Simple Supper from a Simple Man

How a Fading Angler and computer nerd cooks supper:

Obtain wild sockeye salmon filets from Costco
Crack a beer
Beg Mrs. FA to slice filets into manageable chunks
Season with kosher salt, lemon pepper, and a little dill
Light grill
Place fish on grill-safe cooking sheet

Set iPhone timer for 10 minutes
Blog

Check for "doneness" when iPhone beeps

Serve.  White rice is a simple, tasty companion.
Enjoy compliments

Nicely cooked (but slightly bland) wild salmon.

Present State of Grace

I'll open with this: the band "Flogging Molly" definitely ain't for everyone.  Irish punk is probably a long-tail, deviant fanbase.  At least I'd like to think so.  All that aside, they have produced some acoustic masterpieces.  The feature ditty here has lots of that "deeper meaning" stuff I'm not equipped to decode.  Yet, there's just enough on the surface to set a few neurons firing and evoke a mild-but-deep reaction:  this is goodness, beauty, humor, and irreverence.

The bridge invokes a bit of the spirit of St. Norman:

'Cause only life, yeah only life has loneliness to sell
So celebrate, yeah live your life, live it and raise hell
The true prophet never spoke
He just smiled and saw the joke
And this present state of grace we creatures need

If you'd like some insight into how I could possibly find the Maclean boys in that quote, I invite you to review this piece I wrote earlier this year.  And if you can bear one more acoustic wonder with a brief sprinkling of twangy, bluesy electric guitar, the following never fails to make me smile:

Hoping you find your state of grace, and wishing that your tomorrow is better than today.

--The Fading Angler

Before Breakfast

Source: gadgetreview.com

Wha...?  Oh.  Again?

Looks like I made it through another night.  Fingers fumble with the buzzing iPhone, trying to restore silence.  Establish context through mental cobwebs: daylight, 5:30 A.M., I'm in the forward bed of the camper Mobile Hotel®.  Conclusion: I made plans to fish this morning.  Re-evaluating the plan: struggling to be awake, sore, stiff.

I don't wanna get up.

Much easier to just drop the eyelids and put the mind back in neutral.

Don't be an idiot.  Coffee fixes many morning ills. Sit up and scoot!  Trout don't just catch themselves.

Yes, Master.  As you wish.  You're a real &$$#@!%, you know?

I slide my feet over the side of the bed and prop my self up.  Now comes the fun part.  It's a smaller fifth-wheel RV, so there isn't room to stand beside the bed.  I must scoot myself to the foot of the bed in order to stand and wobble for balance.  It's a three-foot chasm of struggle.  Parkinson's Disease somehow robs me of both strength and multi-limb coordination in the wee hours of daylight.  I push, lift, scoot, twist, push.  How the hell did I gain 40 pounds overnight?  Never mind.  Your feet are on the floor and you didn't fall down.  Congrats.  Where are my meds?

1040 Ways to Procrastinate Your Tax Returns

Nobody knows...

Yep, I'm rattling my little tin cup along the bars of my cell.  I'm officially in lockdown.  The sheriff (aka the CFO, domestic Goddess, The Boss, my wife) has decreed "No Fishing Until All the Taxes are Filed." 

(editorial note: actually, I created the 'lockdown' idea to attempt to motivate myself this year.  It hasn't worked, but the authorities decided to enforce it as law anyway.)

So here I am in my cell.  It's like a prison.  A horrible place, painted all green on the inside.  But instead of using a hacksaw blade to escape, my implements consist of receipts, spreadsheets, and laptop.  Being a small business owner and employer, the paperwork is at least triple what it was before I allegedly became my own boss.

The only way out of this dank, depressed funk is tedious work, probably about 12 more hours of it after the 4 I did today.  THEN...  well, then I can dust off a couple of rods, wait for the wind to calm a bit, then see if any lawn trout have migrated back north yet.  Just to get back into the swing of things before I hit the water out west in a couple of weeks.

If you do the things you have to do when you have to do them, then someday you can do the things you want to do when you want to do them.
Psuedo-encouraging words I once read somewhere

I must escape and find that stash of 5-weights.  Soon.