I've been trying to write this up for a while now.

Work is going ok. Getting busy, but ok. Lots of little things have been coming my way and it's been a challenge to keep on top of everything. I'm afraid something is going to get overlooked sooner or later. The end of the term is coming up, a month to go actually. After that, I'm not quite sure what's going to happen. The next term doesn't start until October. As much as I'd like to think that we're going to get all of August and September off, I seriously doubt that's going to happen. I do know that some of the committees I'm on are going to meet and do some work. From what I gather, they're going to try and schedule those meetings at the beginning/end of the break in order to give everyone as much consecutive time off as possible.

I've been feeling kinda lonely lately. Part of that is homesickness. Odd that as I haven't been homesick for a long while. I guess I was due for a bout. Checking out family/friends' pics on facebook has really done it to me. Maybe I'd better just not check facebook as much. Also, I still haven't made many friends here outside of work. Moreover, my work friends are all older and married so they've got their own thing going on. Lastly, I haven't seen Miyuki all that much lately either. It was much easier to deal with the infrequency of meeting each other when we were living far apart, as it was something that just couldn't be helped. Now, she just lives about 10 km away and we still hardly ever see each other. I can meet where/whenever. She however, has been too busy to meet. Also, the few times we do get to meet, the mood has been well, kinda awkward. We did have a talk this past weekend, and she says her feelings for me are still there, mine are for her too. I don't want to put a timeline on things, but if we keep having these awkward moods I have to wonder if we really are right for each other after all.

In other news, my stimulus money came in. Good timing too as I just paid off my Saitama Residents' Tax. It is payable in installments, but I just wanted to get it over and done with so I paid the thing off in full. As the thing is from Saitama, the only place I can pay it off is at a bank downtown. I ended up wasting half of my day Wednesday to run this errand, and I didn't want to do that again, so yeah.

So I've been watching more of my digital cable TV and I'm actually kind of underwhelmed. It just doesn't have as much stuff as the digital cable TV package I had back home. On the flip side, my internet connection is about 5 times as fast, so I guess it balances out. With a good torrent, I can download a 700 mb video in about 2 minutes, a DVD-R image in 15. It's like having video on demand. Just the other day, I was in the mood to watch Tombstone and didn't feel like riding all the way out to the video store to rent it. Found a torrent, started it up, ran down to the Family Mart to get a drink and a snack, came back and the download was done! I might even cancel my digital cable. Still, it does have a lot more foreign sports and news, so I guess it's worth it for that. Oh and there is an add-on fishing channel. It's like 10 bucks a month. I might have to look into that.

Speaking of TV fishing, there was a fishing show on regular broadcast TV last night. They were going for yellowtail snapper. First they tried using live horse mackerel for bait. That wasn't producing anything so they switched to cut bait and then they landed 2 big snappers. One was 11 kg and the other was 10 kg. They served one up as sushi at the end of the show. It looked absolutely delicious, wow.

So yeah, I've been feeling kind of blah lately. Also, somewhat stunned at the news of Michael and Farrah. That really puts things into perspective. Oh yeah, and now Billy Mays, the Oxiclean guy. I totally went down to Target and bought some because of that infomercial!

At any rate, I'm going to try to not waste my Monday now and actually do some work.

First time - Saturday, we went to a beach near her apartment. I didn't catch a thing, but at least I was in good company. Of all the people there, I only saw one guy catch one fish the entire time we were out there. It was a nice sized fish, so it gave me hope.

Second time - Sunday, we went to a port out on the outskirts of town. The place was packed. Yet no one was catching anything. The highlight of the morning was when this one dude almost caught a fish. Everyone made such a big deal out of it, I'm wondering if it is normal here to go home empty-handed. While it was nice to get out of the house, I really wanted to catch something. Oh yeah, and everyone there was throwing out so much chum it's no wonder that nothing was biting. The fish probably got full eating all the chum and didn't need to mess around with eating people's baits.

Anyway, I'm going to try and make this a semi-regular thing. Once I start actually catching fish then maybe I can make it a regular thing, lol.

Tomorrow Miyuki and I are going to try to go fishing. I can't believe it's taken this long for my first time fishing in Japan. I remember the first month I was on JET, one of the Japanese teachers of English and I were talking about free time and he says "I like to go fishing on weekends."
"Oh really? Where do you go? What kinds of fish do you catch?"
And he goes "Oh, there's a river in my town that has some trout. Also, I like to go bass fishing at a lake near my house."
"I love bass fishing! I'd like to try it in Japan sometime." *hinthint*
... *dead silence*
What was I supposed to do, as a 1-week-off-the-boat-ALT, ask him "Do you think you could take me fishing with you next time?" So yeah, the dude never invited me.
Another lady and I talked about going to the beach, and we did go. I totally forgot about fishing by then and we just planned on a nice day at the beach. When we got to the beach I got that fishing itch again that I never did get scratched. I ended up going back home soon thereafter. The last time I lived in Japan, I didn't live near any fishing spots so it was never an issue. This time around I finally have the time and access to go fishing. I'm not going to let this chance pass me by.

In other news, classes were good yesterday and today. They all ended a lot stronger than they started. Typical class: I walk in, the room is hot and humid, and half the class has their head down on the table. I have to really sell the warm-up activity in order to get them up and about. Once warmed-up we go into the textbook. Some heads go down, but at least this time they're a distinct minority in the room. We do a couple more speaking activities. Participation in these goes up as it gets closer to the end of the period. One last quick activity, everyone's (finally) fully into it, and we end the class on a high note.

I know I said I was going to try and cut them some slack. However, judging from their performance at the end of the class, I know what they're capable of. Their level of interest was highest when they were expending the most energy. When they just sit there passively, they just take notes and look like they're having an awful time. Once they start talking and moving about it's a completely different room.

The rest of the week has been ok. I went for a bike ride last night. It was surprisingly cool by the time I got home. It's doing the same today. I like these cool evenings. Anyway, Miyuki wants to go fishing really early tomorrow. I'd better hit the hay.

Didn't do much at all on Saturday. Bought some groceries, did some laundry. Oh yeah, I also bought an electric fan for my office. (It has an air conditioner, but it's not quite that warm yet.) There was one other thing I did but it slips my mind atm.

Sunday, NTT came by and installed my fiber optic internet. Yay! That took a couple of hours. The dude had to literally run a fiber line from wherever the box for this neighborhood is up to and into my apartment. At first there was a bit of a snafu because their fiber optic "wizard" decided not to play nice with my SUGOIENGRISHWINDOWSXPKAWAII PC. Fortunately, I found the log-on application on the CD-ROM they provided and got it up and running anyway. Yeah, the connection is pretty fast. Not as fast as what I've got here at work but it's not shabby. I tested out a torrent just to see how it would go. Once up to speed I was pulling in about 2 megs a sec. I don't need to download stuff quite that quickly and I'd rather not arouse any suspicions so I think I'll dial it down a couple of notches for my next DL. My digital cable tuner comes in later this week. Double Yay! (Why the internet dude couldn't just bring a tuner with him is beyond me, oh well.)

Then Miyuki and I went downtown to have a late lunch and hang out. We went to a pretty good (albeit pricey) Hawaiian cafe. Then on the way home we stopped by that newly reopened fishing store. The place is huge. I was a bit overwhelmed at first. They have a different take on stuff than they do back home. First I picked out a rod/reel combo, then got a small tackle box and proceeded to pick up just enough stuff to fill it up. While it was interesting to put together a Japanese-style fishing outfit, I would have rather gone to a Wal-Mart, lol. Stuff is way more expensive here. I figure everything was at least twice of what it costs back home. In typical Japanese fashion, they also had some super high technology fishing equipment that had me going: "What?!" For example, this one fishing rod which was feather light, super strong and perfectly balanced went for $600. I mean sure it would make casting effortless and you'd probably be able to feel if a fish even looked at your bait/lure. But for that much it had better catch and clean the fish for me as well!

Anyway, if the weather is nice we're going to try and go fishing next weekend.

After the fishing store we had dinner at a ramen place near my apartment and then went home to watch some videos. I kinda wanted to play around on my new internet, but as my laptop is my DVD player that had to wait. Maybe I should get a standalone DVD player, preferably one that plays divx files (as I have a bunch of those). I do need to get a couple of things at the electronics store anyway, hmmm.... Looks like I know what I'm doing after work today, lol.

First I slept in. Then I put my futon out on the balcony to air out. Then I watched a bit of TV/played on the internet. Finally, it was just too nice of a day to be cooped up in the house all day long so I went for a bike ride.

(I forgot to mention that I did get a new bicycle after all. I'll take some pics when I get home from work today.)

Anyway, I just started riding with nowhere particularly in mind. Then I decided to check some things out. The road I was currently on led to the electronics store. I just wanted to see what the PS3 goes for. At Yamada Denki, they're about 40000 yen - when available, the store was sold out. I then stopped by a couple of used game stores. They had the current model used for about 35000 yen. However, they had older model PS3s going for more than 50000 yen! (When I got home, I checked the internet and the older discontinued ones have backward compatibility with PS2 games, the latest model does not.) Do I really want to pay that much for a used machine? I should just buy a new PS3 and then buy a PS2 later if I get some burning desire to play PS2 games.

At any rate, I also stopped by a fishing store. This store was interesting because it had both used and new gear for sale. What I found was that the used gear was more expensive because it was all premium stuff. A brand-new, not top-of-the-line setup costs a good deal less and is perfectly serviceable, so I was like wtf. Are there that many pro fishermen in Japan? Then it hit me: In Japan, even fishermen are label whores. That also got me to wondering, why aren't there more any fishing shows on TV? Well, there might be some on cable TV. Next time Miyuki has some time I'd like to go with her to the fishing store and pick up some gear. Maybe we can even go fishing.

All in all, a pretty nice day off. Let's see, there are 2 more days of classes and then we're off until May 7th! That reminds me, I need to buy a card for Mother's Day!

ETA: Here's my bicycle.

From 2009-04

Life has been kinda boring.

*I missed working out this week because the weather was crap on Mon/Tue, the gym was closed yesterday and I felt like crap today. I hope I can go tomorrow after work. I imagine that maybe Saturday I'll get a call from The Big K to go out for a few rounds.

*I got back into complacent mode (again) regarding studying Japanese. That sucks. I need to get serious. C'mon man, JLPT 2 in December. How long have I lived in Japan?!? *sigh*

*In catching up with people on facebook from high school and junior high, everyone asks if I still play the sax. I guess that's one of the things I was known for back in the day. I miss playing. After I move I want to save up for a tenor. I don't know where I'd play, but I hope the university has something I could use. I'd even take a broom closet down in the boiler room. Heck, I'm so out of practice that actually sounds pretty good - lol.

*Tennis, Miyuki wants me to teach her how to play. That would be pretty good. I miss playing that as well. Public tennis courts here are somewhat hard to find though. We did stop into a Sports Authority at that mall in Koshigaya. They had a decent racket selection, if somewhat expensive.

*She also wants me to teach her how to fish. I need to check out a fishing shop and get a few things - where's a Wal-Mart when you need one?! Anyway, her apartment is about a kilometer from the ocean. There's gotta be *something* out there.

Woke up early and went fishing with my folks, uncle and cousin. We didn't catch much, but the weather was awesome. It was so nice just to be outside and enjoying the sunshine. (btw, today's high: 81 F/27 C)

After that, I took some of my X-Mas money and went to Best Buy and got a 32 GB iPod Touch (2nd gen). I decided before the break that I was going to get one. My sister got a 16 GB Touch for X-Mas. I'd been playing around with it since then and I was even more sold on it. The preinstalled apps are pretty cool. I like the web browser. I might need to get a few games too. I put a few sample CDs, movies & music videos on it. The videos look great. The music sounds pretty good, but admittedly I only have my travel earbuds with me. I'm looking forward to comparing it with my Total BitHead and my Grado SR-60's (check out this review ^_^) when I get back to Japan. Speaking of going back to Japan, it will be great for use on the plane!

Then FSU stomped Wisconsin, 42-13, in the Champs Sports Bowl. That was a good game, well if you're an FSU fan. At times, we looked like the FSU of old. Also, the Orlando Magic beat the Minnesota Timberwolves 118-94. I didn't get to see that game, but seeing the score on the ticker got me all pumped up - yeah!

What else.... Oh yeah my mom made her usual sales pitch for me to come back to the USA. She sold it pretty good. I dare say I would like to have a big talk with Miyuki about it. (Yes, I know - OMFGWOW!) I really need to clean house here though. If I'm a pack-rat, my parents are even worse about it. Seriously, we need to just rent a dumpster and throw all this clutter out. I'm guilty of it too, but I'm at least going to get a start on it and give some of my old clothes to charity sometime this week.

Oh yeah, and driving my car. I know I say this every time I visit home, but dang it really is nice to just get into a car and go somewhere. While I'd still rather be able to bike/take public transportation for work, having that option available for life outside of work totally rocks. Let's see, I think I will get a new driver's license this week. My current license is so old (yet still valid until Sept. 2011), everyone thinks it's a fake whenever I get carded. So yeah, probably Monday for that.

I want to get in some freshwater fishing. I might even do that after I get the license done. I also want to get in some good saltwater fishing, so maybe Tuesday or Wednesday for that. New Year's Eve, unless someone calls with some party plans I'm probably going to just take it easy - watch the ball drop on TV with my folks and call it a night.

Heck I can't believe how quickly this break is going by. *sigh*

The bite was very slow today. I didn't catch anything. I only saw 4 other fish caught all day today: a big Bluefish (bigger than any of the ones we caught that one time stormd), 2 fat Sheepshead, and a small Snook (*just* under regulation). It was good to get out of the house though. The guys that caught the Sheepshead tried something I hadn't yet seen: sand fleas with the shells peeled off. I'm going to try that one myself next time I go.

Too bad the fishing is so far away though. With gas as expensive as it is these days, I'm going to have to stick to places closer to here. I haven't been out to the Mosquito Lagoon in forever, maybe I'll try out there next time. It won't be for a while, and it won't be by myself either. I miss hanging out with people and stuff.

I haven't been fishing in so long. There really is no excuse for me to not go either. So, I'm going to go tomorrow. I usually worry about all sorts of things, time of day, tide, moon phase, water temperature, weather conditions, etc... Tomorrow, I'm just going to get up early in the morning and go. Heck, I'm not even going to load myself down with gear. Just a tackle box, fishing rod (maybe two as I use a small fishing rod to catch bait sometimes), fish bucket and bait bucket. I haven't been out to Sebastian in a LONG time. If the weather is truly horrible, I won't go. It looks like it will be a bit cold, but otherwise ok. I just gotta bundle up a bit.

Oh and I recently ripped the "Bust A Move" OST (JP wiki) - aka "Bust A Groove" outside of Japan. ahhh memories. stormd, demetra_ai, and cerune, where you at?!?
hehe - if/when I get back to Japan I ought to buy this game again and a PSX to play it on. I miss this game.

Orlando 105 Charlotte 92 - That was a pretty good game. Dwight Howard was a monster. We had good seats for the game. We were a few rows back from where the Orlando Magic Dancers sat. (Wow! I could hardly watch the game at times.... *^_^*) There was another level of seating where you could actually sit with the Dancers. Those seats also had cocktail waitresses serving them. Nice. But our seats were good enough and we enjoyed the game. Unfortunately, our dumbasses forgot to bring our digital cameras. We ended up just using our cell phone cameras and well, the picture quality is pretty weak.

Oh and before the game, my brother, sister and I went fishing at the Cocoa Beach Pier. My sister caught a nice little black drum, and my brother caught a big one. That was probably the biggest fish he's ever caught. I didn't catch a thing unfortunately. It was really windy and cold out there. As we were leaving, the bite started to pick up. One guy caught a HUGE flounder, and some others caught more black drum. But we had to get back so we could get ready for the Magic game.

Today is my sister's baby shower. That should be fun. Tomorrow I need to recuperate and do some job hunting stuff.

I actually went and didn't catch a damn thing. I couldn't even catch any bait fish with the sabiki. I went out to Sebastian and it was a very slow day. Hardly anyone caught anything out there. Oh well. At least the weather was awesome - mostly sunny, mid 80s, with a slight breeze.

Tomorrow I gotta get an oil change for the jeep and buy b-day gips for my mom, brother and cousin.

The only bit of work I did today was hammer out the test for tonight's class. Oh well. That's ok, I can do some on Wednesday. I am still planning on going fishing tomorrow. I don't know the tide changes or anything but am going to head out there as early as possible. I still have a ton of frozen bait. Also, I can sabiki for live baitfish. I basically just want to throw a bunch of lures out there and see what hits.

Here's what's going on for the rest of the break...
Tuesday - fishing
Wednesday - do some work, get an oil change and shopping
Thursday - Turkey Day
Friday - Orlando Magic Game
Saturday - Baby Shower (oh yeah, the FSU-UF game is on too, but we're probably going to get killed T_T)
Sunday - Recovery

So tonight at the college, we're going to do one chapter really quick, take a 5 minute break, have the test and go home.

I'll finish up this entry while they take the test.

edit to add: Actually I don't have much to add to this. I may call Japan again tonight to say "hi", but I don't want to seem pushy. I haven't touched up my resume or anything and that's bad. I really need to get on that. While everything is indicating that my old job is a lock, I can't count on that until I get something official from them.

edit to add 2: I may not be able to go fishing as my folks told me there's a lot of stuff to do around the house tomorrow. Grrr....

I went fishing with my folks. They wanted to go to Port Canaveral. So we got out there pretty early yesterday. They started with bait (squid) and sabiki - nothing was biting. I put on a Yo-Zuri minnow and started casting around and nothing. I started walking around the port area and I saw a big school of sailor's choice milling about. Too bad I didn't have my cast net or I would have tried to grab the lot of them. Anyway, it was then I noticed that they were being chased by a school of jacks. So I threw my lure out into the middle of the swarm and wham! A nice jack hit the lure. He put up a pretty good fight. Some of the other jacks were trying to get at the lure too, thinking that this one was running away trying to get the "food" all to himself. Unfortunately, that pretty much spooked everything else away and nothing else hit all morning. We also went out to Jetty Park, but nothing was hitting out there either. One guy caught a nice sheepshead and another guy caught a flounder, but that was about it. Oh but my folks had a blast with the sabiki, pulling in another 5 pounds of bait-size fish or so.

Oh I started a new fishing album on picasa. My sheepshead from last week is up there now. Hopefully I'll have more pics to come.

I got out there around 1 pm. I bought a drop net for fishing at the pier. The weather was really nice. Not a cloud in the sky and temps were in the upper 70s/low 80s. Unfortunately, the water was really murky and there were a lot of surfers out; the fishing was not that great. I did catch a pretty big sheepshead using frozen shrimp. At first I thought I was snagged on a rock, as the fish didn't move side to side. It was just a straight downward pull. It took a couple of minutes but I finally pulled it up. I also tried for some bait fish using the sabiki, but I kept getting snagged on rocks or the pilings. I lost the two rigs that I had. I need to go to Wal-Mart and pick up a few more.

I stayed for a few hours then went home. At least the bar was open. It was nice having a few beers and enjoying the weather. I think I brought too much stuff though, I brought my little wagon and it was loaded up pretty good. I could probably trim my load down to the following:
1 or 2 fishing rods, 1 bait bucket, 1 fish bucket and 1 tackle box.

Dang I just got sleepy all of a sudden. I think I'll go to bed now. (Man, it's only 9:15 pm too!)

F-L-O-R-I-D-A S-T-A-T-E! Florida State! Florida State! Florida State! Whoooo!!!

What a great game! Even if we had lost, it would have been a pretty good game. We were looking pretty sad in the loss to Miami and not exactly awesome against Duke either. Here we go on the road against the #2 team in the country and pull out the win! It was a nail biter, right down to that last interception we got on them for the touchdown and 10-point lead.

Speaking of football, howabout NAVY ending a 43-GAME LOSING STREAK to Notre Dame! The last time Navy beat Notre Dame was in the 1960s and their quarterback was Roger Staubach. (O_O)

Oh and the Orlando Magic won tonight too. Unfortunately, my local cable service provider does not carry the channel that most of the Magic games are on. That really sucks. I mean hell, there were more people watching the game in the arena than on TV in the metro Orlando area.

I didn't get to go fishing today. The weather was nice enough. For some reason though, I just wasn't feeling it. I might go tomorrow. I still have a couple of things to do around the house. I figure I get up early, knock those out and see how I feel about it.

Ah and the other night I stayed up WAY past my bedtime playing with my new toy (the headphone amp/DAC). I tried it out with iTunes, and CDs. Very nice. The iTunes stuff sounds so much better going through a real DAC. This rig also sounds better than my CD Walkman setup too, but the difference is not as pronounced. If my laptop is on, I'll use it to listen to CDs. If not, I don't need to power it up to listen to CDs. I can just use the Walkman and get sound that's good enough. As it is, I'm just happy to use the Total BitHead as a USB soundcard for my laptop.

Speaking of bedtime, I guess I need to set my clocks back an hour. Daylight Savings Time is crazy.

Decided not to go today, maybe tomorrow. I woke up in time, but after having breakfast I just didn't feel motivated. The weather is kind of crappy, you know...

I was thinking about getting a portable media player. From the pongatari files, I was looking at either the Cowon D2 or Cowon A2. They are a bit pricier than other units out there with comparable specs but what you're paying for is the performance. (They look & sound f-ing awesome.... well, at least according to reports on the internet.) A couple of weeks ago, Newegg had the D2 with 8 GB onboard and the A2. The A2 entered the picture when I noticed that it was only 50 bucks more than the 8 GB version of the D2. The battery life was about the same. I like the bigger screen and storage of the A2. Now the 8 GB D2 is out of stock and the A2 has been removed completely. Amazon had the A2 for the same price as Newegg, but has since marked theirs up. bastards. Since I really just need this thing for the trip to Japan, I think I may just forget about it. Maybe I'll just go buy some fishing stuff instead. :P

the midterm, that is. This part should take them all about an hour or so.

I'm thinking back to my "new rule". It seems to me that they've never actually had this explicitly laid out in front of them. There seems to be so much of this tooty-fruity wishy-washy "discipline" out there that they may actually like having the structure so they know exactly what is expected of them. Also, some teachers have so many rules that it just overwhelms them. They just end up breaking all the rules because they forgot what the rules were. Again, this is only the first day of this. Time will tell if this is just the novelty factor or if my theory actually holds water.

In other news, I'm going back to Tally on Friday! FSU vs Miami - yeah! Admittedly, the game has lost some of its luster compared to back in the day, but the soul still burns! I would like to geek out though - visit the school college of music, the music library, take in a recital. Oh yeah, and the game. I don't know if we've got tickets, but it'll be good just to be in town for game weekend.

Next weekend, I'm going to do some fishing. More than likely it'll be the Cocoa Beach Fishing Pier. My folks had the best time last weekend. It opens at 6 am, and they want to get there at 6 am. Which is fine by me, I felt we got there a little late at 8 am. I really want to catch something on a lure. There were HUGE fish out there chasing my lure, but no takers. I am SO CLOSE to catching one of these. I think part of the problem is that I see them chasing it and I change my retrieval/action subconsciously. I need to just throw it out there and work it consistently all the way in.

Oh and I got a message from the college about picking up some hours in the spring, they want me to call them back. I'll call tomorrow. I hope it's good news....

After working with high school kids all day long, I really was not in the mood for anything high school-related. So Friday night, Bill and I went to Sports Authority (the new one by the Fashion Square mall has a LOT of fishing stuff), had dinner at Toojay's, went to a sake bar and another bar.

The sake bar - We went to Tatame (pronounced Tatami :rolleyes: ). I'd heard it was pretty cool so we decided to check it out. We walked in and it was a real hipster place. There was a DJ playing some sort of trip-hop lounge music and the place was decorated with all this funky experimental art. All that wasn't so bad. What was bad was the sake. There were two Japanese labels and the rest was domestic and/or some sort of fruit flavor infused concoction. The two Japanese ones were really LOW grade konbini sake to boot. I had the "Ozeki Blue" and Bill had "Shirayuki something". We categorized them as follows. Ozeki is what the loser salarymen get at 7-11 when they go out for a night of pachinko. Shirayuki is what those fellows get that live in blue-tarps in the train station or public parks. Another sight I'd just as soon forget, some hipsters lining up a bunch of sake cups in a row, and downing shot after shot - barbarians.

The other bar - After the sake bar, we needed a beer to rid ourselves of the taste of bad sake. So we went to a Puerto Rican joint on the way home. It didn't have to be a Puerto Rican place, it was just on the way home and they had beer. That was pretty interesting. The place was pretty busy. Mostly folks were dancing to salsa or merengue on the jukebox or playing billiards. I was just happy for the beer.

Saturday - I went fishing with my folks and my uncle. We went to the pier at Cocoa Beach and the fishing was pretty good. We caught a few black drum. They were nice and fat. Some other guys also caught some reds and flounder. I showed my mom the sabiki rig and she had a blast catching a ton of bait fish - she kept a lot of them for eating, you can fry the hell out of the whole fish and eat it like a chip. It got hot out there and the bite died down so we left. I called Bill to give him a fishing report and was like "Alright, let's go!" So I went again. It was late afternoon so it had cooled down a little. The bite seemed to be back on when we got there, people were catching more black drum. I almost had a flounder, but it got off. Not much else was biting and then a storm rolled in, so we left. We went to Hooters and watched the LSU/Kentucky game. That was pretty cool. The game, that is. Our server was cute but not the friendliest gal.

Oh yeah, how about USF? Number 2 in the nation! Wow! They totally destroyed UCF too. That was an ugly game. Too bad about FSU with the loss to Wake on Thursday. The way I figure, this is a rebuilding year. I mean, heck they replaced most of the coaching staff. Oh well, we still have the same record as UF and are doing better than Miami at least.

Last night, Bill and I went to Hooters at Waterford Lakes and hoooo boy.... We had a couple of servers that couldn't be more blonde if they tried. Wow. Overall, the wings were alright, but the ambiance was "special". We may have to make this a regular Friday thing.

Today, I got talked out of fishing by my parents. They were like, "It's too windy, it's going to rain, blah blah blah." So I did the next best thing. I went to the store and bought a new fishing rod. (^_^) I got a Shakespeare "Intercoastal" Ugly Stick combo. I'd been wanting an Ugly Stick for a long time now. It's a one-piece 7-footer. It has blue trim (which looks really cool, btw) vs. the ubiquitous red trim, and is a bit stiffer. All the better to catch those massive fish I'll be fighting shortly. haha. The reel is decent. There were better reels at the shop, but if I bought the items separately instead of a combo, it would have cost almost twice as much. Anyway, I spooled it with braided line (vs monofilament). I'm a big fan of braid. It's thinner, stronger and more responsive than mono. I also bought a few other fishing odds and ends but nothing really noteworthy. Oh but I did find out that my aerator died. I need to go back to the store and buy a new one.

Other than that, I cleaned my room and watched FSU beat NC State 27-10. Cleaning the room was good. I had so many loose papers lying about, it was becoming a hazard - the papers are very slippery! Also, I like being able to see the carpet. The football game was pretty good too. The "lightning delay" was kinda lame, but the Texas/Oklahoma game they put on was really good. I was almost disappointed that they cut back to the FSU game.

I might go fishing tomorrow. I dunno, we'll see...

...the fishing that is. stormd and I got to Sebastian Inlet at around 10 I think. It was pretty crowded, so we just grabbed an empty section of pier. It was pretty slow for most of the day. Late afternoon, on the other side of the pier, a school of Spanish Mackerel show up. These guys started catching them left and right. By the end of the day, those guys had 2 coolers full of the darn things. Anyway, I found a spot on that side and tried my luck. I hooked a couple, but couldn't bring any in. We were all using live bait, "greenies". They look like Menhaden but I'm not sure that's what they actually are. Anyway, that was as close as we got to catching any fish today. (T_T) Oh well, we'll get 'em next time.

FSU 21 Alabama 14 - Awww yeah! Xaxier Lee came off the bench and led the team to victory! The first half was hard to watch, but the second was great. It pretty much came down to the wire. It was only because of a freak accident that Alabama did not recover the football on the onside kick with about a minute left in the game. We really dodged a bullet on that one. *whew!*

Lots of upsets in college football land this weekend. I thought that USF over West Virginia was pretty awesome. USF will probably be in the Top 10 after this. Maybe FSU will be back in the polls. Still, I never thought I'd see USF in the Top 10 and FSU barely squeaking into the polls. However, UCF in the Top 10 and FSU out - hell will have truly frozen over then. Right now, it's just a cold front. lol