Living it Up

No, I have not been arrested; I have been fishing.

The last few days have been rather hectic and I have not made the time to post on my fledgling blog. I have been toiling to mark stuff off of the honey-do list and pursuing various projects of my own. I also spent the entire day, yesterday, out in the Gulf of Mexico drinking a few beers and cranking on a reel.

Yesterday was a beautiful day for fishing and I enjoyed decompressing. The Gulf was so calm, you would have thought yourself on a lake. The temperature stayed in the 70's with moderate cloud cover and the fish were hungry. We pulled in Grouper, Sea Bass, Grunts, and the occasional Red Snapper. I didn't wrench in a Grouper large enough to keep but I made up for it one 'pan fish' at a time and ended up bringing home a healthy bounty of White Grunts, Sea Bass, and even a Trigger Fish. A couple of friends, from work, came along and they kindly donated their 'keepers' to my stringer. Although I did not catch the biggest fish of the day (Largest was a 17 lb Grouper), I came home with enough moderately sized fish to fill a couple of large frying pans. I call that a successful day.

A side story that adds to my day of fun. I gave in to my more devious side and thought it would be fun to play some mind twisting games with the strangers on board the charter. How does one do this? It is one of the simpler and many would say immature jokes to play on the unsuspecting and unsure. What's that? Ah shut up ye curmudgeon. What else was I supposed to do for the 2 hour trip back to shore? Where was I? Ah yes. All you need is a finger to point at nothing that is off in the distance and appear very interested in it. “It” doesn't need to exist. In fact, “its” lack of existence is the joke itself. So you point and appear very interested in “it”. If you can pull a camera up and charade your way through taking shots of “it”, all the better. Folks may saddle up to you and try to see “it”. Word might pass up and down the boat that something very interesting is out there. Soon you may have lots of folks looking at “it”. You may even hear, “There it is! I see it!” Folks may nod sagely and tell there friends that they were able to see “it” ,due to their superior skills of observation, minutes before others. You will need to be steadfast in your seriousness as you study “it” and nod occasionally as if in answer to some inner dialog. Don't be put off if someone asks you, “What is it? What do you see?” If you just look at them and say, “What? You don't see it? It's right there.” Point at “it” again and look at them questioningly. You might find that now they too can see “it”. “Oh...Now I see it! Wow!”

If God doesn't have a sense of humor I am in a heap of trouble.

I am still trying to come to terms with the fact that just because I think something would be funny, doesn't mean others will. After fishing, I got home stripped down to my boxers, rolled around in the yard to get good and dirty, and throwing the stringer of fish over my shoulder I stomped into the house and shouted, “ Woman! Your hunter home. I bring great bounty of food for fires of our tent. Woman will please me now, then clean fish...”

Looking back, I still think it should have received a laugh but I suppose she doesn't see things the way I do. Now I need to come up with a story to explain to the fellas how I got this lump over my eye.

Talk to ya soon.