fishing for words

(and tossing out random thoughts)

Author Archives: Patrick Konoske


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Sean on the court

Sean played in the Seniors vs. Faculty basketball game last night.  He rattled off some post-game figures…something like six minutes of playing time, a number of steals and a respectable number of goals.  (Thank God he didn’t break anyone’s wrist! …but that’s another story.)  It was a fun game, with the staff taking the lead early and never relinquishing it.  I did a double-take, however, in the last quarter…the clock had ticked down to less than a few minutes…suddenly it was back at 6:00.  Gotta keep your eyes on those high school kids!  The faculty won, but it was all smiles afterwards. 

My apologies in advance for the quality of the photos below.  I had to use a “sport” setting, which combined with the fluorescent lighting, lead to some graininess.

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…simple thoughts…

With a recent turn of events, I’ve come to believe that it’s a lucky few of us who realize how good we have it and even fewer who truly know what we want. I would humbly submit that most people don’t know what we really want until we find out what we don’t want, or find ourselves in a situation that we truly don’t like. There seems to be a design behind the curveballs that life throws at us. In an odd way, we should be thankful for the problems we have now. They are there for a reason and are sometimes may be the best teacher.


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frustrating

Had I known that that the Presidents’ Day weekend would only offer an extra day for things to go haywire, I would made no plans at all. It began Friday. The plan was to head to the cabin for some respite and fishing, as well as skiing for my nephew.

First, my son, who had requested time off, was scheduled to work Sunday. But we could work around that and come home Sunday. Then, my sister calls to tell me that her younger son is too sick to join us. But that’s okay because her husband and older son can still make it. Friday morning, in no rush, Christopher and I hit the road about 11:00 a.m. We stopped for lunch, a visit to the Mother Lode Fly Fishing Shop and a supply of edibles.

About five minutes after five o’clock, we sauntered up to the cabin door to find a note from the friendly water department. Though faded from exposure to the elements, I quickly discerned that due to a leak at the “water source at the house” that the water had been turned off at the meter in January. Without the proper tool, we couldn’t turn the water on to determine how bad the leak was. Phone calls were made. Frustration mounted. Of course, municipal offices are closed by this time. Being a holiday weekend, it’s unlikely that any plumber will answer the phone this late in the day. In the end, we began the drive home about 40 minutes after we arrived in Twain Harte.

Saturday I awoke determined to follow through with one plan for the weekend — fishing. I threw the gear into the car, picked up Christopher and headed towards our one real trout creek, Putah Creek. We hit the creek and tried to make sense of this unfamiliar water. I don’t mind riffles and white water that prevents one from seeing below the surface — and call me spoiled — but I like my trout water to be clear. Crystal clear. Putah Creek is not. Sure, it was a great day, weather-wise, to be out, but four hours on the creek and nary a fish. And none sighted on the lines of the other dozen anglers milling about.

The score so far this year: Trout 1 – Pat 0. Frustrating.


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last “boys’ trip” for a while…?

With Sean graduating this year and Christopher closing in on his 18th birthday, I have a sneaking suspicion that our trip last December might be our last trip together, probably for a long while at least. College, jobs, friends and girlfriends loom on the horizon, and as we all know, they slowly begin to take priority — however slight — over the ol’ parents. It was a fast trip, with Sean and me sharing the driving, so we drove each way in a single day. It was great to see mom and dad as well as Mark and Kenna, and for the first time, nephews/cousins Kaden and Levi. It took a while for Kaden to warm up to these strangers who had invaded grandpa and oma’s house, but before we left he was having a blast knocking his dad and uncle Pat to the floor and seemed to really latch onto Sean, despite the fact that Sean is 10 times bigger than Kaden. We spent a lot of time visiting, along with the typical tourist jaunt to Seattle. (Thanks to Christopher for sharing pictures from his new camera!)


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…15½ hours later…

Sean, Chris and I are in Duvall, Washington, for the next few days. What a trip getting here! Chris and I departed home about 5:15 a.m., picking up Sean along the way. It was smooth sailing through most of California, but in Dunsmuir hit the weather I had worried about: snow. The rain had begun to show evidence of some mushy-ness a few miles earlier, but there was no evidence on outside of the impending storm. Slowly, it became obvious that snow had been falling for a while as drifts were piled on the side of the highway. Eventually I slowed to about 40 mph. With thoughts of putting on chains drifting through my head, we finally emerged from the fluffy stuff near Weed. We charge ahead, only to be slowed down near the Siskiyou pass, where angry clouds were spitting snow in our path into Oregon. With concentration and the awareness that at least three cars had slid off the road, I drove carefully and in constant fear of other drivers, including that of a tractor trailer rig, who flew past us in the slush. But we made it into Oregon without incident, and were rewarded with blue skies through much of the Beaver State. The remainder of our drive was relatively uneventful, save for the darkness that quickly descended at this higher latitude as we began to negotiate the sometimes narrow and often winding roads towards Duvall. But we made it, tired and a bit hungry, but happy to have made it.

P.S. We woke up this morning to a winter wonderland…perhaps 2½ to 3 inches of light snow.


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…a “merry” little christmas…

In the end, Christmas 2006 seemed to be destined to teach us to appreciate when our little Christmas season goes smoothly…something that I, apparently, have taken for granted for all too many years. It all started with a hectic schedule two weeks before the holiday, as Karen and Adam traveled hundreds of miles – yes, literally hundreds of miles – to various GGBC rehearsals and performances. That, in itself, did start this little snowball from, um, heck. It was the constant exposure to the Petri dish of germs that is called BART. The week before Christmas, both Adam and Karen came down with some sort of cold. Maybe it should be referred to as “The Cold that Stole Christmas.” While Adam recovered relatively rapidly, Karen descended into congestion, a sore throat and various aches and pains. We held on to the hope that she’d recover and only a few of us might head to Christmas Eve dinner. Unfortunately, Karen’s father, our gracious cook and host for Christmas Eve dinner, was admitted to the hospital, where the doctors wanted him to enjoy a turkey dinner and stay through the day after Christmas.

So, rolling with these curveballs (yes, mixing metaphors), Sean and I decided we could head to Christmas mass at 9:00 p.m. instead of trying to stay awake for midnight mass. All was good as mass started with “Joy to the World,” then the opening prayer by the pastor, who introduced his co-celebrant, who then said an opening prayer…in Vietnamese! Sean and I look at each other. But I was there, and by gum, wasn’t going to leave. Thankfully, about half of mass was in English. And it was entertaining as we were visited by “The Christmas Cat,” a feline named Gilbert by the St. Dominic’s School kids, who walked up a side isle, behind the altar, then in front of the alter to sniff at the manger scene.

I guess out travails can’t compare to that of Mary and Joseph. Merry Christmas to all!


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…and GGBC makes the radio…

Driving to work this morning, tooling along the relatively vacant roads (a bonus of the few days before Christmas), when I began to hear bells. No, not entirely isolated to my cranium…it seems that KCBS sent a reporter out to check out the Golden Gate Boys Choir, of which Adam is a part. (See previous post.) As soon as we find out if there is a podcast of this story, I’ll throw it up here. In the meantime, if you can tune into 740 AM, I’m sure that story will be run a few more times this morning, before the performance at 101 California Street in San Francisco.


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adam makes the paper

Adam and the GGBC Bellringers.

Adam and the GGBC Bellringers.

Adam, along with his fellow ringmasters, can be found in a photo in the San Francisco Chronicle today! The photo ran with an article about the Golden Gate Boys Choir and Bellringers’ Christmas season performances. Adam appears almost dead center in the picture above the article (third from the left). He’s been attending the GGBC summer camp for three years and participating with the group for just about as long, and joined the GGBC last year during its trip to Italy.  I’m not quite certain where this photo was taken. 

You can find the article on page twenty in the 96 Hours section or find it online at sfgate.com. (You can see a larger version of the picture by clicking on it.)


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for your holiday shopping pleasure

From Dave Barry’s “Christmas Shopping: A Survivor’s Guide”…

On Gifts for Children:

This is easy. You never have to figure out what to get for children, because they will tell you exactly what they want. They spend months and months researching these kinds of things by watching Saturday- morning cartoon-show advertisements. Make sure you get your children exactly what they ask for, even if you disapprove of their choices. If your child thinks he wants Murderous Bob, the Doll with the Face You Can Rip Right Off, you’d better get it. You may be worried that it might help to encourage your child’s antisocial tendencies, but believe me, you have not seen antisocial tendencies until you’ve seen a child who is convinced that he or she did not get the right gift.”

On Gifts for Men:

Men are amused by almost any idiot thing — that is why professional ice hockey is so popular — so buying gifts for them is easy. But you should never buy them clothes. Men believe they already have all the clothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous. For example, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, only three of them. He has learned, through humiliating trial and error, that if he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laugh at him (“You’re not going to wear THAT tie with that suit, are you?”). So he has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone several years without being laughed at. If you give him a new tie, he will pretend to like it, but deep inside he will hate you.

If you want to give a man something practical, consider tires. More than once, I would have gladly traded all the gifts I got for a new set of tires.”