Today we took Quido to the vet because his arthritic hips have been bothering him a lot lately. We have a new vet we’ve been using who is fantastic for us and she tells us that he does have some atrophy in his hindquarters due to the fact that he is favoring his right rear leg. She gave us some pain meds for him to make him more comfortable and WOW what a difference. He still favors that leg because it is weak, but he is trotting around like a pup and I am hoping that if we take advantage of his pain meds we can get him out to exercise and hopefully help strengthen him up a bit. Right now the lazy bum is out like a light, stretched out and comfortable.

As for me; I spent 9 hours priming the entry way to get ready to paint plus another two hours sanding and taping. I am definitely hurting on Quido’s behalf! All I get is ibuprofen though…that lucky dog!

I want to take a second to plug some old friends and new in the fishing world.

First, a little background though: I am very opinionated about the level of service I receive when I open my wallet for anything. No matter if it is up the road at the Buffalo Mountain Country Store to buy a gallon of milk or if I am spending large dollars at Lowe’s, if money is going from my hand to yours I expect to get what I pay for and I expect good service to come with it.

Case in point- last year at the Greensboro Fishing Expo I visited a vendor there and spent a healthy amount of cash on equipment I needed. The vendor, who will remain nameless, also assured me that he could get me wading boots to fit my size ‘holy crap!’ feet and promised that as soon as he got back to his shop he would send me pricing, sizing and style availability. Cue crickets chirping now because it’s been over a year and I’ve heard nothing.

Now bring in Mike Smith and a casual mention to good friend of Greasy Creek Outfitters and owner of the Green Drake Fly Shop down in Greensboro, Stewart Gordon.

When Stewart heard that I needed to get some wading boots and was having a hard time finding my size, he pulled out his catalog and immediately sent me info on sizes he could get and the pricing. The bottom line was that within a week of telling Stewart what I wanted, he made a special order and shipped them out to me before I even had a chance to find out what the price was. Needless to say, I have a pair of excellent fitting boots at a great price and you can be sure that when I need to order again the Green Drake will get my business.

Now fast forward to the present. When Mike and I went to the Charlotte Fly Fishing Show last weekend, I had specific items I was searching for- namely 9 wt line in sinking and floating so that I could outfit my reel and a spare spool I was going to purchase. Now, for those of you that don’t fly fish, buying line for a fly rod is much more expensive than buying for a spinning rod. You get anywhere from 90 to 100 feet of line and you’ll pay anywhere from $30 to $80 or so for it. So, I was essentially looking at spending a healthy amount on line and another healthy amount for a spare spool for my Redington reel. On top of that, in keeping with my tendency to go for the hard to find, 9 wt line is an odd ball. You can easily find 5,6,7,8 and then 10 and 11, but not 9. Luckily, I stopped by Madison River Fly Fishing Outfitters who gave me a great deal on 9 wt floating line (yep, they had it) and suggested that I try using a sink tip system instead of rigging a spare spool with sinking line. Since the sink tip system route would save me about $80 in the end, I was all for it. The problem; they didn’t have any of them at their booth but promised me that if I wanted to try it they would mail it to me when they got back to their shop. Remembering my issue the year before, I hesitantly paid up and gave them my address. I thought that I would wait a couple of weeks and see if Rob Domico was true to his word before I started steaming but Rob didn’t let it get that far. Day before yesterday I got a nice little package with my new sink tip system in it and have added another quality, trustworthy fly shop to my list of favorites. They are both Orvis retailers, by the way.

So thank you Stewart and thank you Rob for restoring my faith.

Their web addresses (click to visit):

The Green Drake: www.thegreendrake.com
Madison River: www.carolinaflyfishing.com

Visit them and tell them Gil from Greasy Creek Outfitters recommended them!

Well the neon yellow walls and ugly wallpaper border in the laundry room are gone and replaced with a much easier on the eyes white. Things are moving right along here and we are making room by room progress. Next up: get rid of the wallpaper in the entryway and stair well.

Well, the hallway ‘circus tent’ wallpaper removal, drywall repair, priming and painting is done! I’ll post pics of before, during and after shortly. Looking much, much better though. Now for the laundry room- it’s got bright, BRIGHT yellow paint on the walls that I want to tone down with plain old white before we put the new washer and dryer in. Kristin and I are working on that today.

More to come…

Mike and I went fishing today- fly fishing on the trout stream and I needed the break.

So…we had a great day out there! It was about 30 degrees, the guides kept icing up (referring to both the guides on the rods and the guides known as us!) and we frequently had to push through skim layers of ice. I personally landed two trophy rainbow trout- a 22 inch and a 24 inch. The sad part about the 24 was that we were all spread out and there was no one to take a pic. I snapped one in the water before I landed it. Beautiful fish. Besides those two, I caught four little guys (comparatively speaking) and broke off another big one.

Here are some pics:

The 22-

The 24-