FanPost

What Hobbies Do You Have Other than Following The Boilers?

It kind of sucks to be a fan of Purdue sports right now so let's lighten the mood and get to know each other a bit more. What hobbies or interests do you have other than Purdue sports?

I'll start...

Hunting and shooting. Growing up on a farm in rural Wabash County, Indiana this was sort of a given. I have quite a few guns, do my own handloading, and have hunted extensively in North America and in 2008 we traveled to Zambia to hunt cape buffalo, hippopotamus, and several species of antelope. I also have a fair number of military arms that my sons and I enjoy collecting and shooting, they are more into the military stuff than they are hunting rifles.

My true love is reading. I don't watch a lot of television but rather spend most of my free time with books. I have accumulated a pretty nice library over the years totaling probably a couple of thousand volumes spanning the Greek classics, theology, European and American history, Western literature, cosmology and quantum mechanics, mathematics, political economy, science fiction and horror, and many other subjects.

Some of my favorite writers are Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (probably my favorite of all-time), William Shakespeare (the absolute master of the English language, the most beautiful language), Edmund Burke and Lord Acton, Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk (being a Krannert finance nerd how could I not love him considering his theories of capital?), Philip K. Dick (just about every good sci-fi movie of the past 30+ years was based upon a short story or novel that sprung from his fertile mind), H.P. Lovecraft (need I say more?), Sinclair Lewis (being a Midwesterner I relate much more to him than his contemporaries; Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck, if you haven't read "Main Street", "Babbitt", and "Elmer Gantry", you should), Winston Churchill (his histories of the two World Wars and his "History of the English Speaking Peoples" are indispensable.) A particular interest of mine is Western history from the period of the Franco-Prussian War until World War 1, a fascinating period that formed the world we live in today. I have an extensive collection of World War One histories and the most recent book I read was Barbara Tuchman's "The Proud Tower" which surveys the Western world from 1890 until the start of the Great War in 1914.

I also enjoy cooking and dabble in cheesemaking, bread making, fermenting sauerkraut, coffee roasting, homebrewing (extensively in the past), and growing heritage vegetables, classic cinema, playing guitar, astronomy ( we have a Celestron 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain that we enjoy stargazing with), and a very recent interest is medieval Japanese metallurgy and swordsmithing (Google "tamahagane" if you want to learn about some neat stuff.)

I know I am a geek and could go on and on but will spare you..

What are everyone's hobbies and interests? What was the last book you read? How do you spend your free time?

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