Birthday, Bike Ride, Trout Fishin'

So I just turned 40. Happy Birthday to me. Whoopdeedoo! Anyway....

I had a couple days off work (Mon/Tues), so I had some things planned. Actually, I had things planned all weekend long AND on my b-day. Here's how it all went down:

Friday at work.....had to sneak out to a Doctor's appointment. I HATE going to the Doctor's, for the simple fact this guy will say things, and I'll end up walking out feeling like I'm going to die in 6 months (God forbid). Simple things like, "you're almost 40, you are NOT healthy!" I'm not? I feel fine! "Listen, you need to make sure you do activities that lower your stress level. Go fishing. Ride your motorcycle. But make sure you get exercise. Don't eat this. Eat that. Don't drink this. Drink that. I want you to now start aerobic exercise too." WHEN AM I GOING TO DO ALL THIS STUFF AND WORK, AND RAISE SIMON, AND SLEEP? "You're overweight!" By 15 pounds. 15 pounds. "And you're ugly" is what I FELT like saying to him. But I didn't.
So I had this thing on my arm that looked like a burn, and I asked him what it was, he referred me to a Dermatologist. That's later in this story.
Needless to say, in 3 weeks, I have to have TONS of blood work done, a urinalysis, and I have to monitor my blood pressure daily....THEN go back to him so he can tell me how much I suck at taking care of myself. All this PLUS managing stress, eating right, exercise, aerobic crap, raise my son, sleep, work, pay bills etc. I'm stressed just TRYING to be healthy.

Saturday morning, I'm not on the air 6-10, but 10-2. No big deal. Afterwards, some friends came over the house to visit (see the baby), eat some MEAT on the grill and hang out. Around 7:30PM I headed up to Lake Winola to try a new kind of fishing. Hey, I HAVE to go fishing to lower my stress, remember? :)
It was a VERY interesting fishing trip because we targeted trout. This is a fish I don't really know about, so it was all new to me.....and I really enjoyed it! I got home around 2:30AM, cleaned the fish I brought home (yea, we caught trout....BIG rainbow trout), and went to bed.

Sunday was nice. I found a recipe online on how to cook trout, made it up, stuck the prepared fish back in the fridge and Mindy and I (and Simon) went grocery shopping. WHY DO I ALWAYS DO THIS TO MYSELF? Why do I insist on going grocery shopping on a Sunday? EVERYONE goes grocery shopping on Sunday, so it's pure mayhem at the store. I'm a moron!!
When we got home, I cooked up the trout and they were delicious!!!!! If you want the recipe, just drop me a line and I'll "hook" you up with it. Ha (that was corny).

Now on Monday, I have the day off. Mindy, Simon and I went to look at a daycare center for when Mindy goes back to work. These things are SOOOOOOOOOO expensive. It's a 2nd mortgage payment. I'm NOT exaggerating either. We stopped by the radio station to introduce everyone to Simon, then went home. We did some stuff around the house and more or less just chilled on Monday. Tuesday (my birthday), I had a motorcycle ride planned with my friend Darren. Our plan was to go Bushkill Falls, via the Delaware Water Gap. But FIRST, I have to go to Scranton to see the Dermatologist regarding those things on my arm/wrist. Darren was nice enough to suggest we ride the bikes up there, then just take off from there since my appointment was first thing in the morning. So we get up there (surprisingly finding a parking spot in downtown Scranton at 9:15am), I fill out all the necessary paperwork, and in the back I go. Quick side-note...I LOVE being the first appointment of the day. I walked in there at 9:20, and I was back on my bike by 9:45. That rocks.
In a nutshell, the thing on my arm (2 of them actually) are some pre-cancerous skin thing from too much sun exposure growing up, nothing to be alarmed about BUT make sure I use sun-block from here on out because they might become cancerous etc etc etc. So let's see......Eat better, drink more water, wear sunscreen, watch what you eat because of the high blood pressure and stomach issues, exercise, do aerobic exercise, go fishing/bike riding to lower stress, work more to make more money to pay the hospital bills (and MY Dr bills), sleep better, monitor blood pressure, lose weight.......AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Turning 40 sucks!!!!
Back to the Dermatologist appointment....he burned (froze) those things off with liquid nitrogen. It did NOT feel nice.
----------------WARNING: GROSS PICTURE TO FOLLOW---------------------


That's them burned. They blistered up, and I'm still waiting for them to heal. Away we go on our ride.....


First stop....Lake Wallenpaupack. Don't forget now, we don't ride on highways(on purpose). All back roads.
It was nice. I've been there a million times, but never on a motorcycle. Route 590 through Hamlin was a joy of a ride! Now I'll follow Darren until we get to Bushkill Falls. A few hours later, we did.
There are no pictures of the falls, because they were charging you TEN BUCKS to walk on the trails. Boy oh boy, do we take-for-granted the hiking trails we have around here that are FREE!!!! TEN BUCKS!!! Wow. We hung out here for awhile and decided to take Route 209S (business road) to 115N, then Bald Mountain road back home. 209S turned into Route 80 HIGHWAY!!!!!! We did NOT know this. And to add insult to injury.....it was a highway with MILLED PAVEMENT! Motorcycles do NOT ride well on milled pavement. God was with us that moment, because we only stayed on there for about 4 miles. We finally got off that road, back on 209S, ended up in Brodheadsville, and finally got on 115.
All-in-all, it was a wonderful day (minus the scary, messed up pavement, on the highway). About 200 total miles were put on my bike, and Darren's company was appreciated, as usual!

Wednesday, back to work, more dental work (fillings, scraping, cuttings..ugh) and back to the grind.

So it's now Friday, I'm broadcasting live from Bo Brother's at PNC Field this afternoon for Happy Hour, then back on the air tomorrow AM 6-10. What a wild few days. I can't wait to see what life brings me NEXT week with another night fishing trip and Tuesday visit to Knobel's!!!!

Have a GREAT weekend (try at least lol), find something to be grateful for, and maybe I'll see you this afternoon at Bo Brother's.

Friday the 13th Part Deux

Last Friday the 13th, (Feb of `09 I think), I did a "random thoughts" post. So here are 13 MORE random thoughts for THIS Friday the 13th.

1. I still hate American Idol. (And all reality shows)

2. *sarcasm here...I can't wait to hear what my Doctor will yell at me about this afternoon.

3. I hope my friend Jeanne is OK. She has bone/breast cancer and is in Philadelphia for treatment. They gave her 4-6 years to live, I hope she proves them wrong and lives longer.

4. I think my son's first word will be "Up". Or "Light". I hope it's NOT "Mom", or "Dad". That's too cliche.

5. Why is coming up with "random" thoughts so difficult?

6. I need to dust my work desk.

7. I'm off work Monday and Tuesday. I hope those 2 days go by nice and slow.

8. My other friend Jesse just lost his job yesterday. I KNOW it will all work out the way it's supposed to for him. I just pray he gets through this rough patch easily.

9. I have heartburn.......again.

10. I REALLY HATE the word "revision".

11. It's hard to believe I'll be 40 years old soon. I only feel 39. :)

12. Maybe this weekend, we'll watch the remake of Friday the 13th.....finally.

13. I got a Powerball ticket this morning. I'm backwards, so maybe with it being Friday the 13th, I'll have some luck.

Enjoy your weekend. Enjoy Friday the 13th. Have some gratitude. Pray for Jeanne for her please.

Love You Too

Love you too Kiddo!!!!!

Weekend was Weird

What an ODD weekend. Some good odd, but most BAD odd. It was like the weird fairies got together and said, "hey, this Jenkins fella hasn't had anything odd happen to him in awhile, let's overload his weekend."

It started Friday evening. I wasn't home. I kind of wished I was to see this, but then again, maybe not. A bear went through our yard. I don't live in the woods. I live in a residential neighborhood, and a black bear decided to take a detour through our yard. No one in my house saw it either. But ALL THE NEIGHBORS DID!!!!

Saturday morning, up at 4AM. This time, not to work on Magic 93, but to go fishing. My friend and his wife from out of town came up to spend the weekend (and to meet Simon), so Chris and I went fishing Saturday morning. As we got to the campsite where the boat is, we noticed that the rain/wind storms we've had knocked down 3 trees.......RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE ENTRANCE TO THE CAMPSITE. Not too bad to move them with some muscle if they weren't covered in poison ivy! Needless to say, we didn't attempt it. So, having a 4x4 pickup, I just drove through the woods into the campsite.

We got to the lake right as the sun was coming up, and it was beautiful.
The water temp was obviously MUCH warmer than the air temp, so the fog was THICK. We dropped the boat in the water and Chris started to rig up his fishin' rod.
Once on the lake, we noticed how bad the weeds had grown. They were thicker than the fog. It was NOT easy fishing on this lake with all those weeds. Even using top-water lures, we caught more weeds than anything else. It was still beautiful though, and just being out there was nice......until.....

those thick weeds ended up burning up our trolling motor's high speeds. No high forward, no high reverse. So we went everywhere.....VERY SLOWLY. Slow enough I could click this picture without worrying about going in a different direction.
So after about 6 hours of slowly fishing, we only caught 3 fish. I got 2, and Chris got 1. Mind you, this lake is infamous for wearing out your arm from reeling the fish in. But I think, because it was too hot for the past umpteen weeks, the fish were NOT interested.

So off we go home. Tired, worn out from casting, not catching, and also from being up that early. I realized I HAD to cut my grass, and with a friend there, we could have it done in less than an hour. That is, if the lawn tractor cooperated. This tractor doesn't owe me anything. It's been around I think longer than me, and it's served its purpose wonderfully. It's old. It's rusty. The blades aren't even that sharp. But it still cuts grass, when it wants to. And Saturday, it really did not want to. The shoot that throws the grass is so rusty, that I hit a bump in the grass and it bent in, causing the blades to drive themselves into it, and it started smoking. I had to get a pair of pliers and bend a chunk of the shoot outwards so the blades would spin. Now the grass is thrown out, and UP to the right. Then all of a sudden, as I'm cutting the front part of the house, some BIG metal piece just falls off. I don't know where it goes, I don't know what it does, but it just fell off. The tractor kept cutting and moving, so I did as well! Grass is all cut, now for some minor maintenance on my motorcycle.

I just got myself a sissy bar for it so I wanted to put that on. That was the easy part. And the bike looks pretty cool too.
But recently, there has been terrible rattling going on at high speeds. I thought it was the headlight. So we put some foam rubber around the base. That wasn't it. Then I realized it was the windshield. So we took that apart, layered some foam rubber around the clamps, and FOUGHT TOOTH AND NAIL to put it back together, only to realize that's not it either. We still can't figure out where it's coming from. Oh well. I'll live with it.

We all decided we wanted to go for dinner Saturday night, and my sister-in-law agreed to come over and babysit while we went out. We ended up going up to Scranton. When we got to the restaurant, I had to use the little Disc Jockey's room. I went in, and as I was doing my thing, I ended up passing a kidney stone. AND NOT A LITTLE ONE. This thing was at least 3/4 of inch big. It scared the pants off me. Now I'm worried, because it's been YEARS since I've had any issues in the kidney department. Doctor's appointment is scheduled for 2 weeks anyway. Ugh.

To add insult to injury (notice I didn't tell you the name of the restaurant?), the food, the service and the check was AWFUL!!!!!! It was the absolute WORST dining experience of my life. Really. It was THAT bad. The waiter couldn't speak English that well (and it's an American restaurant), so it was difficult to understand him, plus he said, "uh-kews me?" after everything we said. I guess he couldn't understand us either. The food was terrible. The worst!! I would rather get a hunger headache than eat there again. I really wish I could tell you the name of it. But........well, you know. I can't due to possible advertising. But oh my gosh......my steak was like shoe leather. Mindy's lobster was under a heat lamp for God knows how long, and the seafood crepes Kim had, the consistency was like lumpy mashed potatoes wrapped in a thin piece of pasta. Chris got some seafood soup, and THEY LEFT THE LOBSTER TAIL SHELLS IN IT! When the waiter brought the food, he brought one plate at a time from the kitchen, and when he put Chris's broccoli down, he practically threw it at him. It almost landed in his lap. Unreal. I will NEVER eat there ever again. Which is sad, because it used to be one of the finest dining establishments in Scranton. As a matter of fact, Mindy and my first date was there. Oh well.

Remember how I said I was up at 4AM? We're now home after a terrible dinner, I'm still aching from the stone, and over tired. I went up to bed around 11:30PM....and could not fall asleep. I was up until around 2AM. I just couldn't sleep. Luckily I did fall asleep. And Sunday was a MUCH better day. Nothing weird happened Sunday. Breakfast, Kim and Chris left, lunch, I went for a small bike ride, dinner (PERFECT steak on the grill btw), and Mindy and I went to bed at a reasonable time.....and slept. And so did Simon. Thank you Simon!!!!

All-in-all, nothing HUGE bad happened, but this is a weekend I don't think I'll forget too quickly. I just keep trying to remember the views on the lake.
Good friends, good fishing (not catching, but fishing), good bike ride, good weather, and Simon sleeping!
Thanks for reading. Thanks for listening to Magic 93. Be grateful for something today and you'll be OK!!!