In high school I had a part time job working at Minnehaha Tropical Fish in Tampa. It had a big concert teepee with the front door in the middle. I don’t know if it is still there. That was over 50 years ago. I also would collect marine tropical fish off the southeast coast of Florida. Made a lot more money doing that and thought I might do it for a living at one point. I have had numerous fish tanks over the years and would breed different freshwater fish as a hobby. Haven’t had a fish tank now for maybe 20 years. It is meditative to sit back and watch for sure.
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I’m limited to badly done stick figures.
Great work.
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Frankly, I’ve been avoiding this thread (till now) because I’ve discovered over the course of a lifetime that I get addicted to hobbies. I find it difficult to be brief in mentioning any of the hobbies which I’ve been captured by, and its the sort of confession not everyone is understanding of and is boring as can be to non-practitioners…
Breeding tropical fish (primarily killifish in the final decade or so) was for many years my main addiction. (My father and grandmother were also similarly afflicted - my father worked for a breeder in Calif. that first imported and bred oscars, was an early commercial producer of neon tetras, and developed the first “brick red” swordtails. ) There were a few years there where I was in the top ten nationwide in killifish show points. I’d have done better if I entered more shows - but I stayed in the midwest and rarely entered or attended more than four shows a year. I still have 58 aquariums in the basement, though its been almost twenty years since I entered a fish show or sold any. I was in the trade for four years and went back to school to study ictheology in the hopes of being the guy who would straighten out the systematics of the genus Cynolabias, but was beaten to it by a guy named Costa from Brasil.
But when I was younger I took piano, and later guitar, pretty seriously. I was the house pianist at a coffee house for about three years and played in several bar bands. I made something of a return to music later in life and was mostly into classical guitar by that point.
And then there is the model airplane jones. Did that as a kid too, and came back to it on several occasions. Rubber band stick and tissue was my main obsession, though I did control line too. RC was always too expensive for my blood - at least to get very far into it, though I did build and fly a couple RC sailplanes. Just for giggles I did a couple indoor “Nocals” in the last year - a pusher canard Shinden and a Hughes racer. These are 16" span rubber band profile scale models that can be built in a day or two (if one doesn’t go gonzo on decorating them). They weigh in at 9.5 and 12 grams respectively (without the rubber), and theoretically should be able to fly in the 3-4 min. range, if I had a decent high-ceiling location to fly them. Which I don’t - but there’s satisfaction in the building and yard flying in dead calm air.
These are the sort of nerdy fates that can befall obsessive folks like us when we don’t paddle enough. But I just can’t imagine how small and dull the world would be without such obsessions.
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A life well lived.
Kinda working on another hobby.
It only happens for about 4 weeks once set up. In Feb-Mar, I’m going to put in 10 taps for maple sap.
I looked around and I can put in 27 taps in basically the front yard and a few hundred if I were to tap the whole property. I figure I will start with 10, that will give me 60-100 gallons of sap, about 1.5 gal of syrup.
I have a old shed, enough block for a arch (stove) plenty of wood, one tank of gas through the chainsaw gave me a stack of split cherry 8’ wide and prob 5.5 feet high. 2 more tanks of gas should be enough. A water storage tank to use for sap storage could possibly gravity feed the pan.
I need a pan and I think I will spend a little on it and get one with baffles and a warming pan and a built in thermometer. I will get 10 food grade buckets with lids new from Lowes. A set of 10 taps with 3’ of line to run to the buckets. Some pint jars, and filters should round out what I need for a test run. Should come in under 500.00
I am going skiing for the last week in Feb. I will tap the Fri I get home. The way I figure it, if I run out of sap, I’m done. If I run out of wood, I’m done.
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Go girl Paris 
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I judge BBQ contests all over the South East. I am a Master Certified Judge with the Kansas City Barbecue Society. It’s tough job but someone has to do it. When not Paddling or BBQing my wife and I like to trail ride in the Jeep. She is a Genealogist and the Jeep comes in handy accessing lost graveyards.
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A friend and I were once on a mission to try every BBQ place in SC. We did pretty well until he moved out of state.
I like looking in old cemeteries. I bought a used kayak and spent an hour in cemetery by the guy’s house.
Mine will be old one day 
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I think I’ll have more than enough time in one to look at them now. If my wishes aren’t followed.
My request is to be cremated and put in the Edisto River.
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My friend blew his friends ashes 
out the window during a televised race on a major network & major race. They showed it on TV. 
Announcer knew it was happening and mentioned it.
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I also like going to watch live music performances as well as playing rekkids on tube driven horns….
I’m with PaddleDog52, I like gardening. But if I could get weed’s gig I wouldn’t mind. Nordic skiing, too.
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Bought the top 
pepper plant in bloom last fall. Took the seeds from it to create the others you see. Can’t wait for them to all bloom.
When I harvested the seeds from the peppers last year’s I touched my eye. It was not a good thing to do. 
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When my younger brother was a toddler Mom used to set him in his old wooden playpen on our covered back porch while she sewed inside (where she could keep an eye on him through the open door.) He discovered he could rock the wheeled pen and move it around the porch at will. Dad was a hobby gardener and had several of those same pepper plants in pots at the sunny end of the porch.
You can guess the rest: it was Saturday and we were all home when we heard terrible wailing from the porch and we all rushed to see what had happened. There little Bro was, face bright red and drool full of red bits of the “candies” he had stuffed in his mouth soaking his shirt front. Mom ran to get a rag and glass of milk for him while Dad grabbed the camera and recorded his son’s teary distress. I have lost track of the photo but it was a family treasure for years.
Little guy not only survived but as an adult loves hot sauce and spicy food especially Mexican and Thai.
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I have fond memories of collecting sap in the spring, walking through the sunny snowy woods with pails on a toboggan, and boiling late into the night.
