My wife’s plan worked like a charm. I spent most of my free time last week cleaning out the garage for my new tools. I’ve setup and adjusted my table saw, sander and drill press. All are working like a charm and I bulit a small flush mount cabinet for my initial project. Amazingly, the door didn’t turn out to be as difficult as I expected. The butt-hinges did give me a little bit of trouble, but not in mortising them in…but mounting them.

I ended up returning my SD208 Dado set to HomeDepot and ordering the SD206 online. (8″ vs. 6″ Dado set)

Well, we took the plunge. Melissa and I had cashed in for $700 of gift cards to Home Depot. The points had been sitting around doing nothing, so we took this chance to put them to use. We also threw in the 10% discount that was available to make the deal even sweeter! We did end up owing a bit, but $850 of stuff for $70 aint bad! I made out the best, but Melissa will reap the rewards. I got my Ryobi BTS3100c Table Saw and my Ryobi Disc/Belt Sander, oh yea! We also picked up a 7000BTU LG Heat/Cool window unit for the shed we are converting into my office. I decided onteh BTS3100c after looking at it, reading about it and checking out the great online community.

She gets the rewards of:

1. My office moving out of the house.
1. Table saw will be used to make things around the house.
1. Sander will do the same.
Me cleaning out the garage to make room for my workshop!

Needless to say, I’m in the process of cleaning out the garage and the shed right now!

We headed down to Seadrift this past weekend for our first big fishing trip of the year. We ate at Barkett’s again and had great food there. The next morning we checked out of the Seadrifter Inn and headed for the floating cabin off of Matagorda Island We didn’t rush into anything so we hit the water around 9:00am (low tide) and motored out. We found that someone had broken into the floater, but hadn’t done much more damage than tearing a screen window and breaking a hinge on the shutter. Still just a shamed to see that people have to do that kind of shit. We dropped off our gear and got lines in the water.

We didn’t have much luck wading the flats, so we headed for the birds and I picked up a 16″ trout, so the skunk was off. Later, we retired to the floater for a nap and I managed to catch a rat red off of it (15″, back he went) and another keeper trout.

Later in the afternoon Stu suggested we head for one of his “honey holes” and he was right on the mark. In less than 15 minutes he and I limited on Redfish (21″ - 27.5″) and Mike nabbed a very nice trout.

We returned to the cabin and setup the grill and lanterns (I had a new Coleman Northstar which is VERY bright and easy to work with.) and cleaned fish. We had a nice “Surf and Turf” dinner and turned in for the night. I slept on the porch as the breeze was nice and I could listen to the waves and mullet jumping.

We woke up Sunday morning and piddled around, had some breakfast (corned beef hash, yum!!!) and went fishing again. Wading wasn’t the thing, possibly due to the low tide. We hunted down the birds again and got into the trout, but they were all coming in around 14″ - 14.5″, just under. No matter, we caught 8-10 of them and had one triple hookup.

Headed back the Seadrift and disembarked, cleaned up and headed to the house. Was a GREAT time and I can’t wait to hit it again soon!

We had our second float of the year last weekend. I stayed up way to late the night before, but it was fun…as always…I think.

The New Braunfels Float Team had our first float of the year. It was good fun with good folks, as always. We didn’t get started until almost 2:30 due to some newbies from Austin arriving late, but that was just more time to down a few cold ones and chat with friends. The river was flowing nicely and the new chute around Stinky’s was nice, but still shallow…keep your butt up through there.

NVIDIA just released new 7664 drivers which support y 6200 AGP. They’ve worked like a charm over the weekend and I’m pleased to have my new card running!