First Float

first_float.JPG Well, I finally got out on the water with the kayak today. I still need to name her, but havn’t come up with anything good yet. We had decided to go to huntington reservoir to do a little fishing and get a taste of what I’m going to need to do to get better. I guess I need to work out some on shoulders because I’m pretty tight tonight after just a couple hours on the water. It was worth it, though, I shouldn’t have waited so long to get into this. I kept telling Kirk that it was so much better than sitting here in front of the computer. I struck out across to the opposite side and came back and decided that purist philosophy aside, the rudder is a valuable addition, without it I have quite a time getting turned around. I’d read that this kayak was a really stable one, and I only had a few bobbles at the start where I almost took on water, but I’ve found out that I can’t turn my head to look behind me without almost capsising.
This was the first fishing trip I’ve ever gone on where I forgot my fishing pole. I had everything out before kirk got up, and it took some finding, as I havn’t been fishing in over a year. I laid everything out on my bed and started getting the car loaded up. When I finally got the kayak and everything in, I hadn’t realized that I’d left the fishing pole leaning against my bed. kirk_fishing.JPG Kirk caught one little fish and let it go, but I wasn’t too disappointed that I didn’t get to fish, I had enough fun just fooling around.
When I was getting the kayak loaded up I had put a tiedown around the kayak and was tightening up one of the tiedowns and it came loose and I got hit in the bridge of the nose with the metal clamp. I have a pretty good cut, and it is really sore, so I guess I’ll get a good scar out of it. I tried to take a picture of it, but man, I’m looking old, so I’m not posting it.
After a few hours out the clouds started looking really threatening and the thunder started to roll, so we headed back to the beach. While we were trying to decide if we should wait it out, or see if it looked like it was going to get serious, it suddenly got serious. It started to pour rain and we started getting everything packed up. While I was tieing down the Kayak the rain got really cold and turned to hail. We got drenched within a few minutes to where my shirt wouldn’t hold more water.
Kirk wants to try to go up to the Uintahs and maybe fish Washington Lake or Trial next saturday. I may try to go up to somewhere close during the week, but I’m not sure how easy it will be to get the kayak in and out of the car. I may have to build some sort of assistance device this week. I also need to come up with an anchor device, and probably create one for kirk’s pontoon boat too.

Another freaky coincidence

illusions.JPGSo, one of my favorite books is Illusions, by Richard Bach. I first ran into it on my mission when it was sent to one of my companions. He was kind of unnerved that someone would send him one of his favorite books that wasn’t on the approved reading list. Such things didn’t bother me, so I borrowed it from him and read it in a couple hours in the evening. I loved it and since have been trying to get people to read it ever since. I’m not sure this has ever worked, but it seems I’m always having to get another copy because I can’t find mine. I decided last week that I was going to get a couple used from Amazon.com and give one to Mandi. I think she would like it. The funny thing was my brother brought in the mail and I had three similar sized packages. It seems that I had lent a copy to my cousin, Mara, some time back, and she came across it as she was packing to move. She’s getting married on Tuesday.
I find it a bit unnerving that they all showed up the same day, especially on this week that everything has changed. Especially since the theme on the cover is about how the author envisions a blue feather as he’s learning to draw things into his life. The crux is, imagine a thing and the thing will come into your life. I purposefully have avoided blogging anything about the upheaval that’s gone on lately. I’m not sure this is the forum I want for my deepest feelings, but I’ll just put a note in here. I met Mandi in the pottery class I was helping John with this semester, and we got to be friends. Then I fell in love with her over the last little while. This is odd in that I had decided to be a loner all my life 10 years back and had done really well isolating myself.
Anyway, Tuesday changed all that when I told Mandi how I felt. I found out tuesday that she’s gone back to dating Chuck, one of my friends, and it kinda upset the balance, as that situation has been complicated. I think I’ve worked it out that we can all three still be friends, at least from my end. And upon the advice of several of my friends I’m throwing myself back into the dating arena, although with no prospects. Lara convinced me to sign up with eharmony, but there is something really wierd about that which goes beyond the newness of the idea of a date.
So in short, lifes been really wierd, and then it shows me it can get wierder.

My Political Ire

So, I can’t say I’m hugely political, but I can’t help thinking that the country is going wrong. It depresses me in that I feel so disenfranchised that I can’t make a difference. It’s as if we’ve become a country of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations. Every now and then at work I read a little news and it gets me all fired up. I came across the “Case for Impeachment” today and was really impressed by several points in it. I think this specific paragraph sums up a lot of what I feel:

We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country’s good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world’s evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation’s wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies. In a word, a criminal—known to be armed and shown to be dangerous. Under the three-strike rule available to the courts in California, judges sentence people to life in jail for having stolen from Wal-Mart a set of golf clubs or a child’s tricycle. Who then calls strikes on President Bush, and how many more does he get before being sent down on waivers to one of the Texas Prison Leagues?

Bat Attack

So I’m sitting out on the porch enjoying the evening just now when I feel a slap on the side of my face. Instantly I knew what was up and kind of froze so I wouldn’t squish the little fella. I looked down and saw a little bat hanging off the front of my shirt. He must have flown out of the bat house hanging from the eaves next door and headed for a bug that was circling my porch light. I’m not sure how he ended up smacking into me, but he hit me right in the ear and his wing hit right about my eyebrow. I pulled out my shirt tight and he was a chubby little thing just hanging on to my shirt, so I gave him a little lauch with my shirt and he flew out into the night. I just wish I’d thought of taking a picture of him with my phone first.

Ankle Shmankle

fishtank.JPG      I decided to take Thursday and Friday off work for a four-day weekend and thought I’d get out a bit and try to get over the miserable last couple of weeks I’ve had.
     I went to lunch with Jack and after we came back to my house I showed him the fishtank I brought home from work on saturday. I’d had it at work for a couple years, ever since Stickboy brought it back after it made the rounds of his family. The tank has a long history. It started out as an advertisment in a Chinese take out place for Oceans realm, a pet store owned by, my brother and me. It’s changed hands several times, ruining a tv in an apartment below it along the way. I had (and have, when you really think about it) nowhere to put it, so I took it to work. Only I didn’t like maintianing it at work and it got to be a real drag to have around. Kirk fixed it up really nice on saturday and filled it with fish. He mostly got South American Cichlids and some tiger barbs as dither fish, and I still had 2 Marleri, 1 Lelupi and a pictus cat from work. oscars.JPG
     After we had taken in the fish we went and took a quick look at my metal cutting bandsaw that I’d been having trouble setting up. Jack quickly spotted the loose set screw that was keeping the blade from turning efficiently and now I’m on my way to being able to finish the kayak rack for my truck… assuming I can get the gumption to work on it more. As we were heading back out I told Jack he ought to see the 4 Kentucky Coffee Trees I’m getting set up to play Bonsai, I purposefully stepped off the deck’s 2 foot drop to the ground, but somehow my toes got the instruction to roll over and play dead on the way down. I fell forward and knew I’d crunched my ankle really bad. Now that I think about it, it has been a year without crutches, and I only get one of them in a row, so after a $75 worthless visit to the emergency room I know I have a sprained ankle. I’d already had Jack pull the crutches out of the basement before we went, so I was pretty much set up. I should have had him get my old air splint so I would have had everything I needed. I guess I ought to know that unless it’s a compound fracture I should just bag going to the hospital to save me the money, because unless it’s a compound fracture it really doesn’t make a difference. I say this because of the last part of the radiologists comment:

… No significant tibiotalar joint effusion is present however anterior soft tissue swelling is apparent as well. A bone island is noted in the posterior aspect of the calcaneus.

     So I have a broken off hunk of bone in my OTHER ankle now too. They don’t know when it happened and were puzzled that I wasn’t aware of the break. I told them the only other time I was aware of breaking my left ankle it was, I believe, a tiny crack down inside one of the tarcels.

ankle.JPG

     Anyway, I’m down for a few days and then have the long rehabilitation to get it working right again. I guess I’ll be lucky to get the Kayak out before autumn.

William Gibson throws a morsel to the dogs

Hopefully William Gibson is close to finishing his book, because I’m really waiting on the next one. I have no idea what it’s really about, but he’s been offering tidbits on his blog from time to time, and I really liked this slice of the excerpt I found today:

“A nation,” he heard himself say, “consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual’s morals are situational, that individual is without morals. If a nation’s laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn’t a nation.”

I read things like this and find a measure of solace to think I’m not the only one out in the world thinking these types of thoughts. Although, it does leave me wondering why, if other people can see these things, how come it seems the world revolves on an axis of stupidity.