I Am Healed...

Editor's Note: Sorry for the original quality of this post... It was very late and done in haste and I now realize I had the 'type over' on which really screwed things up. I will fix it now.

If you haven't noticed, I have been in a total funk lately. Between, all the events of Pam's mother passing, the Great Flood of '06, my physical health, the fish not biting for the entire winter, and lastly, the long awaited and lusted after fishing trip being a real disaster, among other smaller issues, I have been basically totally bummed out and depressed.

Both of the pool leagues I was involved in for the winter turned out bad, for weird reasons that weren't of my doing, but ended up bad to the point that I had lost confidence in my abilities, and when you add it all up, Pam was getting pissed with my whole attitude and performance as the head House Bitch.

It was all going down the sewer from a low-flow toilet - slow but continual...

So Pam cam home tonight after another long and hard day at work, and I had again spent the second day in a row, since returning from the trip, focused on the computer and not doing anything else of value and feeling bad about it all. She had had a bad day at work at the Dell Hole, and wasn't up for it and got irritated with the house and my usual tasks not being done, to our standard common specifications. That pissed me off because I was being called on my act, for not performing my typical daily responsibilities. That ended up in a 'constructive criticism' that was appropriate, but 'unpopular' with me, in my current state of funk...

It ended up with her mentioning that she thought tonight was the weekly 9-ball tournament - which at that point, I jumped on as an escape mechanism, though I still felt physical bad and depressed.

So, on a moments notice, I went to the tournament to play. I left so quickly, didn't even take my cell phone and forgot I had taken my main cue stick out of the case. I just grabbed the case as was out of here.

So, I got down to the Pocket, where they play the weekly tournaments and signed up. There were 18 people signed up - most good players. I realized that I had left my cell phone and my regular main cue at home and only had my warped break cue with me for the event - which is a real pain to use being warped. I had very little time to practice and was doing horribly. The tournament started and I played my first match with a friend that I lost, putting me in the losers bracket.

The next match, I played this new guy and he had been watching me get beat by my friend the first match. I was playing better then and tore him up. He said that he hadn't seen any of that level of play in my first match and I told him the first one was with a friend... He got really mad and pounded on a table and left. Some people just can't take a joke, I guess...

I started playing much better and getting focus on my game and kept beating other losers bracket players until I got to the really good regular players that usually win weekly.

I had to play the guy that has beaten me a number of times and beat him badly. He was really pissed also, and that pumped up my ego considerably.

Then, I had to play my friend again, that beat me the first game from my not playing well and him playing by the 'friend' (no hooks - just try and run the balls) rules with no serious playing going on. I told him that we were beyond the 'friend' rules and it was for real. I beat him 5 to 2.

Then, it was to the third place match - again a very good and consistent player. I also beat him 5 to 2, so I had third place locked up. So, then I had to play the only unbeaten player twice to win. First, to put him in the losers bracket like me, and then we would play the final match as two losers fighting on common ground.

He is a Physiatrist and a very good player. I was able to get him very frustrated and convince him that this first match, where he was the only winner was actually just a warm up match for the real match between us. I was playing awesome and won the first match. So, we were then both losers and had to play the final match on equal terms.

He became more and more frustrated at my playing abilities and level of luck. He was even getting pissed at the crowd walking around the and making noise which is always happening - he basically lost it... I ended up beating him 4-2 and winning first place. He thought it should have been by different rules, but that was totally his problem. So, I won the tournament and got the first place envelope with the winnings in it.

The crowd was totally into the whole event and just couldn't have been better for me, or worse for him. Then, he wanted to play for all or nothing and I told him that the winning envelope was worth more to me, to be able to show Pam, any any amount of money contained therein, so I wouldn't do that.

So then, he wanted to play one game for the difference between the first and second place money, which I agreed to. We played and he ended up winning the $10 for the game. Then, he wanted to play for the additional $10 difference in the place awards, but I told him I was going to give it to the waitresses instead, for a tip, which got him a really twisted. I would sure hate to be his first patient tomorrow...

So, the end result was that I won the tournament, beating the best players in the area, in the process and feel great about the results.

Its like pitching a prefect game in baseball or running 200 yards in football and, in all the cases, becoming the star player that pulled it out of the hat and saved the game to the amazement of all. I am feeling much better about everything after this. Now if I can only catch that 10' Strugeon...

I am feeling great and 'healed' of all my recent stuff past and am looking toward tomorrow for new adventures and fun. Life is good here in DaHo again...

The Big Columbia River Fishing Trip...

Well, I did catch 12 feet of Sturgeon, but I didn't think it would come in 6 parts...

Have you ever checked out the Columbia River? It's a BIG fricking river. It's about 1/2 mile wide or more and the flow of water through there is amazing. We had to use 4lb of sinkers to keep the line on the bottom with little tightly wrapped up squid baits. Here is Storm with the 'setup'...




Fishing was not much fun at all. The guide was pretty good, but his boat was not what I would call comfortable or nice. It was large but totally open with 5 seats. We either fried, got rained on or froze depending upon which hour it was...




All the fish were way too small - one I caught would have made a good aquarium fish... I didn't know they had baby sturgeon. Here is the guide with a 'prize' catch...




I had never really thought about it I guess as I had never seen one under about 3 feet before. The smallest one I caught last year was 5 feet up here and the biggest was 8 feet.

The hotel and the hotel operator all sucked big time - almost to the point of humor, but not quite. Everything in the place was screwed up somehow. Our desk and three different types of legs, one of which was a 4X4 block of wood. They had DishTV but we were told that we could only press 6 buttons on the remote or her husband would get really pissed and take it away.

With all the bank fishing, we didn't get a bite and were fishing off of these 20 foot+ high cliffs. There were never any bathrooms around and my lungs were all messed up for really the first time since all the plumbing changes 5 years ago. So, I was in a 'guarded' condition and concerned most of the time - especially during the 'fun' boat 'thrill' rides. I wore my 'special' life vest, but it was still way too much boat fun for me the way I was feeling. Here I am having fun on the boat...




The guide kept saying stuff like "It was really good fishing last month - you should have been up here then", or "Later on in the summer is when we catch the big ones"... The guy that set this trip up had used the guide before and I think this whole trip was a combination of the guide needing some business and giving our guy a good deal, and our guy, who builds and services grain elevators, having some free time on his schedule. It was the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a trip of convenience for the guide and our guy, but not for anybody else...

It had its moments and just being out on such a trip with a bunch of guys was a great experience and funny at times. I got to know three new friends and we all got together well. But, on a 1 to 10 scale of overall sucking, it was a solid 8...

Fishing and Selling...

First, Pam's mother's house is sold. That was quick and good. There were a bunch of neighborhood kids that were messing with it and without someone there, it was a problem waiting to happen.

Then, I finally did catch my firs fish of the year. It was a relative little one, about 5 feet long, but was fun and the long cold winter drought is finally over.

Speaking of fishing, I am leaving tomorrow morning at 5am to go to the Columbia River for a 3 day fishing trip with Storm and some of his buddies. It should be big fun. I will report back on Monday as to how it all went.

Well, I must go as there is a lot of stuff to get together and I haven't been feeling too good, which is why I haven't written for a while. I hope it all works out well for the trip. I have been planning on this for months. Besides that, all goes well here in DaHo...

Finally Hooked a Fish this Year...

Finally... I got hooked up with a fish for the first time since winter started last year... It was a big one. I don't know how big it was, because it broke my leader after about a 20 minute fight. I never saw it, but it spun off line like no other one I have caught, including the 8'er last year. I hooked it on the spinning rig. I could feel it being scraped on the rocks for a long while before the leader broke. That was after about 5 runs taking a 50 yards or so each time. Again, without the rapids there to keep it confined in the hole, it would have been long gone as it pretty much took line as it liked. The dacron hook leader was badly frayed before the break and the bottom 10' or so of the topshot was badly scrapped and generally messed up - which I cut off when I rebuilt the terminal tackle. I am wondering if the dacron is a good idea to use for the hook leader or not. It sure is a lot easier to use with bait, but I reallly hate loosing a nice fish.

At least I finally hooked up with a fish. Its been a long time and I was getting pretty frustrated with it all... With the water getting warmer all the time, it should be getting better every day now...

Computer and Estate Updates...

I have some good news and bad news about the computers.

I was late to my dentist appointment today because of this *($&%(^ daylight savings time change... I changed the date and assumed that it was done - and we all know what assumed means... Well, Windows must have thought it wasn't right and changed it back to being wrong and I ended up being late for my appt because of it. I will have to figure it out or just change our timezone until the 'real' DST happens next month. We have automatic updates on so I am confused at why its not working right.

But, on the good front, the last I wrote, the new Vista OS on the Living Room HTPC computer that runs all the TV and entertainment was freezing up at really bad times and not recording good stuff like American Idol. So, I ordered and installed 2GB of new memory, replacing the 1GB that it had, and so far, it has worked flawlessly and seems a lot more 'frisky' than it did before. We shall see how it goes in the long run, but its been up and doing great for about a week now. I am really liking this new Vista Premium OS. It seems like everyday I find some new feature about it that is nice - especially now that it has stopped freezing up...

There is an offer on Grandma Flora's house so that should be all wrapped up soon. They are talking about it all being over in a month - which will be great. There are few things worse than having property that won't sell - as both Pam and I experienced in selling our houses in Kalifornia. But, at the prices for older homes here in DaHo, you could almost put it on a credit card, so its a lot different that on the Coastside...

I am going on a fishing trip at the end of next week with a group of friends/acquaintances to the Columbia River on the WA/OR border to see it we can catch some very large or small Sturgeon. Up there you can keep the 42" to 60" ones and we would all love to bring some home to eat - its great stuff. Anyway, from all I have read, its pretty early in the season, but I am the 'tail of this dog' and really want to go check it all out and get better acquainted with the other guys, one of which has a nice Jet boat and is a local river sturgeon fishing addict - my kind of guy...

Fishing at DaHole...

Yesterday, I spent the day down at DaHole in Bliss… This is where I was catching most of my large fish last year. It is a large deep hole in the river with a set of wide and shallow rapids on the back end of it.

There is now a roving herd of sheep that are now cruising the area. The only good news about that is that they are sorta smoothing out the road ruts and I cannot smell…

Again, I didn’t get any fish hooked up. I am really getting frustrated with it all. But, again, I saw some very large fish jump/surface. I saw probably the largest ever – it did a surface thing which got my peripheral eye attention and made a splashing noise I heard over the constant drone of the rapids. I then focused on it and saw it rolling back into the water and saw the dorsal fin with part of the body through the tail – sorta like you see with a whale in the ocean. It was a VERY large fish. It happened in the mainstream of the water flow, across the hole from where I fish – which is where they mostly jump/surface at. I would guess the dorsal was close to a foot high and the body directly underneath it was about as thick and there was probably a good 2’ and maybe 3’ to the tail fin from there – enough for the dorsal to be fully submerged when the tail fin came up. It was MUCH larger than the 8’er I caught last year. I would estimate the back section was at least twice as large, which, I think, would put it easily in the 10’ to 12’, 400#+, class - Think of a 12' shark and you can get the idea of what I am talking about.

Afterwards, I was sitting there pondering the event and looking at my lines, hoping one of them would take a dive with the fish. Which didn’t happen, but then my thoughts turned to that scene in Jaws, where the guy first saw the shark come up and in a shocked and stunned manner told the captain that they needed a bigger boat… I have been spooled twice, but never saw the fish before. That large one I saw gives me a whole new understanding of the ‘challenge’ at hand. I am thinking I need to rethink this whole level of line and tackle I am using…

With the fight the 6’ through 8’ers put up, a fish that size would not be stoppable if it decided to go through the rapids and downstream, or anywhere it wanted to go for that matter. I have never had one pass the rapids yet, which is one of the real features of DaHole, but they have to go through them, as they do go up and down the river… I think when they are hooked, they just aren’t ‘focused’ enough to pass them or something…

Anyway, the air and water are getting a lot warmer and real soon they will be feeding after a long cold winter and it should be BIG fun here in DaHo…

The Hainline Auction...

Well, the Flora Hainline auction was held yesterday at 1pm. It was an all weekend event that left us (Pam and her sister Roberta, and attachments, er husbands, Vic and I) in a sun burnt lump of frazzled jelly.

About two weeks ago, the auction company stopped by and talked to the girls about how it was all to happen. Basically, they had to have everything to be sold in some sort of little flat boxes that would show off the items to be sold and could be used and slid around by the auction staff easily. So, they went down to the local beer distribution place and were given 3-400 beer 'flats' or the little boxes that they put a case of beer in for stacking purposes. They then spend an entire weekend separating and loading all the remaining contents of the house into these flats for sale at auction and loaded them all into two rooms of the house.

Then on this Friday, the auction company dropped off a trailer full of some 20 or 30 long tables and tarps and an outhouse for Sunday's auction. We had to sit up all the tables in the back and front yards, but mostly in the back yard. Since there are a bunch of fruit trees all over the back yard, I had to do a lot of trimming so the low hanging branches didn't hurt people or impede the placement of the tables too much. We had 5 rows of tables that extended all around the yard and were stuffed with all the boxes of stuff that Pam and Roberta had loaded. We also had to clean out all the stuff in the garage and all the miscellaneous stuff and appliances in the house and wherever it was stored. Below you will see a picture of part of the setup backyard with early auction 'reviewers' checking stuff out and Pam and Roberta congratulating themselves on a job well done...

Then, in the front yard, all the furniture had to be torn down from inside the house, moved to the front yard and reset up in room groupings as they would actually look when in use. Its amazing how much that old hard wood furniture weighs... Anyway, this is a very small view of all of the setup and results of all the work that went on all weekend...




And then there was the motor home... There is no way to possibly say enough about the motor home... It has been sitting for about 7 years and was a complete disaster mechanically. I checked the oil and it was about 4 quarts overfull. Actually, we later found out it wasn't really overfull of oil, it was actually gasoline in the oil. When you would start it, the would put out a solid white heavy smoke and spew out oil that covered all the leaves and ground cover and the neighbor's trailer and house with oil splattering, There were bird/rodent nests in the air cleaner and all the belts squeaked horribly - the list just keeps going on and on... Anyway, after replacing the oil, adding a number of additives and carb cleaners and using starting fluids, we were finally able to get it running well enough to pass the auction test - which was start it up, move it forward and move it backward... It died a couple if times in the process, but it finally did do that test and only took up all about 20 hours worth of work to get that done...

She had about 7 TVs and an equal number of VCRs and piles of everything...




The auction lasted for about 5 hours. It is quite amazing to watch and hear. As they would move down a table, there would be 4-5 of the staff going along. The auctioneer, a couple of guys that would yell out features and handle the stuff, and a couple of spotters and recorders to keep track of the bids and sales. If something would not sell, they would add another box of stuff to it all until at some point, the whole pile included something someone wanted and they would end up getting it all. We were all amazed at the prices that were paid - both way too low and quite high in many cases.

But, the good news is that it is all gone and the best news is that it is all OVER... There is nothing left now be an empty house of which there seems to be a lot of interested buyers. So, hopefully, that will be sold soon and all of this will be done. The auction ended up grossing $ 4,650. The motor home sold for $ 1,100... The auctioneers get 15% and they take the ads and toilet rental out of the proceeds. So the bottom line will be about $ 3,800 - I am guessing. It is too bad the other siblings, that will have equal share of the proceeds, couldn't have been there to 'enjoy' all of the work and hassle of the weeks it has taken to get this all done... Really too bad...

But, the weather has turned hot and if I can do my yoga, I am going down fishing and hopefully catch my first large sturgeon of the year - an try to get the past couple of days, and the incessant drone of that auctioneer's voice out of my mind...

Hap's DeJour...

Life is going on here in DaHo. Pam is back to work and feeling much better. She had a EKG as part of her 'why do I still have all this pain after the operation' discovery session going on. She is also going to physical therapy and a variety of specialists to figure it all out and get it all resolved. She is also reducing, changing or stopping many of her meds along this path. So far, she has received good news in that her heart is is great shape and has lost a lot of weight, from all the recent events, that is making her feel better, IMHO...

I got the master bath tub thermostatic control unit valves repaired - all by myself for free. I called and bitched at the manufacturer, American Standard, and they ended up sending me a brand new set of valves free of charge. They are a totally new design from all the past ones. I guess they finally figured out that they had a problem with them and 'did the right thing'.

The weather has been nasty again. Cold, rainy and snowing off and on for almost two weeks now. We are having these bouts of sunny clear weather between the storms - which can happen and switch on an hourly basis. We now have about 4" of snow on the ground - probably the most so far. It usually comes and goes pretty quickly, with the 'going' being done by 'blowing'. We have had lots of heavy wind during this whole process. The reason we have so much snow on the ground now is there has not been much wind for the past few days.

We got the 'new' freezer installed in the garage this week and it is working and is going to be a great addition to our food management capabilities. We can now actually take advantage of specials and have lots of extra freezer capacity to buy stuff without having to worry about what we will have to throw away or remove to freeze it. Good garage news. Speaking of good garage news, we also ended up with a little color tv that I am going to install in the garage. That will be nice to have while I am working out there. That way I can keep up on all the latest Anna Nichole Smith news this summer...

Well, we had our last Wednesday night pool league games this week. Pam went along so she could play the slots they have there and wanted to get out of the house. But, the smoke overwhelmed her and she ended up spending most of the night in the car, with the snow blowing all around. I was able to play my games out of sequence, due to the circumstances, and was out of there by 8:30. I did ok, wining two of my four games - running one of them. I should have won the other two, but I was thinking about Pam and just not taking my time. It was not a very good ending night for the team. I don't think she will attend any more of my pool leagues until the quit smoking in bars - which might be a while around here... But, they are considering banning smoking in the only other excluded businesses - Bowling Allies - so who knows...

I happened to stop by Sportsman's Warehouse the other day to get some 'parts' and was talking to their Sturgeon expert and he was saying they were biting heavy again a few weeks ago - while the funeral and family oriented stuff was happening, between storm sessions. But, now, with the new cold weather, they are off again. That really cheered me up... Grumble, Grumble...

But, one of these days, it will warm up and dry up and they will be biting and I am all ready for them - I cannot begin to describe how ready I am for them... You can only have sooo much fun sitting in this house and playing with computers and doing projects for weeks on end...

Speaking of projects. I have installed the new Vista Premium Windows OS on the living room HTPC and it is very nice. Lots of great new features. Unfortunately, there is this one bad feature it has which is freezing up, usually right in the middle of recording a couple of great shows that we really want to watch. I have heard it is probably a lack of memory problem, as Vista uses much more memory with all its enhanced graphics and all. So, I went down to our only local computer 'super store' Best Buys... to get more and, amazingly, they were out of their sale products, but had these other ones for over twice as much - Ray Charles could see that one coming as it is always that way... So, I ended up ordering some from NewEgg online and hope it arrives soon and in working order. I have also installed the new Orfice 2007 on all the computers and it is much nicer also that the old Office. They are finally getting this stuff much better - about time...

Well, that is about all I can think of that is fit to print, as they say, here in DaHo...