Pushes

After work today I drove to the downtown YMCA. Parking was a bit of a pain, but I finally sneaked into a spot on the lower side of 10th Avenue. I was working "Pushes" tonight and since I'm just starting out again I'm doing light sets.

12x75 Bench, 12x80 Bench
10x50 Shoulder Press, 10x40 Shoulder Press

I'm going to do triceps presses tonight at home with dummies since the gym was crowded and I was in a hurry.

Next week I'll go up to 3 sets. I did "Pulls" last night at the Hermitage Y.

Then I did about 15 laps on the overhead, padded track, which was about 1.3 miles. That track is so nice I even did two "intervals". With new sneakers and the padded surface, it feels like you're just gliding around.

The Road to Jericho

At lunch I stopped at the local Racetrack to get some gas. I was using cash so I went inside. There were three people in front of me, and the first was an old lady buying scratch-off lottery cards. I have a bad attitude about lotteries in the first place, so it was especially frustrating to watch her buy 2 cards, pay with cash, wait for change, then pause for 10 seconds and decide to buy 2 more of another kind as well, pay with cash, wait for change, then I kid you not, repeat the entire process one last time.

She's finally out of the way, and the next person in line is a much younger woman with a European accent. She starts explaining to the cashier that she pulled her car up to get gas, but forgot that the gas cap was on the other side, and the hose won't reach. Apparently she coasted up, because now her car won't start.

The lady at the register, being the typical lady at the register at a cheap ass gas station, looks at her like she's crazy and says "well what you want me to do about it?"

"Do you have a can or something I can put a little gas in?"

"No. You can buy one of those gas cans on the shelf there."

"Can I borrow one for a minute?"

"No, but you can buy one!"

At this point I spoke up, loudly I might add, and said "she's not going to help you! I'll push the car back closer to the pump. Put me down for ten dollars on pump 8," and I threw my 10 dollar bill at her. Of course the cashier is looking at me like I'm the jackass at this point.

We walked out to the pump, and by this point there's a small crowd of women gathered around the car, asking if she found a bottle or something. I tried to pull the hose over the car, and it was lacking about a foot. So I had her put the car in neutral and shoved it backwards and "voila!" the problem was solved. I went back to my car, pumped my gas, and drove by to make sure she was OK on my way out.

I can understand having a crappy, low paying job, and feeling bad about it. I've had those jobs myself in the past, but I still didn't use it as an excuse to treat people like crap. I reserve that treatment for people like the cashier.

Poker Night

So I played Texas Hold'em tonight for the first time since I stopped working in Atlanta about four years ago. It was hosted by songwriter extraordinaire Ashley Gorley and involved about 15 hairy apes sitting in his basement eating wings and slurping down Diet Pepsi's. This was tame poker since it was mostly people from church and Sunday school class.

I didn't get many cards going my way, and when I did I badly overplayed them. At one point I hit a straight on the flop and pushed in 500 on a pot that was about 200 at the time. Jimmy almost called it, but in the end it was too big of a push and he folded. That was pretty much the highlight of my night as far as hands go. I busted out on an A6, going all in just before the river card, looking for an Ace but Daniel on my right had a straight the whole time.

Tuesday at the Waterfalls

Jack's been asking me to go fishing again since the last time we went. We were going to go on Monday, but he ended up going to visit some church friends with Marissa. I promised him we would go fishing yesterday morning when we woke up, so I got home about 5:30 yesterday and after a quick taco dinner we jumped in the car and drove to the dam.

Since I wasn't so rushed this time, I planned ahead a little and we parked on the west end of the dam at the greenway trail-head this time. That means the sun was setting behind us as we faced the water, which removed the squinting that made the last trip a bit annoying. It also made it a lot cooler since the embankment is steep enough that we were sitting in the shade, and the breeze off the lake and the water coming down the spillways made it probably 10 degrees cooler down there.

As we walked across the field between the parking lot and the river, I had my fishing pole and the sack with the worms in it in one hand, and Jack grabbed my other hand. I couldn't help it. I started whistling the theme from Andy Griffith. Jack even threw a rock in the water when we got down to it.

So we picked out a big rock right on the edge of the water and put a worm on the hook. Jack told me that he likes worms now, but he still doesn't want to touch one. After a few casts, I found a spot where they were hitting the bait pretty good, so we proceeded to feed several worms to them before we got one to finally stay on the hook.

I let Jack reel the first fish in, but the reel was just clicking the whole time, so I took over and managed to bring it in. It was a really big bream, longer than my hand and thicker than my hand too. My cheap Walmart pole was bent nearly double trying to pull it out of the water. I was going to throw it back, but a guy walking by with a bucket asked me if he could have it so I let him take it.

After that we quickly caught a much smaller bream. As I threw him back in the water, the hook with a little bit of worm left on it dipped down into the water in front of us. When I pulled it out, there was a really tiny bream attached to it. I guess it was hiding beneath the rock we were sitting on and made it's move when it saw the worm. It was about 2.5 inches long at the most. At that point Jack decided that he like the little fish better than the big fish. I have to admit that the first bream was a little scary looking.

As the sun started setting, the fish stopped biting. We sat there on the rock for a while though, watching the bobber drift along in the current. There was no traffic sounds, no cell phones ringing, and even the planes flying overhead were way off to the north so we couldn't hear them. The only sound was the water coming down from the spillways and a dog barking on the other side of the river while it was playing with another child. Jack started getting tired and put his head down on my lap and we sat there just watching the river flow by.

Fishing : Day 2

We spent another afternoon at the Percy Priest dam fishing today after we went and bought a $12.00 rig at Walmart. I also bought a container of nightcrawlers after doing some research on the web about what to fish with on the Stones River.

They were definitely striking it a lot more today. I found a nice little spot where every time I let the bait drift through they'd start hitting it. They stole the worm about 10 times in a row before we finally got one on the hook.



Yep, we got our first fish! It was a bream that was a little smaller than my hand. We let it go and a few minutes later I got a small bass that had blue stripes between the gills and the eyes. A few minutes after that I caught a slightly larger bass that had more of a yellow color to him.

We moved on up closer to the dam and didn't catch anything after that, but it was a good day even thought it was really, really hot. Next time we're taking a cooler and more water.

Fishing Misadventures

I got a wild hair to take Jack fishing yesterday. The only problem was that I had absolutely no fishing gear anymore. I got home from work at about 5:15 and got Jack loaded up and out the door about 5:30. First we headed over to Poppy's house since he had told us over the weekend he might have a fishing rod and reel down in his basement. He was home and after digging around in a corner, he pulled out two old looking rods and handed them to us.

One was the kind with the thumb button that I'm more used to, and the other was the kind where the metal bar is pushed over to reel the line in. Neither was in very good shape, so I went with the one that was more familiar to me. So now I had a rod and reel, but it didn't have a hook or weights or anything on it.

So our next stop was the small convenience store next to the house that recently opened. I knew they had live bait, so I was hoping they might have a few hooks and basic gear. Unfortunately, they only had bait, so we left there headed to the place that is on my short list of most hated places on the planet. Yes. We went to Walmart.

For some reason the lot was fairly empty, and we we got inside I discovered why. They're remodeling the Hermitage Walmart, so a lot of the stuff inside is missing. We headed back to the fishing area and bought a small quantity of #4 hooks and a couple of bright orange bobbers, which Jack immediately became enamored of. Then I started looking around for some bait.

I had my mind set on getting some crickets. I'm not sure why or even how well they'd work on the Stones River, which is where we were planning to go. As I wandered around a bit, I finally saw an employee standing there with his hands on his hips.

"Do you guys sell crickets," I asked?

"Nope. We sure don't."

"Really? I could have sworn I've seen crickets in here before. Do you know where I can get any around here?"

"Nope. I have no clue."

At this point he walks off and disappears down an aisle. I walk around a corner and there's the Walmart cricket cage, tucked off to one side of the sporting goods counter. I looked around angrily for a minute, but of course I saw no sign of the oh so helpful Wally World Idget. The cage was empty anyway.

We paid for the hooks and bobbers and drove back to the house. I remembered I didn't have a license yet. I bought a Davidson County license online for 8 bucks and printed it out and put it in my wallet. Now we just needed bait. By this point it was a little after 7, so we were running out of daylight.

We drove back to the Circle B by the house and checked out their live bait situation. I told Jack we needed worms so he assumed I meant gummy worms and immediately ran over to that section to check them out and make a selection. The store had a few containers of nightcrawlers for about $2.50, and a smaller container of what looked like grubs for about a buck twenty-nine. I went with the cheaper option, grabbed a Diet Coke, and finally headed for the dam.

We got to the parking lot at the foot of the dam about 7:30. Jack calls it "The Waterfalls" because he thinks "dam" is a bad word and shouldn't say it. All four flood gates were open yesterday, so it did look like waterfalls. We headed down to the water and I put a hook on the line with the knot that I remembered my Uncle Sammy teaching me about 35 years ago. Then I put a bobber on and pulled out the bait.

Honestly, I wasn't really sure what these things were at the time. I thought they were grubs or something but they looked and felt more like centipedes since they had lots of legs. I finally found them online and they were mealworms, which are beetle larvae. I put one on a hook and went to cast it.

That's when I found out how bad of shape this old rod and reel were. The line wouldn't come out smooth so it was almost hopeless to try to cast it. It also only had about 25 feet of line left in it. So I ended up using it basically like an old cane pole and throwing it out as far as I could. Apparently the spot we chose was in an eddy, since the bait would drift upstream and back to the shore in about two minutes each time.

At this point though, I was just glad to actually be fishing. I let Jack hold it most of the time, but he has a hard time standing still so the bobber would wind up heading back towards us even faster. He also discovered that it's much more fun to throw rocks in the water than to stand there watching a bobber. Still, he had fun and wants to do it again.

No one seemed to be catching many fish that I could see. Two Mexican guys were sitting about 35 feet down the bank from us, and one of them was fishing with just a hook on a line wrapped around a plastic bottle. He pulled in a bass that was longer than my hand at least. It was a pretty fish. A few minutes later he pulled in a very small bream.

After about a half hour of watching the bobber drift back and forth, we loaded back up in the car and headed home just as it was getting dark. Our next step is to get on of the 12 dollar rod and reels from Wally World so we can actually cast out into the channel a bit. I put the remaining mealworms next to the turtle at home and when Marissa came home I said "Don't look at it!" It was too late though, she already had.

Gym Weirdness

I'm at the gym at lunch earlier this week, and it's pretty quiet in the workout area. I also forgot to bring my iPod so I'm stuck with the overhead music. As I climb into the first machine it's playing "Let My Love Open The Door" by Pete Townshend. I've always enjoyed the song, so this isn't too bad.

As I switch machines, the next song is "Let's Get Physical" by Olivia Newton John. I never really liked this song, but it's obvious the station they're playing today is doing an early 80's set. At this point one of the Y employees walks by shaking her head and says "they're playing some really weird music today."

Now this struck me as odd, since she looked to be about my age or maybe slightly older. It's harder for me to tell which women are my age now, since as an old boss once told me "once you get past 40, men start looking more and more like Sean Connery. Unfortunately, so do the women."

She walks by again and actually looks at me and says "isn't this weird music?" I finished my set and replied "well, not really. It's just 80's stuff."

"Is it really? Well, 80's music was never really very good in the first place I guess." Then she finally walked away.

About a minute later, "Mony, Mony" by Billy Idol comes on. Ok, so it's an 80's set, not just an early 80's set. Here comes the lady walking by me again, carrying a load of machine wipe-down towels.

"Well, finally they're back to playing more 50's music," she said with a huge smile.

At this point, I finally became a bit exasperated with her.

"50's? It's Billy Idol!"

"Really? Huh." At this point she finally walks off for good.

* Yes, I know "Mony Mony" was originally released in 1968 by The Shondells, but that's a long way from being the 50's.