I spent the weekend hanging out in Idaho with my good friend Mikey. My wife and daughters had to return and put on a shower for a young friend who is getting married later this month. It gave me an opportunity to be supportive and an excuse to go fishing, watch the movie "My Blue Heaven" and eat a lot of grilled food. It also gave me a chance to catch up with what is happening in Mikey's life and spent a fair amount of time not thining about work. I guess that's an okay activity to indulge in on a weekend.

Saturday we left the house in mid morning and headed for Oregon and a favorite little fishing stream. Mikey insisted on driving and wouldn't take no for an answer. Of course, he also insisted on driving my truck. He said that it would give me a chance to relax. Let him do the work. How nice. Even if I ended up paying for the gas.

Our path took us by the local Home Depot. It brought back memories. That Home Depot serves grilled dogs, sausauge and bratwurst from a little stand near the entrance. When living in Boise I spent many a Saturday traveling to that store to get "supplies". I really enjoyed the Brats. At one point I got into the habit of getting one on my way in and then another on my way out. It was clear that I had a problem when I'd repeat this routine a second time on any given Saturday. I begged Mikey to stop by for a quick dog. He just kept driving.

We took three live dogs to the river. Mikey called about a month ago to tell me that he was getting a puppy. Three young German Shorthair Pointers had been left down by the Boise River in a blanket. Someone probably intended to drown them and then couldn't do the deed. Mikey's little boy is all brown and goes by the name of Hershey. He has a lot of energy and just about drove Champ crazy. It was fun.

I ended up as a doggy sitter for most of the day. At least that's how it turned out. At first I had Mikey, Jared, my son-in-law, and Bob, my boy on leave from the army, spread out and walk a ways up and down stream, leaving me to fish close to the truck with the dogs. That didn't work out too well. I had the stream all to myself. The dogs all took off to follow everyone else.

No matter how much I called them and how adamantly Mikey told them to go away, they wouldn't listen. Next, I took off up stream and the three other fishermen stayed at the truck. That did work. Champ followed me and Hershey followed Champ. In fact, Hershey was Champ's little buddy and shadow all weekend.

I sat on a rock watching the water. After a while I saw some fish begin to rise. I thought about it for a few minutes and formulated a plan of attach. I carefully approached the water, got my fly ready for a cast and....SPLASH..... Champ was in the pool, fish was long gone. That's the way my whole afternoon went. But is made a difference for everyone else. Jared and Mikey each caught a couple of fish. Bob hooked up twice but was unable to land either one. We all had fun and remembered to leave in time to return just after dark. It was almost perfect. Almost. Mikey and I both agree, there is no such thing as a good fishing dog.

I spent Sunday ridding the Taylor PC of unwanted Spyware. It was a record of more than 1600 unwanted files. Took me more than a couple of hours to get done but at least the machine was running well by the time I finished. I showed Mikey's kids how to run scans and told them to do it every week or so. I doubt the will do it.

Late Sunday afternoon I helped Mikey fix his barbeque. We did finally get those grilled dogs. Home style. It was a good weekend. I don't do this sort of thing often enough.........
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