Can you feel it?

Something happened yesterday…

A storm rolled through NE Wisconsin early Saturday morning and now it feels different.  I can live comfortably with the windows open.  Thursday night I swear I saw Eddie Lacy rumbling down the field in green and gold.  I saw the lights of Lambeau from my living room window.  I’ve visited the mighty Ahnapee twice in the past few weeks, once with Hoot, and once with dad and T-Bone.  I’ve already gotten the e-mails from Ty…”When are we heading to the land?”  My kids go back to school in 10 days.  If I didn’t know any better, I’d say we’re approaching the most wonderful time of the year: fall.

I’m not an idiot.  I know we have weeks of 80+ degree weather ahead.  It always happens when the kids go back to school, just to make the poor students and teachers miserable for a bit right when the year begins.  However, a month from now the leaves will be changing colors, the Packers will be 2-0, and hopefully we’ll have some goose meat in the freezer and the trail cams hung at the hunting land.  Winter is a drag.  Spring is basically non-existent in Wisconsin.  Summer is fun, but you can have it as far as I’m concerned.  Nothing is better than September, October, November, and December.  It is upon us.

As I mentioned earlier, last week dad, T-Bone, and I jumped in the Big Gray Deer and made our way to the Ahnapee river just west of Forestville.  We grabbed my duck hunting boat from Hoot’s property.  It’s time to give the old girl a makeover.  Tore out the old, brittle wooden seats that have been there since the 70’s.  Giving her boat an entirely new paint job.  I have a fitting new name for her as well that I will paint on, but I’m not revealing it yet.  That surprise is for Hoot first.  Hoot has his crawdad back at his house as well.  We’ve been experimenting a lot on the mighty Ahnapee for the past 15 years or so.  This year we mean business.  If you’re a winged Canadian in Southern Door County this fall, watch yourself.  There will be a lot of steel BB’s cutting through the autumn sky courtesy of my Benelli Nova and a 3-year-old Black Lab eagerly awaiting your descent.

Of course, I couldn’t enjoy my outdoor adventures this fall without writing about it.  You may recall I’ve spent the last three years writing on the critically-acclaimed blog chabrawner.com.  Chabrawner.com ownership disagreed with the financial requirements of the web hosts and decided to abandon the site and domain name.  In hindsight, I should’ve saved the writing before the site closed.  I liked a lot of those 2013-2015 posts.  They’re gone forever.  Attention Russians: If you hacked chabrawner.com in late-2015 and have the contents, I know some members of the media who will pay handsomely for it.

If you go to chabrawner.com now you’ll find a Japanese blog.  If you translate it to English, the title of the site is “Ceramic Watch is Astringent”.  The title of the most recent post is “Cheat too much we do not lose since against Japan two years ago of A Rugarude cup.”  This is upsetting.  The new writers on chabrawner.com are much better than I am and have chosen fascinating and relevant topics.  Kudos!

I’ve rebooted my blog with a new provider and domain name.  My writing now resides at mookiefantana.com.  I didn’t like having a website with my name, so I chose a different one.  From this point on, anything I post will be here at mookiefantana.com.  I will also make an occasional guest appearance at inlandsealife.com, a site I strongly encourage everyone to follow.  There’s nothing there yet, but I promise you when there is content it’ll be provocative and worthwhile.

So that’s all for tonight.  New website.  New alias.  Same me: Mookie Fantana.  Good night now.

Also, 87 days, 8 hours, 45 minutes until Ty, Kneecap, Colin, Uncle Dave(?) and I leave for Deer Camp.