What Are Some of Your Hobbies?

[Doctor Steuss]

My brain feels itchy, which means I need a new hobby to distract myself for a spell. Figured what better way to find the next thing, that see what some of my favorite humans like to do.

A few of my past hobbies:

- Bred and raised poison dart frogs.
- Built cryptocurrency mining computers.
- Gold prospecting.
- Aquascaping.
- Created a new hybrid freshwater shrimp species that survives in very hard water (pretty sure Trop Aquarium here in Vegas still carries some of them).
- Built a mobile recording studio (that one was paid for by the crypto hobby... only hobby that paid for itself, and then some).
- Styrofoam sculpting.
- Making blanket chests.
- Bringing back an old Chevy K1500 back from the dead.
- Making bath bombs (my crowning achievement was one called "The Balm of Gilead" which I distilled essential oil from a Mastic tree to create).
- Fermented, and distilled brandy (always ended up just distilling every batch down to vodka... always tasted "off").
- Learned to read/write with the Deseret Alphabet (a skill that I've totally lost now).

[canpakes]

After reading that list, I’m pretty sure that you are this board’s Renaissance Man.

[Morley]

After reading that list, I’m pretty sure that you are this board’s Renaissance Man.

Some of us here have long known this to be true.

[Res Ipsa]

After reading that list, I’m pretty sure that you are this board’s Renaissance Man.

Some of us here have long known this to be true.

True dat.

[Limnor]

Whittling, with mediocrity. And trolling MG.

[Res Ipsa]

Boardgaming. It's a little out of control, so I'm in the process of pruning.

[Dr. Shades]

After reading Doctor Steuss's list, I now have an inferiority complex.

I'm far too embarrassed to post my own hobbies now.

[Physics Guy]

I currently have the involuntary hobby of looking after a horse. It's time-consuming and expensive but it is interesting. Horses are big, heavy beasts who can totally out-pull you, but they only think slowly, and they are surprisingly easily intimidated by just standing up straight and speaking in a sharp tone. Dealing with them was an important skill for humans for quite a few centuries, and now it's just a hobby for some—most of whom are women.

I'm hoping to exit that hobby as soon as possible by selling the horse, or even giving it away. My wife isn't so sure. It's new and weird to her, too, but she likes it more than I do.

Another partly involuntary hobby is appliance repair. It's involuntary in the sense that I would rather that our washing machine, dryer, lawnmower, and oven were not old and breaking down, but it's a hobby in the sense that I'm happier if I can fix them instead of just junking them and buying new ones. I've learned a lot of the kind of practical physics that I don't teach. For instance, if there's a sudden flash and pop and your oven fills with smoke just when you're baking your wife's birthday cake, it's not actually the electricity leaking out of the heating element. It's the magnesium oxide.

For another instance, if any old electrical device with moving parts mysteriously stops working, it's probably because the carbon brushes in the motor have worn down, and you can order new ones online for a few bucks, and install them with a YouTube video. Do carbon brushes ever feature in my electrodynamics lectures? No, they do not. But they should, because it turns out that the world runs on carbon brushes.

A hobby which I am only trying to pursue is beer brewing. It turns out to be quite hard to brew good beer. I've only even tried once, but I've signed up to try again soon.

A hobby that I do actively pursue, every year, is deer hunting. I'm not good at it, either. Mostly I do not see deer. I've seen them three times in eight years, and two of those times, I missed. I'm not a horrible shot. One time that I missed, it was quite a hard shot; the other time, I had somehow bumped my rifle and the scope was misaligned. I'm clearly not a talented hunter, however. I keep trying. Perhaps one year I'll get there. I am not hopeless at tracking deer. I have found a couple of dead deer that other hunters shot, which is an important contribution. Having to find the deer is the norm; only a rare lucky shot drops the deer on the spot. It's not that the wounded deer crawls away for a long time, suffering badly, but that a deer is a fast-moving animal that can go a fair distance through dense bush in its last few seconds of adrenaline, and not be easy to find.

I'm into board games, but board games are so big in Germany that reporting my level of interest as a hobby would be like counting eating as a hobby. I play some game or other a couple of times a week, but who doesn't?

I actually am quite a bit more into cooking than usual (sigh) for a man. I'm our family cook, and I like trying new recipes. My mother is an enthusiastic cook and she had three sons who all cook for their families. It's not exactly a hobby because we need to eat, but we could eat worse.

And I'm very slowly writing a science fiction novel. It's slow because it's hard. Writing fiction is a profession, and although it's sometimes relaxing to write something good, fussing over things that don't work is more like work than recreation.

[Doctor Steuss]

Boardgaming. It's a little out of control, so I'm in the process of pruning.

Don't suppose you have any good 2-player game recommendations. My son likes playing Payday, Life, and Monopoly (and recently started playing chess against me). He's 14, and I think is hitting where he could probably start doing some more complex/adult games. His godfather takes him to a boardgame café quite a bit, but he tends to leave frustrated because there's always some integral pieces of games missing.

After reading Doctor Steuss's list, I now have an inferiority complex.

I'm far too embarrassed to post my own hobbies now.

If it's any consolation, every hobby was like lightning in a bottle. I don't think I could ever go back to one, and have it turn out anywhere near as good. Kind of a weird bipolar superpower -- become a near expert in something for a while, only to never be even mediocre at it again.

I currently have the involuntary hobby of looking after a horse. It's time-consuming and expensive but it is interesting. Horses are big, heavy beasts who can totally out-pull you, but they only think slowly, and they are surprisingly easily intimidated by just standing up straight and speaking in a sharp tone. Dealing with them was an important skill for humans for quite a few centuries, and now it's just a hobby for some—most of whom are women.

I'm hoping to exit that hobby as soon as possible by selling the horse, or even giving it away. My wife isn't so sure. It's new and weird to her, too, but she likes it more than I do.
[...]

I've always loved critters, but I don't think I could ever handle taking care of something like a horse. My last Cane Corso mix was probably the closest thing to a horse that I'd ever be comfortable being in charge of. Horses are about 1,000 pounds over my critter care threshold. Amazing animals (my grandfather was a rancher, and was a stunt rider in McKenna's Gold), but way too much for my comfort level.

[Res Ipsa]

Boardgaming. It's a little out of control, so I'm in the process of pruning.

Don't suppose you have any good 2-player game recommendations. My son likes playing Payday, Life, and Monopoly (and recently started playing chess against me). He's 14, and I think is hitting where he could probably start doing some more complex/adult games. His godfather takes him to a boardgame café quite a bit, but he tends to leave frustrated because there's always some integral pieces of games missing.

There is a series of games called "Unmatched" that I enjoy. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/295 ... ame-system

I played a light-to-medium war game out of a series called "Undaunted" last night. It was lots of fun. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/268 ... d-normandy

7 Wonders Duel is a great two-player tableau building game. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/173 ... nders-duel

I haven't played it, but Lord of the Rings Duel has a good reputation: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/421 ... ddle-earth

Button Shy has a whole series of wallet games that are good for two people (and are easy on the wallet): https://buttonshygames.com

Azul is a multi-player game that plays very well as a two-player game: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/230802/azul