we're cursed

well, at least we thought we were until last week. we went fishing at chitina, for real this time. we got all prepared to take the charter and pay our 90 bucks each, maybe stay out all day (and all night - some people do until they get their limit). we had a nice drive down, although some of the higher elevation areas were looking even more like fall than my traitor leaves. got there tuesday night, and decided to buy ice that night. chuck has the fisherman's habit of asking everyone he sees how the fishing's going, and it was a good thing. he asked the clerk, who told us the one charter that was opened had closed up that morning due to family medical emergency. geez. that sure was a bummer. where were we going to fish now?

we'd seen people parking at this bend in the road, and stopped to talk to one of them. apparently there was a trail out to a fishing spot, called salmon point. the fee for accessing the native-owned land was $15. so we paid that and got 11 fish in 4 hours with only one net. and didn't feel cursed anymore. the fish were pretty good sized, but they were starting to turn pink. that means they've been in the fresh water too long and are starting to die, and their flesh gets mushy. i haven't tasted mushy yet, but it sure sounds yucky. so we threw back 5, but the 6 we kept looked impressive - chuck even caught a little king salmon.

they were heavy. and we've got loads frozen (in the new freezer that freezes! i'm still not quite over the pleasure of things freezing yet) so it'll be a good winter for salmon. i love that stuff. while chuck was fishing i played with the camera a bit. i had a good excuse: a really bad headache plus one of the nets we borrowed had a short handle and didn't go deep enough - although i did catch one by accident. but anyway i got this awesome sepia pic of chuck fishing. he looks so old school in his plaid and too long hair, i can almost picture him with a rustic pipe sticking out the side of his mouth like popeye. and there's a nice black and white of the opposite bank, which doesn't look all that different from the color one. alaska rivers are grey with silt.

i was quite proud of my pics.

school's back in session here, so i'm stocking up on my kid fantasy books. i've got the last 2 circle opens books, and the wishsong of shannara. in honor of the movie coming out, i re-read stardust. chuck read it too, and enjoyed it. it's fun reading the same books together. i like stardust, it's a cool fairytale. gaiman's written some very good books. then i did some marathon reading while chuck played computer games all day and got through ptolemy's gate in one day. remember my other post about the bartimeaus trilogy? they've just got something that clicks.

back when we had the stepbrats and went down to delta i blazed through the deathly hallows in 2 days. it was a good ending to the series i thought. for the first time, it occurred to me to wonder: where are harry potter's grandparents? it was thanks to neville that the question came up. neville lives with his grandmother, and she doesn't seem to be too old, so it's perfectly possible for harry's grandparents to be alive. but as far as i can remember, no extended family is ever mentioned except for the excruciable dursleys. harry's dad came from a wizarding family, surely he must have some extended family left. it's very odd, but i suppose not as tragic if harry had some relatives that were pleasant. chuck and i went to see the lastest movie installment too. since chuck hasn't read the books, it was interesting to see how easy the movies are to follow. he wanted to see all the others first, and fell asleep during the first two, but liked the third to fifth. just watching with him made me more aware of things they had to leave out that makes the story flow more smoothly.

last night i finished voyager, the time traveling to 1700s scotland novels. i like the history of them, but a definite downside/embarrassment is the flaming love scenes scattered through the book. the history bits can be very scholarly, and then all of a sudden they're ripping clothes off. at least they're married i guess. but i still skip over those bits. still i have the uneasy horror when reading in public: what if someone picks it up to see what it's about and flips open to one of those scenes? and thinks i'm reading trashy romance novels? oh, the shame. molly, when she recommended the books to me, said she "admitted to a guilty pleasure" in them, because of those passages the book could do quite well without. i know exactly what she meant. so be warned if you decide to check them out.