Not much going on – staying pretty close to home.   Having said that, I am picking some tomatoes and lettuce from the garden.   Wimpy but at least something.   The bugs have been ferocious this year and attack whatever pops up in the garden.  We’ve just had a cold snap so maybe that will slow down the critters.

We had a great Thanksgiving but missed having the grandkids here.  Olivia decided to stay in Knoxville since she had been feeling poorly all week and was nursing a low grade fever.  Yep, turns out she tested positive for the covid right after Thanksgiving so we missed what could have been a bad thing.   Ditto Simon and Amy who were exposed to the virus with several friends and business acquaintances testing positive.  Little Tommy and Kate also felt it made more sense to stay put in Chicago rather than risking the public travel.   Good decisions on everyone’s part.   Olivia seems to be improving day by day.   Hope we don’t have to repeat all this at Christmas but …………..

I started fishing again in the lake with the cool down.  I put the poke boat in the water Sunday and proceeded hitting my favorite spots with my favorite bass lure.   After about an hour the score was Joe 3, bass1.   The last one I caught gave a last minute lunge when I tried to remove the hook which imbedded deeply into the my left pinky.  I didn’t have clippers to cut the lure from the line so had to maneuver the kayak with the paddle under my arm.  That was tricky but I only had a few hundred yards to go.  Getting in and out of a kayak is a bit tricky under the best of conditions but doing it while attached to the lure, rod and reel is even more so and I figured there was a 90% chance I’d dump the whole thing trying to land.   Somehow I got it just right, kept my balance and avoided a disaster.   Walked up to the house, got some clippers and cut the lure from the line albeit still dangling from my hand.   That gave me confidence that I could drive myself to the emergency room – which we did.   Once there,  the doc hit it with a lidocaine injection and numbed the finger.  He had good cutters and the hook was removed in a few seconds.  I never felt a thing after that.   They bandaged it up, gave me a prescription for an anti biotic and sent me on my way.   3 days later I removed the bandage and could barely even see where the hook was – zero pain.    Lesson learned – don’t go fishing without a pair of good clippers handy.  I’ll be hitting the lake with more vigor now with the start of spec season.  They usually start congregating after Thanksgiving and move toward shore till March.  Last year was not all that good so maybe the ones that didn’t show up last year will be in full force this time and much bigger. 

Nancy’s bridge almost started again both in Palm Coast and Crescent City.   They scheduled openings and then when things got worse, cancelled them.  They did restart her crocheting group so she’s going strong there.   The extent of our social life is once a week making a trip to Deland to shop for groceries and have lunch at a downtown brewery, the Half Wall.   Tom usually comes up either Saturday or Sunday and we travel all the way to Daytona for special shopping and lunch.  Joey and Mark come up every other week and do fixup/cleanup stuff around the house.  Last week we completed a round of scrubbing and power washing the whole patio – under the screen and out front.   That plus power washing the screen porch, cleaning out the gutters and roof, and tightening loose roof hardware – an annual job with a metal roof.   And the Gators and Knights are having great seasons while the Seminoles are getting crushed.