Gone Fishin'

Man, this has this been one hell storm of a week! Whoever said, "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong" should be kicked in the shin hard. I cannot wait for tomorrow to come so I can sleep in, get drunk, and probably get rained on. As long as there are sparklers I don't care what happens! In preparation for what I hope to be happier times (and to help block the realization that there is no such thing for at least two weeks), I have finally uploaded the pictures from my first ever fishing trip. Enjoy!

Every year, a bunch of my friends from the neighborhood bar get together and go fishing for a week on Lake Texoma. I had never been invited before (as I am a fairly new member to the "inner circle" of this bar's life) and was excited to go, even when I found out I could only go for 24 hours. Bummer! As was the story for June, I had double booked myself so I wasn't able to really get going until around 930. Sometime after 1130, I finally found the camp site and the cabin; loaded down with fresh ice from the store. I like arriving at parties like this a bit late. Everyone is drunk and hilarious and I'm not expected to remember any names. The rest of what happened that night remains a mystery.

The next morning found us scarfing down eggs and getting ready to fish. I have never fished (for real) before and had to drive to the Tackle Box (I know! How cliche!) to get my license. I didn't even want to fish, but to get on the boat it was just simpler to have my license in case we got stopped by the game warden (a mythical beast I never saw). No problem! For $12 I can now fish whenever I want to...through the end of the year...and only on this one lake. Oh well.

The best thing about the trip, and I think this may be telling, was the number of sunscreen bottles being passed around with an SPF higher than 30. Most were 50 or 80. My kind of people! The M.O. was to apply sunscreen or OFF! bug spray anytime you walked by a bottle. By the time we got on the boat, I must have had 8 or 9 layers on! For once, I was not the weird girl reapplying her sunscreen like a good little ghosty.

The fish were not biting on our boat which was only annoying because they were swarming to our friends boat that was out with us. Every 5 minutes we would hear a cheer from the other boat and our spirits would dip. Finally, we caught a few. I have no idea what kind of fish this is, sorry. I caught 1 1/2 fish. The first liberated himself because I had no idea what to do when he latched on and the 2nd thrown back as too small. This worked perfectly for me as I would have liberated them myself if I could. Instead, I taught them a valuable lesson about free food (plus, they were cannibals! Our bait was even smaller fish). I felt a kindred connection to my friends girlfriend who was also on the boat and in our cabin. She was the only other vegetarian there and we immediately high-fived upon hearing the news. I hope she comes back to town.

In the end, it was a much needed relaxing day. I hope I can go again next year, but this time I'm taking two days off work. The lake is close (about 1.5 hours each way), but that's a lot of driving for less than a day of camping. All the trip really did was make me even more anxious for my big holiday later this month. I cannot wait to get away!