Carol Northcut | Wednesday, 7 December 2022
I’d been so hypervigilant since COVID hit the world, always wearing a KN-95 mask in public, not eating out, and not attending any gatherings. Being fully vaccinated and with four boosters, I finally let my guard down and attended a Trout Unlimited meeting with some 30 unmasked people. I didn’t want to wear a mask since I’d be meeting new people and letting them know I want to offer some free women’s casting clinics. Four days after the meeting, I felt confident that I’d not gotten COVID, we had lunch with some friends in a restaurant. We also had a couple of service people out to the house, and I went to the dentist. Somewhere in there, I got COVID. So much for letting down my guard. Steve got it from me about a week afterward. Now he’s on the mend and I’m relapsing. What a waste of life.
Been [very] slowly trying to get through Borger’s book Presentation. There’s lots of good information in it, but it puts me to sleep every time. The only other better sleep aid for me is Mac Brown’s Casting Angles. LOL. (No offense Mac in the unlikely event you’re reading this.) Unbeknownst to Steve, he is giving me two books for Christmas, Gawesworth’s new page-turning suspense thriller, Single-Handed Spey Casting, second edition, and Nick Winkleman’s detective story The Language of Coaching. I find that I stay awake much longer with books about coaching and psychology like Rob Gray’s How We Learn to Move” and Daniel Coyle’s Talent Code. I’d probably enjoy reading more if I read some fiction. My father-in-law can read a book a day. Of course, it’s lightweight fiction and he can speed read whereas when I took a speed-reading class in high school, I walked away reading more slowly. LOL.
This winter has been a little harsher than I’m accustomed to with shorter days. Today’s high is 20F and it’s been snowing (see picture with our pet whitetail we’ve named “Buddy”). On average, temperatures have been 10 degrees below normal for more than a month in NW Montana, and our home in the trees gets less light overall. Our latitude is 48 degrees north, and I can’t image living in Denmark or Norway like some of our hardier SL friends. As a result of the cold and dark, I’ve been practicing more with the Echo MPR. No, it’s not the same as practicing with a fly rod (anyone who tells you otherwise is selling them). It is, however, good for practicing some smaller nuanced movements and getting the feel of the body movement, although there isn’t the same feedback as with 50’ of line.
This is the season of lights, and I really “get it” now why Christmas lights came into existence. It’s to combat the dark and gloominess. So put up your lights and in just a few very short days, it will be solstice.
-Carol