groovy weather

here's what it looks like outside, folks... that's more like the summer weather we r talking about... hee hee.. can;t wait to fish...

What a week!

aiyoh, what a hectic few days.

weather has been real crummy, with the exception of today (so maybe can sneak in some fishing R&R). worked out with nat in her spanking new gym on thursday and found muscles I never knew I had. although it was only for an hour, I could really feel the difference that evening and the next day. legs were like jelly and after I got home, just peng san already...

to make things worse, rochester was having bad thunderstorms. this always happens with the turn of seasons now that we r heading from summer to fall... oh warm days... fleeting fast...

and it just rained and rained buckets that thurday night. Fly was a real manja shit who is afraid of loud thunderclaps, so she sneaked into the house and crawled up on the staircase. hoping that we would just forgive her is we looked into those watery brown eyes.

anyways, it also started to hail near midnight, and nickel sized icechips were raining onto the truck. vince got real worried about the truck so both of us, in our t-shirts and shorts, got in the freezing rain and tried to cover the front of the truck with surgical drapes.... sheesh! held it down with heavy carpet, flapping in the wind all over the bladdy place... what a mess, we all got drenched.

next day, went to TK's 30th bash

we have been working on our comps since then..... sad sad sad... but work needs to be done... sigh!

here's vince...
















ok, gotta make lunch. ... hope to hit the water this evening...

CONGRATS NAT n GENE

Have to say CONGRATS to Gene n Nat on their new purchase.... hee hee... U guys finally did it!!!!!!!!!!Hopefully we get to see it tomorrow..... will post picts then...won't spoil the surprise now...

ok, i am still figuring out how to upload my pict onto the profile page, so am taking a shortcut here... excuse this blog hor...

carp fishing with tom bernhardt and brianna

we went carp fishing with Tom and his equally fish crazed daughter Brianna. the whopper fish we pulled up weighted about 23 pounds each plus minus. we hauled up about 30 over fish that day... in just one afternoon.!!! wahhhhhhhhhh.....

FYI: carp are very hard fish to catch, they are spooked easily... so we did pretty good!

early this sping, we had the opportunity to go to a gun range activity organised by one of the fishing forums. we got to shoot semi auto and auto guns. great fun! i never shot a gun before in my life, prob never ever will, so that was just damm shiok!

here are some picts. the extra large gun I was carrying is a BIG (literally) bonus. some instructor brough that gun in that evening. he was going to use it to shoot the squirrels in his backyard! that is one massive shit sniper rifle. vince is holding up the shell. that's USD$2 to fire just 1 shot!! that crazy instructor must have hell lot of pesky squirrels!

boating in st croix river, taylor falls, wisconsin

ok, the picts aren;t great but we had a blast. Vince caught a sturgeon, albeit a small one, but still, that was a tough fish to catch and I think we were just lucky. we caught it on a worm with a sinker and circle hook. gene took the picts but we won';t get the picts till tuesday when he goes post call, so here are just some of gene and nat on the boat.

sunny day, warm weather, no bugs, nat took a swim, we beached on a sandy bank and played with Fly.... great day. but very tired. will blog more another day. i end with one of the doggie in the car, trying to look cute and asking for pats. she succeeded...

the border collie's story

oh, better give the dog some web exposure...

here's the sob story on :

Fly, female border collie, adopted from Safe Sanctuary near Faribault, MN. thet think she was about 1 year or less when they picked her up from a farm in wisconsin. she got kicked around pretty bad and got thrown against walls by a nasty farmer (hope he kanna langa by car one of these days). so she was skin and bones when I saw here. she was'nt my fist choice incidentally. I was looking for a weimeraner, who was adopted before I got there. but those eyes really got to me, and after considering for a few weeks, I took her home.

vince, then bf/fiance wasn't too keen as he did not have dogs in his life. but Fly survived the 5 day trial at home and vince is gradually warming up to her. though he does not admit it, think he's pretty fond of the dog. so now, vince has 2 "biiiiiaaaatttches" to contend with at home!

she's done very well 1 1/2 years down the road, made lotsa friends, took up frisbee and succeed on drivin vince mad by dropping her hair all over the place and chasing the lure when we cast it during fishing. but really, that's not her fault. she's goofy and not the brightest BC around, but still a poofball of love.

Going boating today......

well, after having read Nat's blog (she's a jounalist who accompanied her husband on his anesthesia fellowship here in Rochester), am very impressed.

so thought I would give it a go. not that life in rochester, mn is the most exciting, but we do stuff that we normally can;t do back in Spore... like skiing, fishing... though most of the time this year, we are super busy with research, manuscript writing and our masters program lectures n exams.

we are taking a break tomorrow. vince is itching to take the boat out on some decent strip of water. he was deprived for a couple of weeks cuz we were busy preparing for our final masters exams. it was over on Tuesday, so we can breathe a little.... and get stressed with other things now!

so we r heading maybe to Lower Mississippi or St Croix river with Gene and Nat.. am looking forward to it. was feeling quite bummed after so many weeks of studying. I still have manuscripts pending and data to collect... all must be done within the month.. bummer.. still, need a break....... taking grocery shopping trips are definitely not destressing me enuff, its bordering on sad.....

here's a pict of us in fall about 2 years ago on a rented boat in the "sippi". I bagged a crappie. in singapore terms, its kinda like a "chong yu or pomfret" but they call it pan fish here. supposed to taste fresh, but we never eat them. as we r now too lay to fillet fish. and even after filletting these buggers, we can fillets no bigger than my palm. too much work lah. vince in the first pict got a bass. that fish gave him bragging rights for months to come. think its still the biggest bass we ever caught. more than 2 pounds, and he picked it up with just a worm on a bobber.

will post picts of how we do tomorrow. I don';t know if we will fish much, prob drink lotsa beer, get hassled by fly and her frisbee (that's the pooch) and have lotsa laughs with "gnat".