the long weekend

July 4th, Independence Day, was spent eating, napping, swimming, thinking, and watching fireworks. For some of my relatives, the day was spent checking out the shipment of air guns that arrived the evening before and practicing target shooting. Despite the heat, I stayed cool with the air conditioning indoors, and watched (caught up with) some Asian dramas. I am really generally wary of getting addicted to the longer Korean dramas, but now and then I like to watch the more manageable and contained Japanese dramas, like Galileo 2. Fukuyama Masaharu is like, the dream man who can take on any role with an unexpected coolness and ease. It sure doesn't hurt that I like his voice also. Really, though, I've been able to "crack" the cases of Galileo 2 halfway through the episode or sooner for more than half the episodes, and I have to say, Episode 9 was quite annoying with the egotistic antagonist whose method of murder, I think, really required no crazy equations written in lipstick on a mirror to prove.

Friday I drove around town regarding a summer course for my brother's school credits, and then it was fixing lunch and dinner while working on patent writing. I got done with the first draft around 9pm at night, and then it was time to prepare for the family fishing trip Saturday. I took a shower, started writing some fiction while waiting for my hair to dry, and probably fell asleep by midnight.

...To be woken up at around 3:30am. I was the designated driver, driving alone since no one else can as of yet drive my stick-shift Corolla. We took the 5 to 46 to 101 to 1, and while driving through the twisting and totally unsafe Old Creek Road near Cambria, we saw two unhorned deer cross the road. One of my family (I won't say who) wanted me to run into the does(?), so we would have some roadkill venison, but they were too cute so I didn't listen. Just before 7am we arrived at Virg's Landing where they sold the tickets for the fishing trips.

I couldn't believe it, but I had clearly called a month earlier for a reservation, and that morning they were booked up but lost my reservation. I guess I got quite upset at the idea of driving for so long to the sea only to be told we weren't going to sea. Anyway, Bob the owner of the shop said he'd try to get us on a boat that day. At first they weren't sure if the 8am-2pm trip would be full (some people just fail to turn up sometimes), so they had us wait until 8am before they had the skipper (who was totally hot) take us down to the boat. We were charged for the tickets but the tackle and rod rentals were for free.

None of us anticipated how windy it would be. The waves were pretty high. After an hour, I began to get dizzy, and I finally threw up at the two-and-a-half hour mark, so there went the California rolls that I had for breakfast! I felt better after heaving into the trash can, but before the trip would be done I would be hunched over that trash can two more times.

It was quite fun, being out on the open sea, fishing for some rock cod. I saw no less than three otters, utterly *adorable* creatures, but they were so camera-shy! In the end I gave up taking pictures and gave my phone to my brother. He spent quite a bit of the time with my mom inside the galley, trying to fight the seasickness. We would've had even more fun had it not been for that. In the end, I caught six fish.

Morro Rock, one of my favorite locations to watch a sunset. California sunsets are the best, even if I didn't stay until sunset this time!

Pulling away from shore, my brother said he felt like the protagonist setting out on  "The Hunt for Red October,", haha.

From Morro Bay, the captain took us south, and sometimes the fish were this close to shore.

SIX FISH FROM A SIX CHICK, only if I still were a SIX chick; in total they weighed almost 10 pounds. The red rock cod in the center was my first catch and weighed 4 pounds and cut my hands when I tried to bag it.

In my opinion, it was an untypically bad weather day for the Central coast, which is usually beautiful, with the sun not coming out until 2pm. Later on Saturday I drove my mom to work and drove everybody else home. All right, I have a garden and rabbit post to come, but I may just decide to do that in partial Chinese if I can't find the English names for the plants. Then I'll get to post fiction!