https://ball-pythons.net/forums/blog.php?2101-Marks-pretty-boring-blog Ball python care and information as well as community driven content covering all manner of reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates - from boas to ball and blood pythons to bearded dragons and brachys. Have questions? We have answers! Come join our unique community and create your own photo gallery, compete in monthly contests, classifieds, calendared events and so much more. Got balls? We got you covered! en Sat, 12 Apr 2025 00:28:32 GMT vBulletin 60 https://ball-pythons.net/forums/images/themes/default/misc/rss.jpg https://ball-pythons.net/forums/blog.php?2101-Marks-pretty-boring-blog https://ball-pythons.net/forums/entry.php?82-Wow-it-s-been-a-while Thu, 22 Aug 2013 02:53:50 GMT Geez, it's been at least two years since I've posted anything here. Actually I kind of just plain forgot about it. I should probably post a few things here and there. I'm still at the same job, currently working 10 hour days on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays but then I have the rest of the week off. It's the first time in amost a year that I actually have some time off on the weekend. I've been riding my motorcycle in every day now for the past three weeks. I picked up a new jacket and pants recently and they're very well armored but HOT. I wore them to work today and was swimming in sweat by the time I got here. I think I'll like them though later on in the fall. Well, that's about it for now, don't want to start off again with too much. Makes it more difficult to keep up with it. ]]> MarkS https://ball-pythons.net/forums/entry.php?82-Wow-it-s-been-a-while https://ball-pythons.net/forums/entry.php?49-Still-pretty-boring Wed, 06 Oct 2010 22:21:26 GMT I haven't been around for a while, still getting used to my new shift at work I guess. I'm now working Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday from 7:00PM until 5:00AM, the money is pretty good, with the time and a half for Sundays and a 10% shift differential for working off hours, it's like getting paid for 49 hours for a 40 hour week. It's like getting a 25% raise, the down side of course is that it really messes up your internal clock. I actually love working those hours, there's actually more work to do, but it's very quiet with less distractions and fewer phone calls. I can crank up Pandora on the computer, I generally listen to classical music at work because I find it so relaxing, and just concentrate on one thing at a time.

One of the hard parts is getting home at 5:30 and trying to get to sleep right away. I usually just end up staring at the ceiling for a couple hours before I can drop off. Then of course the problem is STAYING asleep, if I can get to sleep before the sun comes up I can usually stay sleeping, but then if someone wakes me up I have a real hard time dropping off again. Two days of my work week, I often get a chance to see the youngest boy when I get home since he's just getting up at the same time and getting ready for school, but then he's out of the house by 6:30 to catch his bus. My wife usually gets up around 7:30 or 8:00 to get ready for work and she gets my oldest boy up and gets him breakfast, My wife Suzy has to be to work by 9:00am and Zach has to Catch his bus for school at 10:00. They try to be quiet, but are not always successful. I never seem to be able to sleep past 1:00pm. If I end up with at least 5 hours of sleep I'm pretty happy. Weekends of course are worse because that's when everyone else on the block decides to mow their lawns... :O

My last clutch of the year hatched this week and I'm pretty happy about it. 4 lessers out of 5 eggs. This is my 3rd year hatching lesser clutches and I FINALLY produced some females. The last two years, I only got a few clutches that were short on lessers and the ones I did get were all males. :( This year I produced 3 females and they're all staying with me. :D

one of the nice things about working third shift is that you're off every afternoon. Gives me lots of time for kayaking and going to appointments. I'm not looking forward to the cold this year as I'll have to put the boat away just when it's getting fun. I got this pic of a blue heron the other day while out on Island Lake..



Well, that's enough about me, I hope you all have a great day.

Late edit... Yankees take the first one, but there's four more to go... Pretty good game though. ]]> MarkS https://ball-pythons.net/forums/entry.php?49-Still-pretty-boring https://ball-pythons.net/forums/entry.php?23-State-fair-2 Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:18:41 GMT I couldn't' get all the pictures on one post so I split them up. Here is the continuation.

Across the way from Monty's , the Minnesota Herp Society has a display of native herps in the DNR building. I usually get some free tickets every year because I usually sign up to check on the animals to make sure water is filled and the displays are clean. I didn't do it this year though because I didn't know for sure if I was going to be able to make it.

Timber Rattler, this guy has been out at the fair more years then I have.

All the milk you can drink for a buck... I remember back when it was only a quarter.

My favorite places at the fair are the livestock barns, I'm not much for the rides but I love looking at the animals. Here are some goats, there were a LOT of 'dwaft nubians' on display this year.

and of course you have to check out the weird looking chickens,

And the more normal looking ones

But my favorite is the 'miracle of birth' pavilion where they have all the newborns that were born or hatched during the fair. The chick on the right hatched while I was watching. Just a sudden pop and there he was. An interesting difference from snakes that like to take their own sweet time.

Baby pigs not more then a few days old

Lamb getting a drink

This calf was born just moments before I got there, it's interesting watching the mother licking the calf to clean it up.

I never did get a chance to meet up with Rudd, though we exchanged a lot of text messages, maybe next year. But I had a good time anyway, Hope you enjoyed the pictures. ]]> MarkS https://ball-pythons.net/forums/entry.php?23-State-fair-2 https://ball-pythons.net/forums/entry.php?22-State-Fair Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:16:58 GMT I got a text message the other day from my friend Rudd McCLory saying that he was in town helping out his friend Monty at the state fair. Monty Krizan has had his 'Monty's traveling reptile show' out at the state fair for more years then I can remember. Rudd used to be his neighbor when he lived in California and he'll fly out sometimes during the fair to help out. So I went out to the fair this past Sunday to see if I could meet up with Rudd, well Rudd had gone out on the town with Monty that afternoon so I missed him by only about an hour. Well, at least I had a good time at the fair, got some pictures of it too so I'll show you the things that I did.
Here is the front gate, I always take a bus from the park and ride lot that's only about a mile from my house, it's a lot nicer then trying to find parking on the fair site.

Of course I have to start out with one of my favorites, deep fried twinkie on a stick drizzled with chocolate... Mmmm and SO good for you too.

And of course you gotta catch one of the parades that are always going through


Here's the guy I'm probably going to vote for in the gubernatorial election. When you have a choice between the wimpy democrat with a history of alcohol abuse or the hot headed republican with anger issues, third party candidates start looking pretty good.

Montys place. At three bucks a head the guy makes a killing at the fair, it's a good display though and worth the money, he's got some of the biggest snakes I've ever seen. He sure likes his Retics




]]> MarkS https://ball-pythons.net/forums/entry.php?22-State-Fair https://ball-pythons.net/forums/entry.php?17-Saturday Sun, 05 Sep 2010 06:09:47 GMT Well, looks like vacation is pretty much over. I start back at work again tomorrow evening. Got a lot of stuff done today though, I cleaned one of my yearling racks and all the tubs for this years hatchlings. I've got 47 babies so far for this year with one more clutch in the incubator. I wish I'd gotten a little better odds this year, once again I whiffed on producing a clown, didn't get any eggs from pieds and only hatched one albino. I did hatch one that I was pretty excited about, but it died while shedding. It was my first Leucistic from a lesser to a mojave so I'm still in pursuit of the fabled white snake. She had quite a bit of pattern, but seemed to be doing real well right up to the point where she died. Well, I guess these things happen, I just wish they'd quit happening to me with such frequency. One of these years I'm going to catch a break and really produce some fascinating stuff.

Got a chance to get out on the lake again today in the kayak. Lake Josephine is a small city lake, meaning that every square inch of shoreline except for the public swimming beach and the boat launch is private property. There are some really nice houses there, it's not a large lake, I can paddle around it in an hour, but it's a pretty lake and it's usually pretty quiet later in the day. I got some pics and some of them turned out OK.



It's a pretty clean lake too, very little trash to be found which is always nice but it's pretty shallow in most spots so there are lots of weeds.

Other then that, Suzy had picked up Chinese at Leeann Chins restaurant and we ate Lemon chicken and sesame chicken and watched a video. The video tonight was The Ghostwriter a political spy whodunit type of movie. It was pretty good and I'd recommend it. Well, have a good night. ]]> MarkS https://ball-pythons.net/forums/entry.php?17-Saturday https://ball-pythons.net/forums/entry.php?15-Tgif Sat, 04 Sep 2010 08:19:57 GMT Well maybe not TGIF. That means that it's the last official day of my vacation and I'll be starting back to work again on Sunday. It was fairly cold today, felt like 60's all day long. A definite taste of fall in the air. I like fall, it's one of my favorite seasons, but winter follows after and I'm just not ready to think about that yet. I could use a few more 90 degree days. I really didn't do much, cleaned a dozen snake tubs and fed and watered all the rats, also cleaned out a couple of turtle tubs. Here are a couple of baby lesser pics just for fun.



My wife Suzy of course always has to show me up. She likes gardening the way I like snakes, it's what she does to stay sane. There have been plenty of times when I could tell she had a rough day because when she gets home from work she'll go straight out to the garden and stay there until dark, she won't even come in the house first. Well today she decided to put in a new garden in a corner of our lawn that has always looked a little rough. We have a hard time getting grass to grow there, the soil doesn't seem to hold moisture so she decided to dig it up and work some peat into the soil to loosen it up a bit and put in a flower bed. She got pretty far in one day.



I had to make a little bit of fun of her though, she went out and bought some potted golden rod. I had to comment about all the golden rod I saw blooming wild in the ditches on my way to the video store. Ha, oh well as long as it makes her happy.

Had Pizza and a Movie night tonight, went out to Papa Murphys to pick up the pizza. I had enough stamps to get a free large one topping pizza so in addition to the stuffed 5 meat pizza I also picked up a large Italian sausage pizza and then diced up some fresh picked Jalapeno peppers on top. I love hot stuff, I'm the only one in the family who does though so I was pretty much assured of getting the whole pizza to myself :D. Also picked up The book of Eli at blockbuster. I've wanted to see that one for a while. The boys weren't interested so after they scarfed down their fill of pizza they went back to their rooms to play video games or surf the web or chat online or whatever it is they seem to do all the time. So Sue and I sat and watched the movie by ourselves. We rather enjoyed it, it was confusing at first but we picked it up pretty quick and it turned out to be pretty good. Well I guess that's enough for now, have a good night. ]]> MarkS https://ball-pythons.net/forums/entry.php?15-Tgif https://ball-pythons.net/forums/entry.php?13-Yet-again Fri, 03 Sep 2010 04:22:22 GMT Well, here I am again telling a bunch of bored people about my life. Had a pretty good day yesterday, my youngest son Nick turned 17. He got a pair of Dr Dre headphones which were freakishly expensive for headphones... But, he's been asking for them for almost half a year, I hope he's happy with them and that they're worth the money though I have a hard time believing that they are. Of course I don't think I've ever spent more the 50 bucks for a set of head phones in my life so I wouldn't know if they're really worth it or not. He also got a Dairy Queen Ice cream cake and dinner at outback steakhouse. I actually did something I've never done before when we were out at the restaurant. I sent my steak back because it was too tough. I'm over 50 years old and I've never sent a meal back to the kitchen in my life. I'm glad I did though the one I got back was MUCH more tender. The original one was like chewing pieces of rubber, I couldn't even swallow it. It was cooked right, and it tasted fine, I just couldn't swallow it. That must have been one tough cow.

I went out canoeing the other day with my wife Suzy. I always loved canoeing when I was a kid and my therapist is always telling me that I have to take more time for myself. So, a couple of months back I found a cheap canoe on Craigs list and bought it. We went out canoeing that weekend and had a great time. We've been living in this same house for about 15 years now and we're less then 2 miles away from half a dozen different lakes, I've always loved being on the water and I really don't know why we never had any sort of watercraft before. The only problem with a canoe is that they work MUCH better with two people and I have a hard time talking anybody else to go along with me. Every time I get out on the water, I almost instantly feel my shoulders start to relax and I start feeling calmer and more at ease, these are important feelings for someone who's blood pressure is as high as mine is. So, with that in mind about a month after I bought the canoe, I said to heck with trying to cajole one of the boys to go out with me, and I went out and bought a kayak. It's light enough to carry over one shoulder, I can load it into the back of my truck by myself and pull it out by myself when I get to the lake and it only takes one person to paddle. I've had the kayak out many more times now then the canoe. I can be sitting at home and get the hankering to go out and paddle for a while and within 10 minutes I can be on the water. It's been great and I'm feeling much more relaxed these days. It's also really good exercise. I still like the canoe better, it's always nice to have company out on the lake but it's also nice to be able to pick up and go whenever you feel like it instead of trying to talk someone else into going with you.

Well, that's it for now. I'll talk about snake stuff some other day... Have a good night. ]]> MarkS https://ball-pythons.net/forums/entry.php?13-Yet-again https://ball-pythons.net/forums/entry.php?9-Another-day-in-the-life Wed, 01 Sep 2010 08:08:29 GMT Well it's been a fun few days, still on my 'stay'cation and I still have a few more days off of work. Monday I went out to see inception with my wife Suzy and our youngest son Nick. I really enjoyed it, Leonardo did a very good job and the whole dream within a dream within a dream idea was pretty interesting, I heard some people say it was kind of hard to follow the plot, but personally I didn't find it that difficult. Ellen Page looks like a little kid though, I liked her character and she did a very good job of it but I think she looks like she should be in junior high school instead of in her 20's, of course maybe that's just me, everyone is looking younger and younger to me all the time. We all stopped off at cold stone creamery for ice cream afterwords. Very delicious but it cost almost as much as the movie did. It's a nice treat but definitely not someplace I'd like to go regularly. Neither my wallet nor waist could handle it.

That evening we went to Grumpy's. A local restaurant with typical American cuisine, the food wasn't that good but our main reason for going there was that our son Zach is going to be starting a new school in a couple of weeks and they were having their annual open house in a private room at this restaurant. We got a chance to meet some of Zach's new teachers and pick up his schedule.

On the snake scene, I spent some time washing water bowls and cleaning out cb-70 tubs today. Eggs are pretty much done for the year I've only got one more clutch in the incubator. Recently hatched out a couple of clutches of a special project that I've been working on, I've got a wild caught axanthic looking male. I've bred him before but didn't get enough female babies so I bred him again this year. I did pretty well this year with 4.8 so he's going to be able to go into semi-retirement now until some of his daughters are big enough to breed back to him. I've got 2.1 from a previous breeding and ALL of his offspring have a different look to them. This is his third clutch now so I know it's him and not one of the females. They're not WAY different, but different enough to see they're not normal, I'm calling them my Visually Odd Trait (pretty original huh?). I'll try to get some pictures up later, but my skills with a camera are not the best. ]]> MarkS https://ball-pythons.net/forums/entry.php?9-Another-day-in-the-life https://ball-pythons.net/forums/entry.php?7-In-the-beginning Tue, 31 Aug 2010 05:43:32 GMT This could be very interesting. I like this idea of member blogs, I've never tried blogging before but I think it'll be fun to try. Don't expect much it'll take some time to figure this out and get used to it. ]]> MarkS https://ball-pythons.net/forums/entry.php?7-In-the-beginning