This is a picture of my Father and the biggest fish he ever caught. It won him the prize at the Lake Ontario Walleye Fishing Contest back in 1994, 2 days before his 79th birthday. He was a happy camper that day.

HOOK, BAIT AND SINKER

Okay I'm not quite done with the worms yet but I am going to lay them to rest.

My Father belonged to a fishing club. A group of guys who all went in, kind of time share like, on some land with 3 lakes on it. It was nestled in the middle of nowhere near a place north of Montreal called Mont Tremblant. They had a big log lodge built on a point that separated 2 of the lakes. It was an immense thing with a top floor that was one huge dorm style bedroom filled with single beds/cots. Downstairs was the kitchen, a dining room, a lounge and a game room. Once the fishing day was done the drinking and poker games took over. They hired a couple to look after the grounds, etc. and keep the place stocked and of course do the cooking. There were about 100 of them and it cost them each $100.00 canadian a year for their membership dues. It was so well liked by these men that one could only get in when another one died. You could say they were life members!

Every one would have a meeting and hash out (book) their week and/or weekends when they would have their lodge time. There was a rule that no one was allowed to break. NO WOMEN OR CHILDREN ALLOWED except during the month of August! So my Dad would get a week when he and his buddies (other members) and my brothers had the lodge, then he would book another week when we women could go. I looked forward to it every year. This place was fabulous!

I learned to fish. This entailed taking a wriggly earthworm and affixing it to a hook. I was a little squeamish about this (not as much as the worm was) but got the deed done. Of course I never caught a fish until I became a teenager, but I got in lots of practice. The best part was being out on the lakes in a motor boat (small 5HP engine) and exploring. There were beaver, bear and moose along the shores. This was Canada! This was the North! This was the middle of nowhere! (I forgot to mention that the only way to get to the fishin' lodge was by boat.)

We kids had more to do than just fish and explore. There was a dock that we could swim off of. The water was not shallow, so there was a little ladder to get back onto the dock. The water there was covered in spiders. Water spiders. They actually walk on the water. They weren't too small either so it was kind of intimidating when just your head is level with the top of the water and these arachnids are waltzing around in front of you. Luckily, no I think they knew what they were doing, they always got out of the way. There was also a big wooden box on the platform. It held salt, massive quantities of salt, and a scoop. You'd wonder why they would need all that salt. It wasn't winter - it was only August - winter was next month. But you knew what it was for the minute you crawled out of the water and your body was covered in these squirmy, writhing little things that looked like chicken livers!. You knew what it was for when you realized that you could not pull these little creatures off your body. You knew what it was for when your father laughs at your attempts to rid yourself of these little suckers and shows you how to take the scooper of salt and remove the critters one by one. Leeches, an ancient form of medical wonder, lurking in the deep dark waters of northern Quebec.

Fascinating place. My love of this world we live in was further enhanced by this place that I will never forget.

ElectroMagnetics

Am I the only one who drains the life out of batteries? I can't seem to wear a watch for more than one or two months before the battery needs replacing. They just go kaput on me. It was so annoying that I quit wearing one. Even a Timex would frequently say Time Out.

Another thing that bugs me is static electricity. I cannot touch, no make that get close to anything metal without that little bolt of lightening leaping across the airwaves to find me. All those metal filing cabinets at work are a source of constant dread to me. I keep my keys in my pocket so that if I must get into a drawer I grab a key and approach the metal and watch the little lightening bolt leap to it. That way the shock that I get is greatly reduced. Still it is a scary thing. Especially if the keys are not in my pocket. My hand will reach for the cabinet, and pull back over and over again, until I get the courage to just bite the bullet and do it. When I have to open something that is wrapped in plastic, watch out. The plastic will cling to me. I can move the stuff from hand to hand without actually doing anything but let the one hand get close to the other. Sometimes this can interfere with my work as I must experiment with it because I feel that there is a point where if I keep my hands at the correct distance from one another I could suspend the plastic in space and time. Alas, the only thing that I suspend is work time, but there are those times when the experiment is more facsinating than the work.

The car I had before this one had electrical problems too. It was an 1984 Lincoln towncar which I got in 1995. My former boss was the previous owner. It had all the bells and whistles that a luxury car should have. It would not start for me on a regular basis. I would have to pop open the hood and jiggle the wires and eventually the beast would start again. It also got frequent trips to the mechanics to try to troubleshoot the problem but I never got any satisfaction out of that. Then one time the car decided to die right at an intersection where I was waiting to make a left turn. It would not start. I was on the famous Route 66 and I was in the way. A police car came along and pushed me around the corner and into a nearby parking lot. When this boat had no power it was difficult to manuever. Steering and braking without that help is very hard on a 5'3" wee body. Back to the shop and a new thick film ignition thingy was installed. Hooray! Problem solved at last! Then my husband and I were out for a cruise through the great Mojave Desert and the door locks start going on and off. They were just clicking away going on and off in a sporadic fashion. We stopped somewhere for a bite to eat and figured when we turned the car off and removed the key it would stop. No way! The car locks just kept clicking away like there was some phantom sitting at the controls that we could not see. When we got home the only way to stop it was to remove the correct fuse, otherwise the beast would have continued on through the night and as it was parked outside (no garage) it would have been vulnerable to the local thieving hoards. They would have seen this barge as a great party car for a night. Well another trip to the mechanics and an expensive new computer just to control the door locks and I decided that this car's days were numbered! So what do I buy. A little 1998 Ford Contour (which I love) that has no, nada, bells and whistles (except the one to remind me that I've left the keys in the ignition, which I am very grateful for but apparently don't always listen to it). The consumer reports magazine reports that this car has problems with it's electrical systems! So far I have been doing okay with it. After I traded in the Lincoln I got a recall notice from Ford, Lincoln, Mercury on it about how the thick film ignition switch was faulty and needed replacing. No kidding! About ten years too late I think. Then I got a class action lawsuit notice from some sharks about it. But after I traded the beast in I chucked all the maintenance records so I get no recompense from there either.

RINGS

Okay shoot me! I'm back on worms again. This time it's those kid friendly things called Ringworms! It is for real that I got this bunch from a dog, or that's what I was told when it happened. We got a dog when I was 3 years old. I remember being terribly jealous of him when he first arrived. He was getting more attention than I was. He was a black labrador retriever and he became my pal. He was closer in age to me than any of my siblings so we got along famously. This was also in the days before leash laws so Blackie was free to come and go as he pleased which he did frequently. So who knows what he picked up and gave to me. Of course, I blamed it on my sister's new puppy (she was already married with child, I was an aunt at 7). It was a really cute belgian hound that was still able to fit in the palm of a hand.

The fungi affixed itself to the center of my chest right below my neck. Luckily it took a position that was very exposed in the opening above the top button of my blouse. As a kid I would not have noticed it but my Mom did. A special cream was put on it and a bandage had to cover it so as not to expose it to myself or anyone else. My school would not let me attend until the offending beasties were banished from my body. I thought that was great! Except, of course, when I realized that all my friends were in school so there was no one to play with. I was free to move about the outside world so I would head to school and peer over the fence at the schoolyard, planning my arrival to coincide with recess time so I could at least talk to my pals.

MORE CIRCLES

There is a website that I like to visit because it gives me a view of the earth. There are a few buttons on the bottom of the page so that you can change the view. If you click on the button that says clouds, after a few seconds, you will see all the clouds that are covering this world. If you look out at the Atlantic you will see more potential hurricanes moving westward. Please send them vibes to make them disintegrate. Enough already, there is a big typhoon looking thing out in the Pacific too. Let's evaporate them. Sorry the best that I can do is a footlonger.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/uncgi/Earth and I hope it works for us.