[RG_]

Originally Posted by rangerboy

Okay...enough about me....what do some of the rest of you like to do between spankings???

In no certain order:

I like nature, hiking, and camping, and it comes out in severel different ways. I used to be a big hiker, going on overnight/multiple night treks deep into the wilderness, in addition to day hikes. An ambition of mine is to do a through hike of the Appalachian Trail, north to south. In the past 20 years or so, though, my hiking activity has been much reduced, though I still do get out a few times a year for some kind of day trip into the woods. (It doesn't mean I've given up camping, the form has just changed, as you'll see below.)

Photography is a big pursuit. The past three years I've snapped about 20,000 digital pics a year, though this past year the number will be down considerably. I do unique photos, pictures in nature that I like, events (not professionally, but ones which are part of my life), holidays, everyday living life pics for anything that we do, and more. I also have some experience at video editing and will be emphasizing more of that aspect in the future.

I love history! I wallow in history. There's almost nothing historical that I won't do: go to museums, go to historical sites, watch history on television, collect historically accurate movies, read history mags.

And then, a spin-off of this general interest is my main hobby: I'm a living history reenactor. I portray an American Civil War era (1861-65) cavalry soldier, primarily in the Confederate (Southern) army, but also the Union (Northern) army. Sarah, who is also a history reenactor, and I go to quite a few events each year at which reenactors gather, live the lifestyle for a weekend, and participate in a number of events, ranging from battle reenactments, to period ballroom dances to music of the era, to lady's teas, and more. As part of doing this, we actually put up a tent (also authentic to the period) and camp out all weekend, with a nice campfire to keep us warm while we sit outside and talk to late hours of the evening under starry skies unmarred by city lights (in most cases). Most often, though, Sarah sleeps in the tent at night while I will put a saddle blanket out on the ground by the fire and sleep there, using my saddle for a pillow. That's the way cavalry soldiers spent the great majority of their nights during the war. Sometimes, if I'm keeping a closer eyey on the horses, I'll put my blanket down near them.

A related interest that takes me over into the movie interest hobby is military history. As Sarah can tell you, whenever I'm watching TV about 95% of my time is spent on The Military Channel. And while I like to collect movies (my interests tend to be narrow rather than wide), by far the largest genre that I have are war movies. In fact, I keep them segregated to the other side of the TV console in their own rack so that they are easily and quickly accessible.

And another history-related interest that I have is genealogy. I have researched and studied my family to great depth, having pushed some lines back many centuries. I also catalog all of the living relatives, and collect stories, both great and routine, of my family. Some day I plan to write a pretty comprehensive account of my family's history and even if I do say so, it's quite an active and interesting history, from documented gunfights back in the 1800s, to a very famous name or two, to some interesting connections in history. I'm known throughout my family as the guru of our family's detailed history.

Science has been an interest from my earliest years. I buried myself in the study of science from my earliest contact through my college years, finishing with a heavy minor in biology (my original major), including significant study in human health, physiology, genetics, and virology. I significantly helped my first wife through her nursing school careers. I probably studied her courses more than she did. I later landed in a highly technical career for a few years that I dearly loved and greatly miss today, in the nuclear field. I still stay in touch with it today, browsing bookmarked sites that discuss aspects around nuclear energy generation, reactor physics and operations, heat transfer and energy transformations and cycles, and more. I love astronomy and the stars. I can walk outside and recognize and name most of the constellations, and point out and name many of the stars in the sky, as well as know the history behind them, the myths and how they came by their names, and what they meant to the ancients and those who came before us. When I was a kid one of my dreams was to be an astronaut, and I pursued that dream avidly until my eyesight started going bad in junior high school. (I read the entire set of World Book encyclopedias when I was a kid, sometimes staying up late at night to do it. That may have been a big contributor to my bad eyes!)

I used to be a voracious reader, consuming the materials mentioned above, as well as hard science fiction. However, my life has become so busy that there just hasn't been time in recent years, so I confine most of my reading to hard history or current news. I'll confess to a little quirk. I keep reading material in the seat beside me on the car. I hate sitting at traffic lights, or in a traffic slowdown, and so keep something that when the car stops I can pick up and make good use of my time with. I've read through several books this way. I usually do this with history books, reference books, or a foreign language book because they can be taken in smaller bites without losing much of the context of the story.

I have been working for several years to learn a foreign language. I have a collection of books, shorter materials, and audio resources that I can listen to on an MP3 player while driving to help advance my mastery.

I like classical poetry. I have many poems memorized, so that I can "read" them at my leisure at times that are particularly appropriate. For example, I've been camping, as noted above, and have watched a gorgeous moonrise come up over a body of water. When it does I can recite aloud the words from Longfellow's Hiawatha's Childhood, which contains:

"Saw the moon rise from the water,
Rippling, rounding from the water,
Saw the flecks and shadows on it..."

Or when at one of my events, the stirring words from Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade, or when considering the impact of war Sandburg's Grass, or McCrae's In Flanders Fields, or Seeger's dark I Have A Rendezvous With Death, or when thinking about the passages of life something short but meaningful like Stevenson's Requiem, or when deeply reflecting on the meaning of life and it's transience Shelley's Ozymandias, or ... ok, I got carried away with that one. Don't be worried. If we ever meet I won't hit you with a bunch of poetry. I almost never share it with others. But I will say that having it in your head for recall and enjoyment without being tied to the written page gives it a depth, meaning, and fulfillment that cannot be achieved otherwise.

And, finally, of course, there is THIS special interest! But, of course, you knew that.

Now you can see why Sarah might get exasperated from time to time living with me.

And if that was way more than you wanted to know, I apologize.