Hello on Friday Morning

Dear Friends,



My ice-fishing adventure on Thursday didn’t have a good start. Just before heading out the door at 6:30 AM, I checked the bait which I purchased the day before, and half of the minnows were dead. It was semi my fault. When I came home from purchasing the bait on Wednesday afternoon, I decided to change the water in the bait bucket. I used the cold water from the kitchen sink. Well, it must have been the Pittsfield water which reeked havoc on my bait. If Pittsfield water can kill fish, can you imagine what it is doing to our bodies?

There are some positives of me spending the day on Pontoosuc Lake. I did arrive in time to see the sun come over the horizon. The cloudless skies and the bright sun did allow me to get a good facial sun tan. Did I catch and fish? No, but I did get at least five flags. The fish must have been too small to swallow the minnows. The flags going up did force me to get out of my chair, and tend to them.

I wanted to drive my car on the ice, but I decided to haul my sled out from the parking lot instead. The ice was plenty thick to hold my car or the multiple trucks, and SUV’s that were on the ice. My fear was not the thickness of the ice, but that I might bottom out since my car is so low to the ground. I did that a couple of years ago, and had to be pushed out, and off the ice by three other fisherman.



Linda did enjoy her day alone. She prepared a crock pot soup which we had for supper. It was wonderful once again. It was a beef / vegetable soup.



I was all set to go ice-fishing again today, but we are going to be involved in a protest at 12:45 PM. A bunch of us retired teachers are going to march outside the Teacher Union Office in Pittsfield. The protest is about the midyear changes in our health insurance which we will be experiencing on February 1, 2010. The rates are set on a yearly basis, and they remain from July of one year to July of the following year. Our health care providers were experiencing a deficit, so us retirees, and current teachers have to make up the short fall. I thought that when I left teaching, my protesting days were over.



I don’t know what is on our social agenda after the protest. Hopefully it will be a quiet evening. We would go to the movies, but I don’t like what we have to choose from right now. There is an action one which I would like to see with Mel Gibson starring in it, but I think that it starts on Sunday.



Politics / News – Tiger was sighted at a Clinic where he will be treated for sex addiction. If I was his Psychiatrist, I would tell him not to waist his money. The diagnosis would be “Incurable.” Get a divorce, pay alimony, child support, and get back to work. If he needs to have a woman before, during, and after golf, there would be no headlines because he would be single.

I see that Edwards finally admitted that his transgression, while his wife was dealing with breast cancer, resulted in the birth of a child. The two year old girl finally knows who her daddy is!

Sanford on the other hand, finally realized that he really hurt his family and political life by his transgression. I hope that he has a wonderful life with his Argentinean woman and her children.



If these guys went ice fishing with me, they would pretty much pass out from the 8 hours of fresh air on the ice. I fell asleep trying to watch the Boston Bruins hockey game which started at 7 PM. The roar of the crowd woke me up at 9:30 PM. I went to bed. Of course, I don’t want to be up this early, and I will most likely need a nap.

I think that I will hit the gym at 4:30 AM, and when I arrive back home, I will go back to bed for a couple of hours. Being retired means being flexible.



Linda and I will be going to the Temple together on Sunday for 11 AM service for the mother of one of our teacher colleagues. The deceased woman was in her early 90’s like my mother.

This is a different Temple, a block away from the other one which Linda went to this past Sunday. I think this one is where the parishioners are called Orthodox Jews. The wife of our teacher friend plays Mah Jongg in that second group which I often refer to in my daily blog.



Weather – As I was enjoying the sun on the frozen pond yesterday, and listening to the radio, I was reminded how lucky we are to live in this part of the country. We are pretty much disasters free of things like mudslides in California, or Tornado warning in the places where our Berkshires friends residing in Ocala, Florida (yesterday). Damaging earthquakes, like we have seen in Haiti don’t occur that much in the Northeast. The seismologists keep warning us that we could have a major earthquake in the Northeast, but I hope that it happens when we are long gone from this earth.



Have a great weekend.

Talk to you soon. The Curley Lad