I think I'm good. I'm going to just use it up between now and then. He's on the up and up and would make sure it happens.

Yeah, this might turn out to be pretty sweet.

They run a lot of tests in conjunction with the wellness stuff at work. Once a year they draw blood and give results - free. And, yeah, I need to schedule a physical with my own dr. pretty soon. It really hasn't been all that long since I got tested every which way and got a clean bill of health. Also, I think I can go on wife's plan. She is going to stick it out where she works.

But, yeah, all is good I think.

I haven't posted anything fishing related lately.

Biggerwife and I try to go out every weekend. We generally go about 30 miles offshore. The water turns from a green to a deep blue that far out. We fish in about 100' of water.

When we first started going out, we just had an area but we have slowly built up specific spots. With our depthfinder we can "see" the bottom. If the bottom is irregular we try to fish it. That means there is some structure down there. It might be a natural reef or it might be where someone (like the government) dumped (stuff) down there to create an artificial reef.

Usually, when you see this, you can also "see" fish. You learn what that looks like on the depthfinder. It is usually pretty accurate. If we "see" something, we almost always catch something.

Nothing is secret even out that far. Almost every time we go out, there will be a boat on one or more of our spots. But we've built up a lot by now so we always can find an place nobody is fishing.

So, last Saturday, biggerwife had something to do, so I asked a few guys that live in my condo complex to go. They all live where I park my boat and always ask me to take them. I've been meaning to for a while, but honestly I like fishing with my wife so I just haven't.

Anyway, we head out Saturday. Our first task is always to find bait. This time of year it is not all over the bay. It is generally concentrated around the 3 piers near my place.

We headed to the first pier to look for bait. The pier is basically T shaped. The bait is usually on the inside of the T. The pier is sideways to the current so it is very tricky driving the boat. The area isn't that big and the boat is very difficult to maneuver with current, wind, and a tight space. Biggerwife struggled a lot at first but through a lot of practice she's does very well. Even then she gets really nervous.

We arrived at the pier and I asked the guys who could throw a cast net. None of them could. Ugh. It was my plan to drive the boat while someone else threw the net. So, I asked who was comfortable driving the boat. One guy chimed in immediately. He is a diver and is out on the water a lot so I trusted him.

I told him we needed to putt along the outside of the T first to see if anything was there. I should have picked up right then and there this was a bad idea. He got the boat sort of sideways and had to gun it to keep from hitting the pier. But, I really didn't think things through.

There was no bait on the outside, so we headed into the inside of the T. I told him how I wanted the boat positioned and where I wanted to throw the net. He gave me the thumbs up.

Throwing a cast net is not easy. You have to "set up" the net before you can even throw it. This setup takes a couple of minutes.

So, I'm setting up the net when I hear one of the guys say "stop!". I look up and we are heading to the pier at a high rate of speed, sideways. Once you get in that position, there is nothing at all you can do. Bot the other guys could lean out and push on a pier to try to slow the boat down, but they were no match for a 3 ton bot. We hit it and we hit it hard.

Here is what happened.



There was a loud crack, and I knew it wasn't good. My first thought was the hull was structurally damaged. But, looking at it I don't think it is too too horrible.

I called a boat repair place and sent him the picture. He thought there were two possibilities. He can simply repair the white outer coating, which shouldn't be too expensive. However, he felt like there was a possibility that some more structural damage was done. If that is the case then he will have to take the entire top rim piece off and fix the inner fiberglass. He thought this might be about $2,000. That is a lot, but I really thought it would be even worse.

I'm taking it in tomorrow so he can look at it up close.

learned a good lesson that never let anyone that isnt really good with your boat pilot it in wind or near anything hard. anchoring would have been better.

but damage doesnt look to bad and boats get beat up. i never fix anything cosmetic on a boat as the next bang comes along soon after.

I get so frustrated with businesses. I often feel like they think they are doing me a favor to be their customer.

I took the boat in early Thursday morning. The service manage was nice and he took all my info and got someone to help me park the boat. He told me that he would have "his guy" look at it and would get me an estimate via email that day.

Nothing came Thursday.

So, I called him after noon on Friday. He said the guy had already looked at it and he would send me the estimate before the end of the day.

Nothing came Friday.

I went in this morning to pick it up. He doesn't get a third chance. He was obviously puzzled by me picking it up and he actually said to me "I told you I would have the estimate to you today". I reminded him that that wasn't what he told me at all, and refreshed his memory on our prior conversations.

Anyway, called someone else and hopefully this goes better.

good luck on boat repairs. they usually make you park it in their lot and it sits for a few weeks before they look at it. then tell you they needed to order parts which they just could have figured out the first day. most tell you an overly optimistic time date on repairs.
if they are a good shop you have to shut up and suck it up. the bad shops send the boat back with nothing fixed but a big bill.

I typed up a loooonnggg post about what is going on at work. But, hey. Who cares? The cliffs are: glad as can be I'm retiring.

Yay to retiring and fishing!

he might never get his boat back from the shop.

Thanks!

LOL, yeah. Second place hasn't called me back.

Updates

The fourth book is complete. Everything has been submitted and the printers are reviewing. The illustrator started on the last book. Although this is the "last" book, I had a great idea in the middle of the night a few weeks ago for one more, but guess what - I forgot. Need to write things down. That's fine, though. I'll have 5 solid (imo) books which should be a good start when I can get around to more aggressive marketing.

I called another boat shop that I use for engine maintenance (and other things). I didn't think they did fiberglass repair but she said they subbed it out to a guy. She said she would arrange for me to bring it in for an estimate. Miracle of miracles, she called me back the next working day with a time. He gave me a substantially lower estimate than the other places. That could be a warning sign but I'm going to take that as him not having any overhead. He should be able to get to it next week.

We got a little bombshell at work. It was announced that we would be "combining" with another company. I took that as some sort of merger but then I did a little googling and we got bought out. Good time to be leaving.

I am hoping that the boat gets to the shop this week. In preparation, we took the boat out of the water yesterday and put it on the trailer.

Biggerwife hit another trailer in the parking lot and crunched the side of my new truck

glad my place is on the other side of the state from you. a working disaster area around you

The boat is in the shop. It also needed a 200 hr. maintenance so hopefully killing 2 birds here.

There is a saying that the 2 best days of a boater's life are the day you get a boat and the day you get rid of the boat. They are expensive, time consuming, and require a lot of work.

However, here is why I own one. A few pics from recent trips.

Triple tail



Tuna



Another tuna



And, one more



Big red snapper (have to throw these back )



Big red grouper (good job biggerwife - we can keep these)



Kingfish



Nice haul of snapper - yum,



Not to mention all the cool stuff we see. Big sea turtles. Schools of dolphin. We see something different every trip. Here is a big school of manta rays.

Nice pics! Just got into Orlando last night. Will be spending 10 days in Tampa starting Friday. Are you playing any poker anymore?

I didn't update this real time, but the boat came back on time, and the repair job looks phenomenal. I can't even tell anything happened and I know exactly where to look. The customer service at this place is stellar.

Last weekend biggerwife was out of town so I decided to take some guys that live in my complex fishing. They keep telling me they think I'm the best fisherman ever. LOL. We.....got....skunked. The wind picked up and I couldn't get out to my spots so I tried a few summertime spots but the fish just weren't there. First time I've been skunked in forever.

I had a "discussion" with one of the guys I took out. This ventured into politics which I'm very reluctant to bring up in my blog. But, it bothered me immensely and continues to do so. I have a rather lengthy diatribe running around in my brain that I might post later.

Work, uh, what is it good for (absolutely nothing).

We finally got a new manager. He seems sort of hardcore. We'll see. I really don't care much. They can tell me to leave today and I'd be fine.

The project I've been working on has been like swimming in quicksand. I'm starting to get this software but there are still too many parts for me to keep up with. Additionally, my tech lead gave me extremely vague requirements. He's sort of making it up as he goes.

He knows everything about this. We finally got together for an extended session to talk over my work so far. He got in there and changed a bunch of stuff and got it all working in a matter of minutes. Stuff that has taken me days to work through.

It really doesn't make any sense at all that I'm on this project. The only reason I can think of is my tech lead is about to have a baby and will be out for a while and the boss wants me to try to know as much as possible to fill in.

Without getting too political, this is a political (sort of) post.

I've really, for the most part, tried to stay away from political discussions in real life. And, for the most part, online as well. That is, until our most recent presidential election.

If anything, the last big election got me very interested in all things politics. Mostly forum, watching various news channels, and discussions with like minded people I know.

But, the more I read and discussed, the more it seems really really contentious. "We" seem to have an unbridled hate for "them".

Recently I was with someone that I probably wouldn't consider a friend, mostly because I've only talked to him a few times. But I like him and would probably want him as a friend. Seems like a nice guy.

I took him and a few others fishing and he started talking about politics. He was obviously on the other end of the spectrum from me. It caught me by surprise and sort of pissed me off and I snapped at him. He got real quiet (as did everyone else) and from then on there wasn't any political discussion.

The whole incident has really stuck with me. I've always struggled with the idea that we should dislike others that don't think the same as us. There are so many factors that determine our world view. Sort of a subset of the whole nature/nurture paradigm. Ultimately, we are all just people. We have our flaws. We do good things, and sometimes not so good things. Some try harder to improve than others.

I'm still interested in politics. Well, more so policy. This division we have is not a good thing and i am going to try to distance myself from it.

In the end I think I would rather try to be the best person I can be and be nice to the people around me.

I don't know who all reads this, but I would like to ask that nobody brings politics here. My goal with this post was for it not to be about politics, but about my own thoughts and personal choices. Thanks ahead of time.

Interesting reflection and I can relate to it pretty well

Wayyyy tl;dr about the fish we eat.

Too lazy to post pics of the actual fish but I think I've posted a pic of most of these at some point in time.

Although I've fished most of my life, until now I rarely ate fish. I always threw them back. Part of the reason was I almost exclusively bass fished and most bass fishermen do not keep their catch. But the main reason is my sorely lacking cooking skills.

However, this has all changed. Biggerwife is a phenomenal cook and we now eat fish at least twice a week. This is all fish we catch. We never buy any. This is a good thing because snapper/grouper is about $25 a pound. Yikes!

We fish in the bay as well as offshore. Generally we don't keep much of what we catch in the bay but we definitely keep offshore fish. Mostly because the types of fish we catch offshore are tastier.

I thought I'd make a list of what we catch and what we do with them.

First of all, what I don't eat. Catfish. Although it's hard to beat some freshwater catfish breaded and fried, the saltwater variety is pretty bad. Hardhead catfish are inedible. Their cousin, the gafftop, I've heard is edible but I haven't (or won't) try it. I was shocked when I moved here that people eat mullet. Lots of people, apparently, because they sell it like crazy at the fish market near me. I haven't tried it but will someday just to say I have. We catch a lot of grunts when we fish offshore. We ate one once and it was good. Not as good as snapper but good. The issue with grunts is there isn't much meat on one. I would have to clean 5 grunts to get the meat of one snapper. Not worth the trouble.

Now the good fish.

Trout - Sea trout, not rainbow or other freshwater trouts. These are probably the easiest fish to catch. They are almost exclusively caught in the bay, not offshore. There is a size limit on these so we don't keep many. The meat is white and somewhat moist and flaky. Not the best, but very good. We have found we like to bread trout before cooking.

Redfish - Not red snapper. It is a drum (fish). We don't catch many of these because we don't target them. They are mostly caught in the bay but they do move offshore. I know they are caught offshore but you rarely hear about it. They are very good, though. The popular way to cook them is to blacken them. The meat is white and firmer than trout.

Snook - Snook are pretty plentiful but very protected. They are caught in the bay and nearshore (offshore but not far offshore). They have become very plentiful due to strict catch limits. We have not caught a keeper sized one and therefore have not eaten one. But, I hear they are tasty.

Snapper - This is our preferred fish to keep. Red snapper gets all of the good press but you cannot tell the difference between red snapper and any other type of snapper. The meat is white and firm and oh so good. We try to catch mangrove snapper since they get bigger than most of the other species (except red). The red snapper are heavily protected and can only be kept one month a year, so we end up throwing them back. A LOT of them. They are all over the place. Yellowtail are another type that are sort of hit or miss. They get fairly big but usually about 12-14 inches. Lane snapper are the smallest we catch but we keep them as well. There are quite a few others but those are the most common.

Dolphin (Mahi) - We don't catch a lot of these. They are only offshore. They are pretty close to snapper in texture and taste. Maybe a little firmer. Very good.

Grouper - Probably our second favorite. The meat is white and firmer than most any other white meat fish. Grouper is challenging because they are fairly protected. Gag grouper can only be kept 6 months out of the year and must be 24". However, we can catch them in the bay as well as offshore. We don't catch a lot of these. Red grouper is fairly common, but you only catch them offshore. However, they only need to be 20" to keep. We catch a lot of them, but rarely big enough to keep. The only issue with these is they have worms. But the worms are very visible and easy to cut out. Some people won't eat red snapper because they are freaked out about worms, but once you get them out it is fine.

Kingfish - Kingfish can be caught in the bay and offshore, but they are seasonal. They come in around April and leave around October. There aren't many restrictions to these so you can keep most of them. And, they are somewhat easy to catch. Kingfish is a dark meat. Many people won't eat them. But if they are fresh you can grill them and they are good. Most people, however, slow smoke them and use them to make fish spread (dip). This is what we do. It is absolutely delicious.

Cobia - These can be caught in the bay and offshore. They are a fairly solitary fish. Well, they travel in pairs sometimes. Maybe 3. They are not a fish you generally target. They sort of just show up sometimes and you try to catch them near the boat. I have heard cobia is delicious but we have not kept any. They are fairly large fish and for some reason I just can't get myself to kill one. Not sure why. Plus, we have so much fish in the freezer one cobia would overflow it. I'm sure we'll keep one someday just to try it.

Tuna - Yeah, baby. I said snapper is our favorite but not really. You can't beat fresh tuna. The issue with tuna for us is it is unreliable. We've been lucky enough to catch 3 this year but many people never catch any. We try to cook some up the day we catch it if possible. Biggerwife has a bunch of ways to cook these and all are delicious. When I say cook, I mean prepare because you never want to thoroughly cook a tuna. Either sear the outside or prepare it with something acidic to "cook" it, i.e. ceviche.

One more thing to mention - cleaning the fish. I was really bad at this when I first moved here but, practice, practice, practice. Snapper is the easiest but partly because I clean more of them than the others put together. You just cut right behind the head, from the back to the stomach. Then run the knife down down one side of the back along the spine. Then you just sort of peel the meat off the bone with the knife. It's a little tricky towards the head but you learn. Once the fillet is off the bone, you flip it over and run the knife along the skin which removes the skin from the fillet. Then do the other side. There is one little spot that you must trim due to a couple of bones. I miss this sometimes with smaller fish. Grouper is almost identical. Most of the others are variations but you approach the cleaning the same way. Kingfish have a spine but not rib bones like the others. It is a little harder for me to clean because it is so big. But there is so much meat that if you miss some, you still have a bunch. Tuna is the hardest for me to clean. It is big and it is almost four fillets instead of two. I still haven't figured it out completely but the nice thing about tuna is you can come back after you fillet it and carve out the smaller pieces of meat. They are great for ceviche.

cliffs: Fish - yum!

I'm not sure I've ever mentioned this before. Maybe.

My father was an artist. Specifically a professor of art. He was really averse to, well everything. He enjoyed teaching but hated all of the other university nonsense. He also hated any sort of self promotion. He occasionally sold some of his work, but mostly to people that approached him and he liked. He rarely, if ever, exhibited it.

Because of that, my sister, mother, and I have about 95% of the art he ever created.

We all have been sort of thinking about what to do with it. So, we are looking at setting up a foundation. I think we all have different ideas of what that encompasses but we are all on board on setting up a permanent place to display his art.

My idea (and so far Mom and sister seem to be on board), is to do this in conjunction with helping art students, since that is something my Dad was passionate about. We would like to have a space (gallery) that would have a section for permanently displaying his art and rotating student art.

I also came up with an idea of a framing shop. I remember how difficult and expensive it was for Dad to frame his work. He did a lot of it himself and it was really time consuming and difficult. Hiring people to do it was really expensive for someone that produced a lot of art.

My idea is to employ art students and create some sort of credit in addition to pay where they could get discounted supplies and use the equipment to frame their own work. I also see sort of the same for the gallery - allow them to work there to acquire credit to display their works.

We met with someone that is in tune with the Austin art world, and is a huge fan of my Dad's work. He suggested the first step is to create a mission statement (which I've drafted). Then we can begin networking to get people that are more experienced with this than us. We envision eventually having a board. Hopefully we can get some good people that will help us with the money side, gallery expertise, general art expertise, and possibly rotating student board members.

My Mom and my sister both have money that we can seed this with, but I would like it to eventually be self sufficient.

We are really very early in this process. Not much more than an idea. But it is something we definitely want to do.

sounds like it is what the university does already in their art dept. you might find yourself in a retail business that requires a lot of work with all money going out.. nice idea though.

the good thing with the art is if you donate it get it valued or appraised and you can write it off on taxes.

We definitely DO NOT want to have anything to do with the university. For many reasons. We had tossed around the idea of working with the community college. And, with young non-student artists as well. We want to find a good niche where we can be helpful.

I hear you about the business. It would have to be at least cash flow positive for us to even consider it. Our core focus would be the gallery and if there is a way to bring in enough money to keep the lights on, I think I'd be happy with it.

I think we sort of lucked out with this guy we met with. He seems to be really on top of the local art scene and has a good feel for what might work and what wouldn't work. We will probably lean on him a lot to help us make these kinds of decisions.

The other aspect of this is it will be a foundation, so fundraising will be part of it. We will be looking for ideas that hopefully will attract donations.

Of course, none of us has a frickin' clue about any of this.

Work (?) update

The new boss is actually pretty good. I would probably like working for him if I was to continue.

My tech lead, I think, has pretty much given up on me. Understandable. Instead of mentoring me through this software, he is just doing it. I have very little to do at all. He mentioned the end of my tenure is probably very early June.

soon welcome to the world of retirement. then you will be much more busy. ha ha