along the southern edge of the system.
www.accuweather.com

And the worrisome years--over the hill I thought it's supposed to get easier to pay your bills I got nothing to show but a worrisome heart. Can ya please tell me--when does the good part start?

I done like they told me, I done like I should Ever since I started, I's trying to make good trying to make a good life for my family but I can't buy any stuff the kids want from TV - Greg Brown, The Worrisome Years

Here I am 31 years old; a father, a homeowner and a weekend warrior. This is the time in a rider's life that your body inevitably starts to breakdown, slowly deteriorating from years of abuse and punishment. Ever the pioneer, I reached that stage about 5 years ago when my knee went pop after nearly 17 months of continuous snowboarding. At that time, this silly sport consumed my life from the actual act to having the fliest kit to knowing the every in and out of the sport. In one moment most of that disintegrated, I didn't know it at the time nor did it all happen at once, but without a doubt my departure from the snowboarding scene commenced as my ACL exploded. Over the past 5 years, I moved away from North Conway, got married, had a daughter, and effectively put riding on the back burner. As will happen as priorities shift, I did not maintain myself and as a result my enjoyment on the hill lessened.

This past summer while reminiscing about the last seven years winter, I decided it was time to get myself back in shape. I started road biking and hit the stairclimber at the hotel. I grew to truly enjoy the former and despise the latter, but over the months the weight fell and my legs got stronger. I started playing basketball again and put the knee brace in the closet.

So I arrived at this my third seven years' winter, rebuilt both physically and emotionally. I started this season on equipment over 3 years old but with a sound and solid body.

It was another late start on Sunday for day deux, but I actually had my crap together, sporting a board with edges and a set of headphones with two speakers. On the first lift, the sound of skis and snowboards scraping across east coast solid ice filled my ears while man made snow pelted my face. I thought to myself, this is not the image of exclusivity or privilege, magazines or videos, no this is an everyman's day and I smiled. It was good to be back.

Two truths were quite evident on this day, sharp edges even on a Magne Traction suck less than no edges and strong legs amount to much more pop. I rang in the new season with a slew of ugliness including a nose grab, roast beast, and melon.

There are many aspects of snowboarding that I love, but at the base of it all is the slash. It is a simple pleasure, the result of a subtle shift of weight to the front of the board and a gentle push of the back leg. It can be smooth or quite violent, it can be accomplished on the worst of days and by just about any snowboarder, it is often overlooked but for me it is one of those great little things. On this weekend, I was lucky enough to combine it with two other simple things that make me smile; new snow tires and a sharp chain on the saw.

7YW0708 - Glad To Ride - Seth

MUMBAI: Watch out Apple and Google, Sony may just surprise the world with a ‘Playstation Phone’. The Japanese company is toying with the idea of developing a ‘Playstation phone’ that will combine the power of a gaming console with that of a mobile phone, a top company official told ET.

www.economictimes.indiatimes.com

Currently I don't really have any terms of use other than the Creative Commons License that is down on the bottom. If anyone goes over the line, they will be entering a world of pain, this isn't bush league pysch out tactics. Recognize.

There is blood running out of my eyes, I have survived off of guinness and sailsbury steak for two days, and I actually sounded giddy while discussing the finer points of CSS. If it wasn't for the guinness and sailsbury steak I would be really ticked off. I heard recently that I have failed to find happiness in my work, well duh. I really should have followed my high school counselor's recommendation to be an auctioneer. Not one of those prissy ones from Sotheby's either, but one that auctions live beef to people with funny hats and tight jeans. Instead I am trapped in a virtual world where I pretend to be cool. Luckily there is something out there that brings me happiness (other than the obligatory wassup up to my family, you are the wings beneath my wind). I just love spending ages, and I mean a painfully long time, creating websites for all of my friends (Dom, Mike, and Andy) to post on. Seriously it is awesome. Well here it is the new bad colonies, read below, get stoked and post something.

Game Recap:
Dom and I decided that driving a piece of junk rig to Mongolia would be fun back in aht5, we called our gang of idiocy the bad colonies motoring cooperative. My ass learned some html on the quick and bcmc1 was born. It was ugly, but we filled the white space with sarcastic humor about how dumb we were/are. After finding Mongolia and losing Carrie's cousin, we decided that writing detailed posts was really a pain in the butt, especially with only a couple people actually posting and less reading. Following the lead of Snowboard Mag, I borrowed some code from the kind crowd at drupal.org and hacked up the css files to create a slightly less ugly site that all 2 other people we knew could post youtube clips and such. Then we all stop posting, except Andy who was actually doing something that didn't suck. I got pissed at the slightly less ugly site and embarked on BCMC2andfew which really ended up annoying me. Instead of fighting through, I opted to change the banner image to something I chooched off of google image and kind of tweaked the background image. It was truly a lazy effort, all were amazed with the grandeur or actually they were amazed that we tricked another group of Vermontsters into not only doing the Mongol Rally but also posting here. So I arrived in November a bit tired and decided it was time to make the site suck less.

The Motives
First off, the sarcastic humor is back along with actual posts. If you don't like, just wait a few weeks and it will probably be back to normal, albeit with a perty wrapper. The color scheme is unchanged, brown and blue, earth and sky, poop and water, guinness and windex. While legally (please don't research this) the site is still known as "The Fantastically Super Bad not bad meaning bad but bad meaning good Colonies Motorcar Orgainic Vegetable Cooperative", it has been shortened to "bad colonies" as we realized that we probably had climaxed with our Mongol Rally travels and were really feeling the unnecessary pressure of the full name. In addition, this allows us to branch out into areas like quilting, curling, and trash removal. The old site, the one that sucked more, was kind of pain to navigate, in fact it really irritated me. I made this one simple, there are main links at the top, there are flashy colorful links in the middle that let you do stuff. Don't hurt yourself trying to figure out the significance of the numbers/letters, those circles are fashioned after subway icons since I was on the L in Chitown when I designed them. No you can't actually save anything, that button is for scheduling stuff like a bake sale or a burger building contest (I'm coming strong this year hoseheads, recognize). If you click that "Share Ideas" button, whatever you enter will be fully open to editting by the rest of us (me and Andy if Mike enters it, vice versal if one of us enters it). If you want more stuff look at the bottom of the page, where lots of fun things are hidden away from the masses.

Generally I am like most people and far too lazy to type much more that 20-30 characters, so there is a "shoutbox". I don't like that name, so I changed it to "telegraph", you know go to the store and send a wire, crazy, but either way you can give little inspirational things to help the rest of us get through the day. The key to the BCMC3 is space, the content has become the prime focus, it is wider and higher, like any self respecting trailer park. There are lots of hawaii type flowers interlaced into the backgrounds because it makes me less angry. It is not complete, there is a real forum on the way, image help for those of you that don't understand imageshack, and a text editor to make it more like Microsoft Word, word. Don't hold your breath though, I already ate all my free time on this overhaul.

That's about it, I hope you like it, I do, well it sucks less and that is all I care about. Jeez I wonder what BCMC4 will be like, well don't that's a long way off, start posting. - Seth is out

I have a six pack of Guinness, a pot of coffee, a few Rockstars, and a Hungry Man TV dinner - this site will be relaunched by the morning, this much I promise.

I know you are thinking, "Shouldn't it be BCMC 3.0", well it is not Hank 3.0 so it sure as hell isn't going to be BCMC 3.0.

A massively redesigned bad colonies site will be online by the end of November. I know the 4 users (Tommy, Mike, Andy, and myself) will be ecstatic with the results.

Pan Am planning is back underway and there is snow in the hills, signaling the start of the Seven Year's Winter.

Seth out.