kelly's centennial

In the middle of a day, I received a distress call from Susan – her car blew a tire on a highway not far from my work. I got to her pretty quickly, and put the spare on. Then, on the way back, my dear Prelude Kelly reached quite a milestone:

I wasn’t sure if the car was gonna blow up or turn into a pumpkin, but luckily neither has happened.

my cusk and I

OK, so maybe waking up at hella-early in the morning was worth it after all. Sunny and I met up in Gloucester, and boarded a Yankee Capts fishing boat. The website (pretty much our only source of information for anything deep-sea fishing related) told us to show up two hours in advance of departure, but we could've walked in ten minutes before 7AM - the boat wasn't too crowded. So, right at seven, off we went - past the picturesque harbor, and into the Atlantic - for a good hour and a half. Then, the boat dropped anchor, and we got to fishin'.

Now, this type of fishing wasn't what we expected. Instead of casting, we dropped bait on a hook attached to a heavy sinker all the way down to the ocean floor, 250ft or so below the water surface. One thing that we quickly found was that it meant lots of reeling. Lots. Just dropping the lure took almost a minute in some places.

Sunny was the first to deliver, with a fish that was just short of the minimum length that you needed in order to keep it. Then, we hooked a couple of sharks (yup...) - not as scary as they sound, as they were about 20 inches long. Those we couldn't keep either. Finally, mid-way through the day, I caught a cusk fish:

Apparently, these guys are infamous for being poor swimmers, so it barely fought as I brought it to the surface. Eh, all that mattered was that it was long enough!

A little later, Sunny distinguished himself by reeling in a nice-looking haddock:

Thus, operation Fish was completed, and we had something to show for it. Good times!

plans for the weekend

Up at 4:30AM on a Saturday morning to go deep-sea fishing, after staying up to play paintball last night. Somewhere out there, work begins on a monument to my manliness.

the whole 10 yards

This is a first for me as a homeowner - and for my family as a whole. I just got my very own 10 yd dumpster!

What's the big deal, you say? Finally, I have a chance to get rid of all the construction debris that have been clogging the basement/garage/shed. This is just about half of the stuff that's been sitting in the basement alone:

First the yard sale, now this... we're finally getting organized!

P.S. For the record - yes, I know that disposing of stuff is not the most environmentally-friendly thing you can do. In my defense, everything I'm throwing out has been carefully sorted for anything recyclable/salvageable.