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Finally broke the ice. The headless guy in the pic is me, promise. Caught 3 and lost that many so it was a good afternoon. So I broke in the new rod on a high note which bodes well for it's future. It would have forever been a suspicious outfit had the first fish been a catfish but a nice blue………………… Starting to see some mullet in the surf and that usually means the blues will be following in closely.

What I love about the beach is that people move to a different rhythm. I think it's tidal; Or for some it's wave height; or wind direction. But for sure not on the standard 60 minute, 24 hour clock. When are we going to eat? About two hours after high tide. Some people are high tide people and some are low tide. Some only move when the surf is big and booming. We had an early breakfast, 2 hours before high tide to be exact, and sat in the pier restaurant looking out at the surfers riding the boomers. Late yesterday afternoon the wind was blowing strongly from the south, right along the coast and that brought out the sail/parachute surfers. What a show. It's a good thing I grew up before all the surfing stuff arrived on the scene or I'd probably have turned out totally different. I don't see how I ever could have fit in school or work.

Good news, bad news

The good news is I’m not using much bait; the bad news is I’m not using much bait. I’m taking solace in the fact that nobody else is catching anything, that I’m getting lots of nice beach walks, that my tackle is working flawlessly, nice tan without burning. I guess I could include a picture of me not catching anything.

Humiliated. I was up early fishing for blues and catching nothing. About two hours into it, an osprey dived about 50′ from me and came up with a bluefish that looked to be about 2 pounds. I’m saying to myself, ok, the fish are moving in, hang onto the rod tighter. Still nothing. About a half hour later, another osprey pulls the exact same move on me. Both times, my bait was within 50′ of where the osprey picked off the blues. I know they’re fishing for a living but still……………….

The pic shows the new deck extension on the upstairs apartment. I’m showing that pic because I don’t have any fish pics. Everything is perfect – the weather, the surf, water temp- all perfect but no fish. No bites, no baits lost. It’s not just me. All the fishermen I talk to say the same thing. Even tried last night after dark. With night fishing you just walk towards the ocean and stop when your feet hit the water then cast out as far as you can. No problem. Getting back up and finding the stairway up the dunes is a bit more challenging. No bugs so it was really nice. Not sure what I would have done if I had caught one and had to deal with it in the pitch black. If I do that again, I’ll bring a flashlight.

We hit our second favorite brunch spot yesterday and Nancy had the Kahlua French toast again. Then she went off to play bridge in Palm Coast and I beached. Her partner from Crescent City came over and they won first place in both the A and B divisions. Sounded like some hustlers coming over and fleecing the locals to me.

According to the fishing column in the paper the blues are “thick” in the surf. Wouldn’t you take that to mean there were lots of them? So far I would be saying “thin” or “few and far between”. That’s after my first hour and with the wind blowing hard from the south so it may be too soon to reach any conclusions. One of the neighbors here that I’ve come to know walked down to the surf to greet me and said they’ve been banging them hard at high tide in the early evening – but that was before the wind started blowing. He’s convinced me that before it’s over, I’ll have loaded up the cooler. Even so, the first evening was a success. Managed to catch a couple of whiting and test the new outfit. It exceeded every expectation. I can cast it a mile – helped that the wind was at my back – and it didn’t wear me out. Exactly what I was trying to accomplish. I know that it will be cranking in some serious blues this week.

The place itself has changed a bit. The owners have moved to Atlanta and converted the upstairs, where they lived, into another rental. They built a really nice large deck as part of the upstairs renovation and put all new living room furniture down. It’s always been nice and comfortable but now even more so. They changed the password to access the internet but we overcame that rather quickly – and they switched to Bright House so the internet is quite a bit faster. We know all the neighbors by now so it’s like coming home. Even the neighborhood beach dogs come running up and jump on me. One of our favorite restaurants, JT’s, added an early bird-happy hour from 3 to 6PM, so that will be giving Flagler Fish Company some competition for our business. Our local breakfast place added oatmeal-raisin pancakes to the menu so I had to give it a try. Very tasty but one goes a long way!

And the iPod does well on the beach so I can be totally zoned out while fishing or walking the beach. I have this overriding concern that somehow it will end up in the ocean before the week’s over but this is exactly the reason I have it so…………….. The FM radio feature works well. It doesn’t pick-up anything at home but here there’s several local stations – not the XM Coffee House but listenable.

Brand new Great Great Niece. Megan had her first last night and Nancy tells me all is well. The baby’s name is Allie Marie – what a pretty name.

Simon called from Gainesville the other day and invited me up to hear his chem professor give a lecture on Nano Science. Turns out this guy was listed in some prestigious magazine as one of the top 100 chemists in the US and his specialty is nano chemistry. Simon has been praising this guys teaching skills all semester. Tom hit one of the lectures a few weeks back and said he was incredibly good. I happen to think nano technology is perhaps the hottest new technology and will shape much of the future so I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

The plan was for Nancy to play bridge as usual on Friday and me to take off for Gainesville. Instead, just before leaving for bridge, the game was canceled so she decided to join me at the lecture. The hookup with Simon went perfectly and we arrived about a half hour early. I had left plenty of time to cover a bad parking situation which didn’t materialize. Turns out the lecture and the prof lived up to or exceeded expectations. From my perspective, I found it interesting, informative and entertaining. I knew 90% of the material covered and, judging by the interaction with the student body, more than most of the students around us. They seemed really inattentive and distracted by other things and it made me wonder if I had the same fidgetitus when I sat in chem lectures 50 years ago. That would explain why I struggled with chemistry – that plus the heavily accented evil Russian prof I had. I wasn’t sure how Nancy would like a one hour chemistry lecture but she loved it and got a good basic introduction to the technology. I could tell by the questions that she asked on the ride home that a good bit of it had sunk in.

In the March 29 post I mentioned that a mouse had constructed a nest in the trunk of our car. I loaded a mouse trap with cheese and set about trying to catch the little culprit. I checked on the trap every day for a week or so and no luck so I guessed it was a one time thing and the mouse had moved on to bigger and better places. We decided to take that car up to Gainesville and needed to put something in the trunk. Got him (or her). I’m going to load up the trap and put it back just in case one of his siblings or buddies decides to take up residence there. I still can’t imagine how they can get in there.

Correction to the post describing Chris’ new job. He will manage the 34th street store. That’s the corporate headquarters and an easy commute. He has a 10 minute walk from his place to the PATH train which drops him off right at 34th across from the store. He sounds very excited about the moves.

Next week we head for our “spring break” in Flagler Beach. I’m looking forward to this vacation so I can break in my new surf gear and give the ipod/Bose combo some serious run time. I’ve heard rumblings that the blues are in the surf – wouldn’t that be a kick. I’m 1000% ready for that action. The timing is perfect garden wise. Nothing much going on right now but by the time we get back from the beach, the potatoes and first squash of the season should be ready to harvest and it’s possible, not for sure but possible, that we’ll be picking the first tomatoes and the first cucumbers.

The pic is the new pole bean trellis system using my PVC pipe design. I combined the pipe with bamboo poles so I guess that makes it a hybrid. I’m growing the same variety of green beans that were so successful last fall, Smeraldo, along with a new (to me)yellow variety, Gold Marie. I’m happy so far with the whole PVC concept and, along with the bean trellis, have several tomato cages constructed and cross supports for the insect netting over the squash plants. You can see all that if you look closely at the picture. It’s working out exactly as I had hoped.

Lots of family news. Chris took a new job. He was the NY/NJ District Manager for Origins, a division of Estee Lauder. He rose through the ranks there for the past 8 years, starting as a temp sales clerk to pick up some extra Christmas money. He was recruited by another cosmetic company, Sephora, and finally succumbed to their offers. He will be the manager of either the Times Square store or the Soho (a section of NYC). store.These stores each do about 5 times the business his entire district does now so this is a nice jump in responsibility. It just so happens that he’s also moving to a new apartment in Jersey City – both moves within days of each other. The neighborhood he’s moving to is nicer than where he currently resides and is close to where he lived a few years back. Both times we visited him, we ate at a great neighborhood bar/restaurant just down the street from his new apartment. So basically he’s starting with a clean slate – new job, new digs.

Joey and Mark sold the boat. Joey had gone back to work for the airlines about a year ago and it was too big a drag on Mark to run the business by himself plus it’s looking like Mark will be recalled to American Airlines in the fall. That plus they were tired of living on the boat and wanted to get back to adding real estate to their rental empire in Cocoa. Made the first addition a couple months back and have remodeled it back to dollhouse status – even installed hard wood floors throughout. The folks who bought the boat live in Annapolis, MD and want it delivered to Norfolk VA so there’s one last long cruise ahead for them. Mark has identified the next boat building project, a smaller, 30′ cat. This time a power boat.

One super bene to the ipod/Bose pairing is completely shutting out the yippee dog that lives on the lake and insists on barking continuously when I’m fishing. I did a test this morning and my volume control wins. On top of that, bagged several bass.

Bass fishing in the lake this year is unusual. It’s always been typical to expect either nothing in an hour or so (not biting at all) or 3-4 hits per hour. Inside the 3-4 hit days, the majority would be juveniles, 2 pounds and smaller, and maybe one strike from a larger fish, say 2-5 pounds. In a few hours of this level of fishing, perhaps one monster bass would appear. For whatever reason this year, three out of four hits will be fish in the 4 pound plus class with maybe one juvenile. Doesn’t seem to matter much what part of the lake I’m hitting, same results. And I do just as well at noon as I do at daybreak or sunset – normally the middle of the day you might as well be napping but this year the fishing’s just as good mid day. It’s spawning season and these large fish are females, with a belly full of eggs. No mistaking that when they jump or I’m removing them from the hook. I’m guessing this means lots of small bass for the next couple of seasons. I had worried that the very low lake level was going to screw up the fishing this season but apparently it’s had just the opposite affect. So all this time I’ve been bemoaning the low lake level, I didn’t understand exactly what a boon it was going to be.

Went out to check the garden this morning and found that it had been attacked by a herd of killer armadillos. I had planted 2 new egg plants last night and sure enough both had been dug up. Not sure why they chose to dig there but it often happens that they dig exactly where I make a new planting. They don’t eat the plant so about half the time I’m able to successfully replant but it’s still frustrating. Doubly so in this case, because one of the egg plants is a variety that I’ve had a hard time with. It’s a heritage variety called Louisiana Longs and last year I wasn’t able to bring even one to fruiting. They are incredibly long in the germination process and maybe a third actually make it that far. Even then, they don’t do well on transplant. last year all of them crashed within a month of transplant. I’ve tried to counter that this year by leaving them indoors longer so the plants are quite a bit larger starting out. So I’m taking this armadillo event personally.

Put out some garden beautification plants today. There’s a spectacular variety of Marigolds that I learned about 15 years ago in Utah. I grew them here one year and they did ok but my focus shifted from what I was planting to getting the soil conditioned. That job is on target and the ground is in nominally good shape so I decided to doll it up a bit with a couple dozen Inca Marigolds. When mature they are nearly 2′ tall with full blossoms of 4”. If all goes as expected, the garden will be a showplace – check for pic’s in a couple of months.

Had a great couple of times this week with both grandsons calling just to fill us in on what’s going on in their life. Tommy just got back from a Spring Break vacation in Bozeman. One of his college buddies lives there and invited several out for the experience. In about two months he heads off for an internship on a magazine in LA and really seems to have his head screwed on right about his future. Simon called to confirm that as soon as school ends, he wants to come up to spend a week at the lake before he starts his summer job. We discussed such details as him bringing up a kayak and exactly where we’d be fishing. It’s funny, no matter at what age I interfaced with them, I always thought it was just the perfect time in their life to bond. That is anytime after they were old enough to go off camping or fishing with me – age 4+. I know I taught them lots of stuff and it’s neat now to be on the learning side of the relationship. It really makes me feel special when they ask my opinion about something.

Then to put the icing on the cake, Olivia called and asked if I could help her with some algebra. Tom is out of town and she has a test pending and was not too sure of herself. I haven’t done any math tutoring since Chris was in high school so rusty is probably too kind an adjective to describe the current state of my prowess. I looked up material on the internet to see if there was any hope I would understand it and surprisingly, It came back fairly quickly so I took a stab at it. I actually think I was able to shed some light on a few things for her but came away feeling good that she was right on top of it. She has the basics down well.

Had another go at the Apple store. The ear phones that came with the ipod seemed to me to have a broken wire or bad interface that caused it to occasionally drop out. So I took it in and found out in about 3 seconds that the problem was that I wasn’t pushing the connector all the way in. That felt good. But aside from that, I didn’t really feel comfortable with the ear buds that come with it. I have a size 2 ear and they are size 4 ear buds or something. So while I was there it made sense to check out other earphones and sure enough they had an array of fine offerings starting at about $150 on up to some very nice Bose noise canceling headphones. I asked the guy if the bigger headphones would cause the ipod battery to discharge faster. Nope, the earphones are totally powered by internal batteries. Any chance my 10 year old Bose QuietComforts would work – special adapter or something. Not to worry says the Apple dude – your old Bose will work just fine. And they do and are awesome. Bye bye size 4’s. So the cockpit problem with the earbuds saved me a couple hundred dollars. And just for kicks I asked the guy if there was any way he could help get the Appleworks program I have, which is no longer supported, working on my laptop. Turns out the magic program that does just that is on the OS installation disk and he told he how to load that program specifically and nothing else. Haven’t tried it yet but if it works as advertised, that was the best trip to the Apple store ever.

Our garden is located on my neighbor’s property. He has a great spot with plenty of sun so I do all the gardening and they share the results. We pick much more than they do for a couple of reasons. First, they eat out a lot whereas we mostly eat at home; second, I tend to grow stuff we like so some of the items are not necessarily in their normal diet. I specifically ask them if there’s anything they would especially like to try to balance things a little better. I know they like collard greens so this year I planted a half dozen collard plants which Barbara picked several times and seemed to enjoy. In January George mentioned that he liked Kale to make his favorite Portuguese kale soup. So I picked up some seeds and raised 6 kale plants. Kale is not something I would normally eat and have always viewed it as decoration for real food – like putting a touch of green beside a pork chop to make it look healthy – but I like trying to grow new things and I owe the neighbor a few feet of garden space. When the plants got a little size he told me I picked the wrong kind; mine were curly leaf and he likes the non curly leaf varieties. Tough.

Earlier this week Barbara picked a load of kale and made the soup. She brought over a big bowl which I really didn’t want but thought maybe Nancy would like – she loves soup. I tasted it and decided I did like it but it was way too hot (spicy hot) for Nancy. I decided to cook up a bowl for lunch today and see if my first impression held through a full bowl. To me it’s an ugly soup so if you eat with your eyes, you are going to pass by this quickly. The cooked kale is a way different color than the fresh kale in the garden – it turns a camo green-khaki and really looks like something you don’t want to eat. The soup is also loaded with kidney beans and chunks of potato which are not so good looking either. When you run a spoon through it, you immediately understand the term “hardy soup” and want to reach for a hunk of crusty bread to fill out the image. It has to be so loaded with vitamins and hot spices that you don’t want to spill any on the bar where the energy of the soup would eat a hole. But man was it good. Very filling, very good. Make no mistake, the kale goes in the garden a bit earlier next year.

Barbara said this was particularly good Kale – so much for picking the wrong kind – but the real thing was that it was so clean. She had told me the same thing about the collards. I didn’t know it but I guess when you buy collards and also Kale, it is often sandy and difficult to clean. She said her sister in-law quit making Kale soup just because she could never get all the sand/dirt out of it. She gave some of the collard greens to her daughter and when I asked her how she liked them, she said they were really sweet and very clean. So I guess that’s a big deal. I think I know why mine are so clean. By now I am growing in soil that is highly organic with not too much “dirt”. That, plus as the plants grow I continually add new compost on top of the ground to add nutrients but mostly to keep weeds from growing. I suspect in most gardens the wind whips up the dirt up into the leaves but in our garden, there just isn’t much dirt to whip up. Who’d a thunk it???

Other garden news – about half way through the brussels, little green tomatoes popping out on all 12 plants, corn up a couple of inches, finished off the snow peas, and the cucumbers are starting to climb the trellis. The 4 squash plants I am growing under cover look big and healthy so my concerns about blocking too much sun appear unwarranted. Having to pick and eat the red lettuce fast before it bolts and the iceberg is forming up heads. The chard always amazes – the more you pick the faster and bigger it grows. If history serves, it will hold until June when it finally succumbs to the heat. I don’t eat it but the bridge and quilting ladies love it so I’m responsible for their good health and long life. Come to think of it, Esther commented on how “clean” it was.

The great storm I mentioned last post finally ended. We got about 2 1/2” of rain before all was said and done and the power was restored about 4PM – 24 hours later. In two days the rain total was 3 1/4” which was badly needed. I refueled the generator at noon and got a good calibration on how much fuel the generator uses under the modest load we have; TV, fridge, freezer, a few lights, the computer and, most importantly, the well and septic tank pumps. Looks like a half gallon an hour is about right. The tank on the generator is 5 gallons so we can run 8-10 hours comfortably. I think I have 14 gallons on standby so that would get us a couple of days if need be. Plenty of propane for the Holland and stuff to grill. About the only real inconvenience was not having hot water for a shower. The weather was such that we wouldn’t have been using either heat or air conditioning anyway. If you hadn’t known, there was really no difference between running on the generator or having the regular power service. The generator provides 5600 watts continuous and 8000 surge watts, very adequate for our needs. I was ok with the whole thing but Nancy was not pleased that instead of her regular viewing, such as Regis and Kelly, all that was broadcasting was storm info, all channels, all the time. I didn’t really feel her pain since I had the XM radio with Fox News and the Bose headsets. That’s all I need for a peaceful survival mode. If things really turned bad, there’s cold beer in the fridge.