Friday, May 15, 2009

Today, and a movie review with no spoiler!

Oh my today is a beautiful day! Think I might enjoy some if not most of it outside! Maybe I will head over to my local Home Depot and pick up two lawn chairs! We have only two and one is broken, both were uncomfortable, and it is time for new ones. The boyfriend has a hard time letting things go and I am anticipating a bit of a struggle. He will be fine with the concept of two new chairs I am sure but he will want to keep the one that isn't broken. It's worn, it's not comfy, and even though it isn't broken 'yet' it is well on it's way. Every time you sit in it it creaks louder and louder! Maybe I'll just toss it when he isn't looking...or maybe I will get lucky and it will 'mysteriously' break. I know it sounds horrible but really, this chair is well past it's prime.

Went and saw the new Star Trek movie last night. We met up with Aaron's friend Fraser (check out my blog on fishing on the weekend!) and although I like Fraser, I had wanted this to be like a date night. It's NOT a date with three people. Aaron spent like a half an hour trying to convince me to go. He even went so far as to say he'd cancel with Fraser but I was like 'No, you made plans I'm fine, you go' (cause I am stubborn like that) Finally I relented after he bribed me with a promise of 'date night' involving Angels and Demons! Needless to say I am glad that I went. Without giving anything away...the movie was awesome! Visually stunning, just the most spectacular eye candy in a very long time! The special effects were just incredible! The plot was also very good, leaving a healthy twist at the end. What was show stopping? The performances by Karl Urban (Bones McCoy) and Simon Pegg (Scotty) stole the show! This movie made me laugh, made me cry and made me want more. Go see this flick it's a fun romp and a great installment for the Star Trek series! 5 Stars!

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The Escapades of Fritz the Gnome

When I lived in Acton I had a great neighbor named Stella. Stella had a wide collection of garden gnomes that lived in her garden. I had been planning a trip to Minneapolis with a friend and at the last minute decided to play a little prank on my neighbor. I kidnapped one of her gnomes! My girlfriend and I have this thing we used to do whenever we went over the border. We would strap our teddy bears into the backseat, belted in for safety obviously! It always gets a laugh from the boarder guards to see two grown women doing this, and we always got a kick out of giving someone a laugh at our expense! Now, let me paint this picture for you.

All summer we watched Stella pitch a heated battle with grubs in her lawn. She tried everything on the market to get rid of them and nothing worked so she set too with a plastic container and a small gardening shovel and picked them out by hand. For a while she thought she was loosing the battle as the grubs kept disappearing from her container whenever she went inside...it was blue jays up on the wire.

So it is the night before my trip. I had just gotten home from work at the gas station and was hanging out with my friend Amy when this plan just hit me! I was very incognito about this heist! I belly crawled in front of their hedge, slipped my arm through and grabbed the first gnome I hit, and brought it back to Amy. Much to my dismay, Amy declared I had not grabbed a gnome as this guy had no beard! Back on my belly to put him back and grab another, and Fritz was the winner.

Now not wanting to upset my neighbor with the prospect of one of her gnomes being stolen I wrote her a note and stuck it to a stick in the spot where Fritz had formally been. It went as follows

My Dearest Stella
After a long and arduous battle against the army of grubs, and our subsequent victory I have decided to take a much needed vacation. I will return in two weeks.
Love Fritz, the Garden Gnome.

Picture this. The next day I am spending all of my time looking out the bedroom window watching Stella garden and waiting for her to notice her note where Fritz had been. Her friend popped by and noticed the note in the garden. Stella read it, passed it to her friend and then they both laughed.

So off to the boarder with my friend, Fritz the Gnome safely wrapped in a towel and belted into the back seat while sitting on a pillow. Here are a few of the pictures we took of Fritz the Gnome on vacation!

This is Fritz driving through some construction in Wisconsin!

Fritz is riding shot gun giving us directions so we don't get lost! Our route is on the map!

Fritz having a look at the scenic lookout in Michigan!

Fritz at the beach! Is it a vacation without a beach?


The payoff from this gag was huge! My sister bought Fritz a friend named Franz! We returned Fritz to his spot in the garden with his new found friend and a lovely little picture book documenting his journey! We leaned the two gnomes up against each other and surrounded them with Red Cap 'stubby' beer bottles and the album. Large laughs ensued!

We watched carefully the next day, waiting to see Stella be reunited with Fritz. When I fessed up to my 'crime' I was thrilled to hear the results! Her friend called her everyday to see if Fritz was back from his vacation! She was delighted with the photo album and the new addition to her garden! She did however lament that after his vacation Fritz had done nothing and had become lazy! The album comes out whenever she has new company come over. Stella you are awesome!

I was inspired to share this story when I read some of the adventures of Bilbo the garden Gnome! Thanks Victoria and Kim!

Fishing weekend at Fraser's cottage

Well here are some pictures from our successful fishing trip on the weekend! We caught 8 fish in total, 2 lake trout and 6 small mouth bass! All fishies were returned to water as we don't keep what we catch unless they are not going to survive...thankfully we are pro's at getting lours out of fish mouths!

This is Fraser! He is our fishing guru! His cottage is on Lake Joseph. It's a beautiful large fresh water lake with lots of things to catch including trout, pike, large and small mouth bass and apparently walleyes...who knew! What a fantastic little smally Fraser caught on Friday!

This is my honey Aaron posing with with his lake trout! It was funny because we thought he was maybe hitting the bottom of the lake bed and then he reeled in this monster! Silly fish didn't put up a fight until he saw the boat! He was very gracious when we got him in and happily posed for this picture! We caught this guy in Fraser's bay which we kind of expected! Lots of down trees in the bay near the shore and we know how much fishes like to hid in shadows!
Last but not least is ME!!! Gave the boys the gears about how I was going to catch the Loc Ness Monster with my little pink $30 fishing rod! Instead I pulled up this bad boy! He gave me a really good fight which was awesome as he is only the second fish I have ever caught! I think that is obvious by my insane smile! I named him Fred Fish, thanked him for hopping on my line and then let him go! I even got to give him a belly rub before I did! I think he liked it! Just sort of swam away like nothing major happened!
We had a really funny discussion on the boat that Friday. We were talking about fishing 'out of season' as small mouths are not in season yet. We have come to the conclusion that we can't get in trouble for catching them out of season as we threw them all back and really, we have no control over what jumps onto the hook! Fishes just see the lours and chomp...they don't know the difference and really I don't think they care....they're just thinking about dinner!

So what did we have on our rods? I was using a white jerk bait. Which turned out to be an awesome pick as one that I almost caught, jumped off my line and spit out a little bait fish it had been eating! It just so happened to be white! The second fish I caught I was using a black Chug Bug surface lour, and I caught him off the dock at around sunset. Our pictures of this guy aren't so hot as the greedy little bugger swallowed the whole lour! Took some pliers and some finagling to get that one out but we did and sent him on his way. No time for a pose with that one!

Aaron's trout he caught using a white chatter bait which I had suggested all weekend. With the weather being all wonky and fish being persnickety (oh yeah that's right persnickety...I said it!) about weather I figured something shiny and noisy would get their attention...turns out the novice was right! (patting my own back here!)

Saturday was crappy! It rained all day! And while the boys braved the weather I stayed at the cottage and kept the fire burning...literally! They had no success during the rain but afterwards we caught one while trolling with a dipsy diver. Not bad considering that this is the first fish we have caught after a big rain.

Other things we saw at the cottage? Well, Friday we went to get some groceries and on our way down the cottage road we saw a big black bear! We stopped the car and marvelled at this animal on the side of the road and then watched it head into the bush. The surprise? When she came out of the ditch and headed into the forest following her were two little cubs! The were so fluffy and cute! It was amazing to see! Have seen only one other bear at the cottage and he was just a little guy (maybe a year or two) going for a swim.

Here is the little bear we saw last year going for a swim. You can just see his head poking out of the water. I was surprised actually how fast they can swim! We moved the boat just a bit closer for a picture and as you can see we weren't that close at all, and he just like put on the turbo!

Here is the same bear getting out of the water on the island. There are cottages on this island and when he got out of the water he just ran! We saw a cottager walking out onto his dock and warned him of the bear. He ran safely back to his cottage for his bear horn and managed to give us the courtesy wave too!

Occasionally bears will break into cottages on Fraser's lake. It's kind of scary but they seem to only do it when no one is around...which is good! You can always tell when there is a bear around as the cottagers that are up get those bear horns blasting! No hiking for us for while! At least not with Momma and her Babies out there!

All together it was a fantastic weekend! The count for the summer is as follows

Fraser 1 lake trout, 3 small mouth bass
Aaron 1 lake trout, 2 small mouth bass
Nikky (me!) 2 small mouth bass.

Oh yeah boys it's on! Me and my little pink fishing rod are going to out catch you both!