Smoked Salmon

The other day I was smoking a salmon for the first time for an informal get-together later that day. Operating a smoker, as you may know, involves a lot of standing around in between the normal activities like burning yourself. For some reason, my juggling clubs were outside, so I picked them up and started juggling. It occurred to me that I hadn't done that in a while, despite having spent several years in my youth practicing that particular craft. In any event, some of the early arrivers saw me juggling outside by chance. They had known me for quite some time, but didn't know that I juggled. I talked about how I had worked my way through school juggling on sixth street in Austin (tuition was at first paid by my folks, thanks folks, but I picked up spending money - literally).

Anyway, the reason they didn't know I was a juggler is that I don't generally go around talking about much besides maybe my latest obsession. I change obsessions about once a year or so, so there are far too many past obsessions to catalog in introductions or in casual conversation. However, every now and then, I will mention in passing one or more of the things I've done in the past when it is germane to the conversation. This happened on this particular occasion about four different times with different things. ("Oh, yeah, I'm interested in that organic beer you're drinking because I used to make beer...", "I was riding my motorcycle out past Lake Lavon and noticed how low the lake was...", that sort of thing.) So anyway I happened to think that they might have gotten the impression that I have a lot of hobbies when every subject that came up was connected to something I used to do. It struck me that I needed a place I could point people to which would detail some of this if they were interested. I could probably tell a lot of tales about the different things I've done, and one of them was bound to interest someone, at least, or people might find out they have some obesession or obsessiveness itself in common with me and we could strike up conversations about it, and I could hear about their obsessions. Hence this blog. Or maybe it's just my latest obesession.