Worm Hunting

Sometimes, you just gotta go do something ridiculous. It might have a purpose, maybe not, but if one day you wake up, look outside, and decide you want to gather up a large quantity of worms, well, this is the blog post for you.

First of all, go barefoot. Why? Because everyone needs an excuse to go romping around in the mud, and worm hunting is one of those reasons.

Second of all, go after a rainfall. Why? Well, apparently worms come crawling out of the ground after a rain. I've never really seen it myself, but you might get lucky. And hey, you need after-rain mud to squish inbetween your toes, right?

Now, if you seriously want to go digging for these crawly critters (maybe for fish bait, maybe for animal food, maybe just for fun) digging around in the ground is a sure-fire solution. Just as long as you have some dirt you're sure to find some worms as well, assuming you dig around long enough. But the problem is, you don't get very many little creepy crawlies this way, and most of them aren't really big either. So, how can you improve your worm hunting skills? Well look for fallen branches and logs, silly!

In all seriousness, any object that has been plastered onto the ground (you can tell because the bottom bits will be sunk into the dirt a little) is what you're looking for. Warm up those muscles and push whatever you find aside, and sure enough you'll see tons of worms nestled underneath! Other critters, such as centipedes, slugs, and ants are also common, but whether or not you want to collect those too is purely optional.

Now this is when you have to be fast. The little worms aren't all that worried about what you just did, but the big fat ones (like nightcrawlers) get pretty scared pretty fast. Though you'd assume that the smaller worms would be the faster worms, this unfortunately is not the case. So if you're hunting for large prey rather then mere numbers, you have to be quick. Having a garden scoop is handy here; though worms quickly slide down into the dirt if you're careful you can dig them out before they crawl too far out of sight. Inevitably, you're going to lose some of them. But, how fun would this hunting experience be if you caught everything you were searching for?

And, well, that's all there is to it! Worm hunting might not be the msot exciting of sports, but lack of complexity is not directly proportional to lack of fun. However, an enjoyment of slimy things definitely helps.

Pictures are not related, but definitely hilarious. (Thanks to my dad for finding this in the first place.)

10 things about ND that are different than MN

1.) "Can I have a sack?"

I'm not really sure where this came from, but at least fifty percent of the people who come into my work a call bags "sacks." It is more common among older folk then younger, and definitely more common among people from other states like Texas and Montana. I just wonder where the name came from, because "bag" seems to make so much more sense to me then "sack." Oh well!

2.) Fat Chicks

This is probably more of an area thing then a problem with all of North Dakota, but the percent of fat chicks is much larger here then it is in Minnesota. (Male obesity rates seem to be about the same.) I'd say about nine out of every ten women are very large, which seems wierd because most of the people around here are involved in farming and oil working. Perhaps oil workers make so much that their wives can just sit at home and get fat? I'm not even trying to be mean here, it's just true!

3.) Box Burning

In Minnesota, most cardboard boxes are unrecycleable or else they need to got through an entirely different system in order to be re-used. In North Dakota? Just burn those sons-of-bitches! I guess in Minnesota it is illegal to burn boxes, which is absurd (in my opinion) because they burn clean and stores get so many of them, and it's not like they're hard to make. Oh well!

4.) Gun Laws

I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the gun laws in Minnesota, but when transporting a firearm in a car you must have it unloaded and in a gun case. North Dakota is almost completely opposite. If you have your guns cased, they have to be in a place in the car that is easily visible. And, it is not illegal to have them uncased and loaded. Shooting prairie dogs out of the window of your car is probably one of the most hilarious things I've done while I've been up here, and in Minnesota it would be completely impossible.

5.) Cowboys

I'm going to be competely honest here; I really didn't think cowboys existed anymore. Not in terms of the profession, because there is obviously enough free-range cows around to warrent the existance of cowboys. I'm talking the dress style. Tall leather boots, the signature cowboy hat, plaid shirts nestled underneath a stylish, fringed leather jacket? Oh how wrong I was. On a side note, however, it is a pretty attractive style on skinny young guys, so I suppose the fact that it still exists isn't really a bad thing. :)

6.) White Trucks

Is white a very interesting car color to you? I didn't think so! But I guess in North Dakota it is. Again, this could be just a regional difference, but the amount of white trucks in this place compared to other colored trucks is at least 2:1. Why are there so many!? I really have no idea. One day I held a count of how many white trucks I saw while going about my normal business, and I made it well up into the forties. I just don't get it!

7.) Montana Tax

"Uhm, yeah, I'm from Montana but I'm in North Dakota so can I just skip your tax and have mine instead?" Yeah, I know it sounds dumb, enough that when someone asked for it for the first time I just laughed at him. (Not a very good idea for a cashier to do, and he wasn't very happy about it.) But, apparently, in North Dakota this is actually possible! If you're from Montana and you buy over $50 of anything, you can take off the North Dakota tax and have Montana tax instead. What the hell? Too bad I'm from Minnesota I guess....

8.) "Sorry, you're not old enough to look at booze."

In North Dakota, liquor stores tend to be in places that you don't really expect them to be. Like, latched on the side of a Wal-mart, or nestled in the back of a convenience store. But, what's even more surprising is that you can't enter one unless you're 21. Period. I found this out the hard way, by following my dad into one after a day of shopping. Once I told the lady at the counter my age she gave me a huge buggy-eyed stare and pointed towards the door, complete with incoherent babbling that I didn't quite understand. What I want to know is why? "Oh no, I've been in a beer store! I'M GOING TO DRINK AND HAVE LOTS OF SEX NOW!" It's just wierd, I guess this is a law I don't quite understand.

9.) 24-Hour Stores

You know those stores that are open 24/7, like Walmart or Cub Foods? In North Dakota there is a law that says that every 24-hour store must be closed for at least 8 hours a week. This kind of defeats the purpose of the 24 hour label wouldn't you say? At least they close Sunday mornings most of the time. Who would want to go to Walmart that early in the morning anyway?

10.) Drive-Through Subways

This is something I've never seen before until I came here. Maybe they exist in Minnesota, but if not, I wonder, why not!? Subways in North Dakota have a drive through option! It'd be a little more complicated then ordering a burger at Hardies, but also a lot more convenient for people on the go! I was pretty surprised when I found out about it myself, and my coworkers seemed pretty amused by my excitement. I suppose I'm just easily entertained or something. :)

Also, here is a WTF doodle that is not related to this post at all:

Aaand, me and Chad beat Diablo 2 last night. I took a screenshot as proof! Pretty cool huh? (My character was a summoning druid that attacked with a bow [hence the name PewPewDrood] and his was a concentrate barb that used a lot of warcries. Kind of a wierd combo but we ended up kicking ass.)

Rage Quit

Today things have just not been going my way. After spending a decent chunk of time working on the image above, I just could not seem to get it to look how I wanted. The bats are supposed to be locked in mid fight, the upper one swooping in on lower one. But the legs and claws of the critters looked wrong no matter how I placed them, and the back wings just refused to look good in any position. Who knew some simple WoW fanart could become so complicated?

Anyway, after rage-quitting that I quickly ran into some problems with an MMO I've been trying to play around with. It's a game called Istaria, and you can play as a dragon which peaked my interest. It's not free but there is a 14 day free trial, so I naturally went to check it out. But after hours and hours of downloading, I was only able to get into the game for 10 minutes (10 awesome minutes) before the game lost its connection to the server and refused to reconnect. Naturally by this time I was ready to choke a bitch, so I went outside to go climb some hills and vent my frustration. The result was oddly refreshing.

I crawled my way up some pretty steep hills to see as far as I could in these pictures. When people come up to visit there are plenty of big places to climb that I hope to show them. :)

I also really liked this dirt/rock thing. I'm not really sure how it was made or what exactly it is, but for some reason it's visually appealing to me.

Anyway, now I feel pretty worn out, so now maybe I'll try my hand at that bat image again. Or even better, finish the next panel of Adventures in D&D! I only have one more background to color before it is finished, so I might as well wrap up what I started. It's turning out to be even worse then the third page... I think people will enjoy it. :)

Working now!

I was intending to post again sooner, but the day after my last post I got a job!  I actually went in to talk to the owners of a small convenience store I had applied with, and they ended up hiring me on the spot and sending me to work.  Since then I've been spending a lot of time there, ringing up people for gas, guns, bait, and beer.  A bad combination?  Probably.  But the people there are really nice and the customers are almost always in a good mood, so it works out well.  So far I've made about $600; not bad for two weeks of work!  Hopefully the amount of hours I'm getting will continue.  :)

Here is a link to my work's website: http://www.scenicsports.com/

Other then that, I've been spending my free time sleeping, eating, writing, and drawing, usually in that order.  My dad bought a new trailer that will be roomier and nicer then this one, so in a couple weeks I will be rocking out in a new home.  (A new home that comes with a washer and drier, huzzah!)  I'm missing my friends and teh Chad a bit, but so far things aren't going too badly at all so it's not terrible.  :)

Because I hate to post without any personal images to show, here is something I doodled up a few days ago.  It's a mount creature for one of my stories, a flightless dinosaur-like thing that growls and thrums in its throat and is pretty intelligent.  This is a female; the males have tails more like a rooster.  If you were to sit on it your feet would nestle behind the wing-arms, and you'd control the beast with a simple bitless bridle.  Personally I think they'd be pretty fun to ride.  :)

         "It was Bine who came out first; she was the younger of the two females, and colored with a medley of grays and whites and yellows.  Taller than Sayden and four times as heavy, she was a beast that stood on two strong legs and was covered in pebbly skin.  Lowering her head she snuffed at Sayden’s hair, and he laughed.  “Good girl Bine, it’s nice to see you too!”  The Raptor huffed in response, and then hissed defensively as she dropped her head to the food.  Sayden backed off a little.  “Hey now, I’m not going to be taking your breakfast!” he laughed.  He gave the Raptor a pat on the head and received an annoyed grunt in response.
            A shrill sound emanated from the scoop and then Keen emerged, blinking the sleep away from her eyes.  Keen was larger than Bine and more solidly colored, her feathers and skin a rich brown with dainty yellow tips.  “Bine is a little snappy today,” Sayden told Keen.  She swung her head to look at him and then thrummed, though much more quietly than Bine had.  With a huff she thudded around Bine, pressing her muscled sides against the other Raptor and nudging her head down into the food.  Sayden noted the pleased flick of their feathery tails and gave them both a solid pat before moving out of the scoop."

Exploring

Since there isn't much to do up here until I get a job, I spent some time today exploring again. This time I scoured the other side of the park, walking along the lake beach and just checking everything out. There was a lot to see!

I did another composite image of the lake, but it is a little decieving. When I took the pictures I was standing on a penninsula, and had to turn in about 3/4ths of a circle to get all of the water. However, when I placed the images in a line the penninsula ended up looking more like a solid bank, when in fact it stretched back behind me and not out to my sides. Anyway, this is the best I could do; there are parts where you can't even see the other side of the lake so at least you get some idea of what it is like. Here is a bigger image: http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/4080/lakecomposite.jpg

Apparently Lake Sakakawea (which is the lake I'm living on) is the third largest man-made lake in the U.S., and it has a small population of a prehistoric fish called Paddlefish living in it. I doubt I'll ever catch one, but other people have, and this is what it looks like:

Even though I didn't see any fish like those today, I did see a lot of other animals. I first saw a deer, and then a bunch of ducks, some grouse and even a couple geese. Basically, everything I wish I would see while I was hunting. ;D There were also a huge amount of bugs, so many that they made a loud buzzing sound when I was walking near them. Mosquito season is not something I'm looking forward to this year, I'll tell you that much.

The funniest animal I saw was this strange little beach bird. It had sharp wings and spindily little legs, and it obviously knew I was there because it kept peeping like crazy and running away from me. Though, if it was trying to escape it wasn't doing a very good job. Every time I moved toward it is ran away, and every time I stopped moving it stopped too. I followed it down the beach for at least 15 minutes, until it finally took off and flew behind me. Unfortunately, the only image I was able to get of it was the one below; it's not that good but at least I got something!

After walking for a while I realized that there was a lot of driftwood that was on the beach! For a state that is severely lacking in trees, there were huge amounts of dried wood littered all over the place. There were even a few trees that had fallen and drifted over, and some petrified wood I picked up too. I can't think of a Minnesota beach I've seen with this much wood on it... it seems kind of wrong that this lake had so much of it. :o

And I'm not really sure what this is. It was sitting up on a pile of rocks, and there appears to be some wires running to a light on the top. Maybe a ghetto light house? I don't know.

Finally, after a good hour and a half or so, I decided it was time for me to head back to the trailer. I worked my way around some rocks and then was moving through a grassy area, when suddenly, about a foot in front of me, a grouse jumps up out of the weeds and scares the crap out of me! I almost passed right by, but then I leaned down to look where it had jumped out of, and what do I see? A nest full of eggs! There had to be at least 12 of them in there, all sort of small and greenish-blue colored. It was definitely a cool way to end my little adventure; I'm going to be checking back on the nest as the weeks go on I think.

So now I think I've sufficiently explored everything nearby! This should be my last big picture post for a while, unless I see something else really cool of course. Now you are all as familiar with where I am living as I am! There should be some more normal posts coming up, like further installments in Adventures in D&D and such. So far I've submitted applications for Walmart and a convenience store, and I'll probably submit more tomorrow, so I'll let you all know how that goes. Thanks for reading, it makes me feel like people care! :D

Where I'm Living

So, the place I am staying at is named after Lewis and Clark, apparently because they passed this way while exploring North America.  It's a pretty nice place for a little trailer park resort, with some nice trees and badlands hills.  Below I put together a few pictures I took; basically I walked up on top of a hill behind our little trailer and this is what I saw.  It's a lot more impressive in person, but, you know how it goes.  For a larger picture of this, click here: http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/6690/landscapecomposite.jpg

Besides those neat little hilly areas, on the other side of the park there is a huge lake.  I walked down to the beach and took a few pictures; the first isn't all that impressive but the second shows a line of trees in the water.  Apparently the water has been really low for quite a few years and as such a bunch of trees started growing on the beach.  Well, the water has started to rise again and so the trees are getting covered.  :o

Here is one of the more surprising things I found was while I was walking around on some hills.  The grass and brush was pretty scrubby in this particular place, but I looked down at one point and what do I see?  A cactus!  It was wierd seeing a cactus in the middle of a bunch of grass so I had to take a picture.

Me and my dad went and explored today as well; I didn't get pictures of some of the cooler stuff (there was one road we went down that wound right between two huge badlands hills) but here are some images I did get to take:

This oil pump was particularily impressive, mostly because I've never seen one before in real life before.  My dad said that sometimes the pump went down miles and miles; pretty cool for such a simple-looking machine.

Another small thing that really impressed me was this huge chunk of petrified wood.  I thought it was just a normal piece of wood at first, but when I got close I realized it had crystals and was pretty rock-hard.  I guess this kind of stuff is common in this area.  Who knew?

Here is some sandstone.  It is a lot more brittle then it looks; more hills are behind it.

And finally, when I saw this gas station I just couldn't pass up taking a picture.  :)

Whelp, that's all for now!  I'm going to be doing more stuff with my dad tomorrow; I don't know if I'll have more pictures to share but maybe I will!  So far this place is really neat; the only downside is the fact that I don't get cellphone coverage, so texting and phone calls are pretty much impossible.  If any of you guys want to contact me, please come on skype or else e-mail me!  I'm going to try to be on MSN more often as well.  The only contact I'll have with you all is online, so please say hello and keep me company every once in a while!  I appreciate it.  :)

North Dakota

So after 4.5 hours of sleep and 10 hours of driving, I have officially made it to Williston, North Dakota!  I've never driven for so long, and doing it (basically) straight on so little sleep was a very interesting experience.  Luckily I didn't have many "sleepy" periods, and I had my parents and teh Chad to talk to me when things got boring.  I will say, I got pretty sore after 6 hours or so.  And driving with no one to keep you company kind of stinks.  I circled the town I'm in on the above map; as you can see it's nearly in Montana.  I rode on Intersate 94 for over 500 miles, and then turned on a road called 85 and rode that for another 100+ miles.  I will say, I'm happy to finally be done with it!

Anyway, now I'm going to go on a search for work!  There are a lot of places hiring so hopefully I'll get a good job somewhere and make some cash over the summer for school.  It'll be nice to spend time with my dad too; truth be told I care more about that then work anyway.

I took lots of pictures as I came up here, starting once I crossed into North Dakota.  Here is the sign that shows you are entering the state, followed by the bridge arch that comes right after the sign:

North Dakota, on a whole, was extremely boring.  It was nice and green, and there was cities and stuff, but it was so incrediblly flat!  The wind came whipping around like you wouldn't believe; huge Semi-trucks would be swishing all over the road and my little car was being pushed every which way.  After a while I got used to the resistance and didn't notice so much anymore, but at 80mph when a big gust slaps your car on the side it can be a little freaky.  Furthermore, I realized about 100 miles into the drive that I only had one squirt of windshield fluid left in my car, and so as I went the piles of dead bugs on the windshield got more and more distracting.  (That is what those little smudges in the pictures are; bug guts.)

So, as you can see, the drive was pretty much just a pile of flatness.  But then, suddenly, maybe about 7 hours in, I look to my side and what do I see?  A hill!  A glorious, non-flat, half-grassy half-dirt hill!  After miles and miles of endless nothing, I pretty much pooped myself in happiness.  (If you look closely, you can see the hill in the picture below):

After this things got a little more hilly; I finally turned off 94 and was making my way down 85.  Things were about the same as always, flat with a little hill here and there.  I came around a sharp corner, completely zoned out, and what I saw pretty much made me crap my pants.

Hills, everywhere!  Where did they come from?  More importantly, where were they for the earlier part of the trip!?  For about a half hour I was surrounded by the huge striped badland hills of North Dakota; you can't see it very well in my pictures but they stretched high up into the sky and low down below the road.  I've never seen anything quite like it and it made the rest of the trip worth it, to be honest.

Finally, after 10 hours on the road I pulled in to the trailer park where I will be staying.  My dad fixed up an old trailer for us to stay in and split it into two sections, one for me to sleep in and one for him to sleep in (because we most likely will have different schedules.)  My computer is set up on a wood table he built, my bed is a nice futon and all in all it's a pretty nice place.  We did find some old pot and meth stuff though... kind of wierd really.

So, that is about it!  I will be updating this blog as more things happen out here, and of course will keep updating with art and such.  For now, I'm off to relax.  Just sitting in one spot for 10 hours is more tiring then you'd think.