Maple Syrup Festival

This week we had Jesse and Alicia Alba come up and visit from the great city of St Louis. Actually, I don't know if being voted as "America's #1 dangerous city" in 2007 counts as "great," but whatever.

We drove up to the Maple Syrup Festival outside of Mansfield, OH. We enjoyed a free day of taking a horse-drawn trailer up the snowy "mountains" (I mean "hills") to get demonstrations on the making of maple syrup from the indians, European settlers, and modern day syrup makers. We learned that the sap drained from the trees is 2% sugar and 98% water. To get the syrup you have to boil out the water to get a 66% sugar consistency. You can also boil out all of the water and have dried maple sugar, which the pioneers used instead of going down to the mercantile store to pick it up. Although everything here was free, they did ask for donations. And they did sell maple fudge, maple beef jerky, maple barbeque sauce, hot dogs boiled in maple syrup, and of course maple syrup.


We're sad to report a member of our family died today. Yes, Brutus passed peacefully this afternoon. Although it was a little sad, I think it must have been fate coming. When we bought the fish back in September, I made the agreement with the little fish that we would name him Brutus and dedicate him to the Buckeye's football season. We had the arrangement that if the Buckeyes ever lost, we were going to cook him up for dinner. Well, he DID bring us luck for most of the season, but alas it wasn't enough. We extended him mercy by not eating him when the Buckeyes lost 2 games at the end of the year, but perhaps karma was reaching out to him when we weren't. Over the last 2 weeks he started swimming more slowly and developed some black spots on his chin and on his ventrolateral side. Note: black spots are never good. Last night he decided to curl up into a semicircle shape. His gills opened slower and slower. We're not sure at what minute he expired, but we're pretty sure it was overnight. At least, we hope he's dead because Sarah flushed him down the toilet already. She said he had "fish rigor mortis"--he maintained a perfect semicircular form as he disappeared down the crapper in clockwise swirls.