So, I guess you lived? Pneumonia in a person of your advanced age can be life-threatening. You made it sound like you had double pneumonia, though you never actually said so. So how did Lori feel with another child in the house to take care of? I wanted to be babied when I was sick, too, but Carrie told me that I would have to hire a nurse-maid for that. I am sure it was her unfortunate choice of words that caused me to think of a large-breasted Bavarian bombshell in a very short, very tight, white nurses uniform, so it was all Carrie's fault. Of course she said that if I was well enough to have been day dreaming about sex, then I must have been well enough to mow the lawn.
Of course the mower was out of gas, and it needed a tune up, so that meant that I had to go to town. I don't like hauling gas cans inside a car, so I had to take the pickup to the gas station. When I got to the gas station, the tanker-truck that delivers fuel to the station was pumping gas into the underground tanks, so I had to go to another station that was farther away. I decided that I would try to find a new spark plug for the lawn mower while I was at it, but that meant that I had to go all the way to Durant. I needed a new air filter anyway, and I reasoned that it would save me another trip later on, so I headed for Durant.
On the way there, being a safe driver, I checked my rear-view mirror often. Being an observant sort of fellow, I couldn't help but notice that my fishing tackle box was still in the bed of the pickup. I remember that I needed to replace the fishing line on my reel, and I needed some bullet weights and some more plastic worms, so I figured that I could kill two birds with one stone.
Predictably, I couldn't find the spark plug I needed in the lawn and garden center, so I headed over to the automotive department to see what I could find there. Of course there wasn't one there, either, but since it was next to the sporting goods department, it wasn't far out of the way. I bought two spools of fishing line, some new weights, three of bags of plastic worms, and a couple of lures that I had been wanting to try out. On that same aisle, there was a new reel that I had been drooling over for about a month, and when I looked up, I saw the exact same reel mounted on a new 6'6", medium-action, graphite rod, and it was the same price as the reel was by itself. I couldn't pass up a deal like this. The only thing I could find wrong with the rod/reel combo was the fishing line that came with it was a cheap monofilament line that was only rated at 10 pounds, but since I already had two spools of braided Kevlar polymer fishing line in my hand, I figured I would just restring it later anyway.
While I was in the check-out lane (there is always a line because they never keep enough lanes open), I decided that the easiest way to restring my new reel was to attach a weight to the cheap line that was on the reel, and cast it out until I got to the end of the line. Then I could just cut it off, and tie on the new line, and wind it in until the reel was full, but that created a problem. I needed to find a place big enough to cast that far, and I didn't want to do that in the parking lot, because cars would be driving over my brand new line, so I decided to head out to a pond where I had had pretty good luck before. I still hadn't filled up the gas can, so I stopped at a gas station on that side of town. I remembered that I was out of beer at home, so I picked up a six-pack, but then I thought that might not be enough, because it was hot that day, and I might drink one or two while I was working on my new reel.
When I got to the pond, I tied a fairly heavy weight on the old line, and I cast it towards a tree on the other side of a clearing near the pond. It was pretty far away, but it wasn't far enough to take up all the line on the reel, so I made a loop in the string and tied it to a stick. I drove the stick into the ground, and walked towards the tree. That served two purposes. It allowed me to unspool more line while I went to retreive my fishing weight. By the time I made it to the tree, I had run out of line, so I cut the old line off and tied on the new line. This line was much better, and I know from experience that I can cast farther with this line that I ever could with monofilament, but since I had never used this particular weight of braided line, I was curious to see how far I really could cast with it. I thought about using the fishing weight that I had used with the old line, but I decided that, since I was at a pond that had fish in it, and I wanted to try out my new lures anyway, I could again kill two birds with one stone.
In case you haven't figured it out yet, I always try to do everything as efficiently as possible, and now I had the perfect opportunity to try out my new rod, my new reel, my new fishing line, and my new lures all at the same time. Now that's what I call efficient.
Three hours later, Carrie called my cell phone to see where I was, and she just couldn't understand why her sick husband was at a pond with a fishing rod in one hand and a beer in the other. Women! I don't think she ever accepted that it was all because she said the word "nursemaid". I did tell you that it was all her fault, didn't I?
"Whimsical, verbally assaulted, philosophical melee"? Shouldn't that have been "assaultive", since "assaulted" implies that I am the victim? I feel victimized, but that is more or less a constant state of existance since 2003.
OK, my coffee is getting cold, so I better go. More later.
