Ed Icionsub

Thought it would be nice to send a free email card to some of my family over the weekend. I’ve always used the web site that Hallmark cards runs. They have nice designs and the site was easy to use.

But today when I went to Hallmark.com, I found out the they are not doing free email cards anymore. They want 99 cents for each email card, or you can sign up for a membership type thing and get unlimited cards for a flat fee each year.

I’ll have to think about that one. I like sending free cards and there are other sites that do it. But I don’t blame Hallmark for wanting to make a little money from their efforts. So I’ll think about it for a bit, and maybe sign up for the membership thing.

Most nights I don’t change the cable channel off of CBS unless it is for a football or hockey game on a different channel. But friends told me about a new series on a channel called FX, so I decided to surf over and give it a look. I like the show and some of the commercial during the show were interesting as as well. Maybe I’ve been missing too much by keeping it on CBS all this time. I should probably expand my horizons a little and watch some new or different shows and some movies that I’ve not yet seen.

At night I can hear the frogs and the locusts, but I rarely see any. It has been ages since I happened across a frog or toad of any sort in my own yard. But this morning when I took out my dog and checked his water bowl, I found this little guy swimming in the dog’s bowl. I don’t know if he was trapped or just startled to have me walk up to the bowl, but he wasn’t moving. So I tipped the bowl and dumped out the water, then away he went.

When I gave Claude a call this afternoon I was surprised to have him actually answer the phone. Usually he is gone from the house all day and I just expect to leave a voicemail message. But this afternoon he answered the phone and it caught me off  guard. LOL!

So Claude was packing his gear and getting ready to head south for a long weekend of fishing on the Gulf Coast. This is the perfect time of year to head to the Florida panhandle or Alabama coastline. Most of the tourists are long gone and the off season room rates are really cheap.

He has a buddy with a nice fishing boat and they often go out into the Gulf together for a day of deep sea fishing. Claude is even thinking of buying a time share at one of those vacation condos in Destin or Ft. Walton, so he can leave some of his clothes and gear down there locked in a closet and have a place that feels more like home when he goes down for a weekend.

Found a site that I need to let my friend, Claude, know about. Claude is an avid fisherman, ever since he was hurt on the job and was told that he is permanently disabled. Thankfully he is not confined to a wheelchair and the exercise he gets from hiking back and forth from his car to the streams and rivers to fish is good for him.

There are plenty of places around here to go fishing, and Claude has been to them all. He is a strong believer in the catch and release program, so he doesn’t have a wall in his living room full of trophy fish mounted on plaques, but he does occasionally take a photo using his cell phone of his recent catch.

Claude has fished for just about everything from bass to marlin, but his favorite catch is trout. He says that fishing for trout is more challenging and therefore more rewarding. I have to agree with his logic. If it is too easy, then it is not really fun.

The web site that I came across today, http://www.trout.co.uk, is all about trout fishing, so I thought of Claude right away. The site is relatively new, but it is well organized and they appear to be writing a new post of interest every day. So it is the type of web site that you can visit on a regular basis and find something new each day.