Opening Day of Duck Season

My dad and I went to the Paulinskill and Hyper-Humus WMA for our annual outing on opening day of duck season. The day began with the alarm at 3:30 AM...BLEA!

The interesting aspect of going to this place is the part where we use bikes to get to our spot. It is quite a sight I'm sure to see some guys on bikes with shotguns on their backs in camo!

It was a pretty slow morning and if it wasn't for some luck we wouldn't have even had a shot. My dad got two and I got one. As you can see from the pictures, the highlight of the morning was the beautiful fall colors!
Oh and if you think you see ducks in the pictures, they are not, they're just decoys! I always think it's funny when people think they are real. :)

2008 Presidential Election

Some people may want to understand the state of the race right now. Here is a brief outline of the state of the race.

Using the map shown above you'll see the states are shaded into RED, BLUE and TAN colors. RED = McCain, Blue = Obama, TAN = undecided. The numbers on each state represent their electoral votes.

Can McCain take traditionally Democratic states?:
The Traditionally Democratic states that McCain has been trying hard for are Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Polling within the last two weeks have shown that Obama has healthy leads beyond the margin of error in all of those states. So offensively McCain isn't doing so well.

Can Obama win states won by Bush in 2004?:
Obama has been polling very well in two states won by Bush in 2004: New Mexico and Iowa.

Who is in the best position?:
A candidate needs at least 270 electoral votes to win the election. As the map is laid out here Obama has 264 to McCain's 174. In order to win the election Obama only needs to win 1 of the undecided states. McCain would need to win all of them. One interesting note to consider is that if Obama only won Nevada and McCain won the rest the electoral vote would be a tie at 269 - 269. What happens then? The election would be sent to the House of Representatives which is led by Democrats who presumably would vote Obama President. (the Senate would vote for Vice President)

Who is leading in the undecided states?:
The undecided states do have leanings.
Strongly leaning Obama: Virginia
Leaning Obama or tie: Colorado, Nevada, Ohio, Florida
Strongly leaning McCain: North Carolina, Indiana
Leaning McCain or tie: Missouri

Conclusion:
Things of course can change but right now Obama is in an extremely advantageous position. It would be very unlikely for McCain to win every undecided state considering their leanings...we'll see! I'll post another update sometime soon.

Sources:
www.electoral-vote.com
www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/latestpolls/index.html

2008 Governor's Surf Fishing Tournament

Nikki, Devin, Dad and I again hit the beach for the 17th annual Governor's Surf fishing Tournament and yes once again the Governor was nowhere to be seen. Boo!

There were slightly over 1000 participants and only 27 fish entered! That's surf fishing i guess...seems like it's either dead or the fish are all over the place!
If i find official results I'll post them.

Devin dares a fish to strike his pole!

We did catch a few Sea Robins but they aren't an enterable specie. In fact I think a very large Sea Robin was Devin's first fish caught surf fishing. He was very excited even though it didn't count for a prize.

Devin's Sea Robin!

Here are some pictures from the day. If you click on them they'll be larger. For more pictures you can visit our shutterfly page HERE

This is so sweet!

This is sweet enough to melt my cold, fall-hardened heart (just kidding). Barack Obama has done more for this country culturally than it is possible to quantify! yes we can!

New Dinnerware

Nikki has been begging for new dinnerware so today we finally picked up a new set. She's really happy with it!

Fetch!

Sorry for the lack of updates!! This one will be mostly pictures. Let's see if I can sum things up a little bit. Bear is getting bigger (45 pounds?) and is completely house and crate trained. His obedience is ok better inside than outside but best when food is involved lol.

He likes to relax on the bed with us and continues to be SO dern CUTE!

I started teaching fetch outside more frequently and also in thicker cover. He loves jumping into bushes and uses his nose to find the bumper if he didn't see it fall.

As far as training is concerned problems would be: slow to respond to sit and come especially outside, distractions make training go out the door, sometimes fails to bring bumper back and when at eye level he sometimes wants to wrestle. We're workin on it!

Here we are kayaking for the first time on the Rahwey River. It was harder to steer a kayak than i expected...if there were Kayak police we would have been pulled over for drunk driving! We were all over and i don't think we ever did get it figured out.

We took Bear to Assunpink WMA for some water training. He always has a great time! Here he's going after the bumper.

He got it, here he comes!

Bear found a friend there, who promptly played keep away from him! They had a blast chasing each other, he was exhausted and slept the whole way home!

HAHA Bear in mid air going after a bumper in the bushes.

He found it!

After a long day of romping around Bear loves to snuggle hehe.

Bear's Introduction to Water!

We took Bear for his intro to water maybe 3 weeks ago to Round Valley Resevoir. He had a great time. At first of course he was wary, but then was wading all over and even swimming short distances, even over his head to grab a stick. Although he didn't like the over the head part and started shying away from that.

Since then he has gone into streams and ponds and loves the water. The other day i threw a stick in a pond (Lenape pond) where it was over his head maybe only a foot out from the bank. (i didn't actually know this) Needless to say he got quite the surprise when he jumped in but he certainly didn't get scared! It's a good thing i had a leash on him because he started swimming off to the middle of the pond! hahah!

Here are some pics of the round valley trip.
I also threw in some pics from Memorial day, which was his first trip to the beach. Dogs never cease to amaze me in what they eat. He ate so much sand the poor thing was constipated for several days and threw off his digestion for practically a week!

"hmmm i think i like this..."

"This is awesome! Throw the stick, i DARE you!!"

Good Job Bear!

Bear loved the beach...i guess it made him tired...or maybe he's just sleeping off a meal of sand...yum!

Wow! Bear is growing so fast! He still has lots of growing and we're already saying..."aww remember how small he was!"

Bear is a rascal sometimes...but really...he's such a nice puppy.