Sunday Brant invited me on a fishing trip off Palm Beach Island. The crew included Tia, one of our neighbors, her brother Tom, her father, Brant, me and of course the charter captain (who was incredible). So we took a small boat out through some pretty heavy breakwater. Some waves were around 10ft which I completely enjoyed…others…not so much. After about 40 minutes we were beyond the breakwater and in deep enough water to start fishing.

The captain broke out the kite, which I’d never seen before. He sent a kite up (we had heavy winds so it was key) and we proceeded to set up three rods to use the system. Each line was attached to the kite line which would release once we got a bite and started to reel in. The kite keeps the line verticle in the water and allows you to fish far off the boat and easily rotate lines in and out from far to close depending on who’s got a fish on. You just have to keep your bobber/marker about 2-3 feet off the water and live bait, about 10 inches long, in the water with the ocean swells.

Brant was the first one out and got the first hit. Tom was next then me, who got the smallest fist of the three. Tia caught one on the sideline (non kite) which was just a bit too small to keep but she had a good time getting him in.

Then we reset and waited for about an hour. I was the last on the kite line so I was closest to the boat which means I was less likely to get the next hit.

BAM…I landed a 20 lb Mahi Mahi which I chased around the boat a couple times. It came in close twice and then darted off making me work my ass to bring it in. I was thrilled, shaking and excited. When we finally got it in I was beat, forearms throbbing but soooo cool. Huge fish and smiling from ear to ear. Not bad for my first fishing trip.

One thing that made it difficult was the sea was listing the boat about 6-8 ft every wave so it was a constant battle to stay upright. Constantly keeping your balance, watching the bobbers and running like mad when we got a bite. What a great day on the boat.

The ride back was fun as well, as the captain is a surfer so we had a good time surfing the big swell with the boat on the way back to the dock laughing my ass off.

Brant whipped up some cajun seasoning when we got back after the captain perfectly prepped fileted the fish for us and we headed to the grill for some well deserved Mahi Mahi.

Thanks again Brant, it was a great time! Thanks Tia, for taking such great photos.

Thanksgiving was a bit different this year…in a good way. Of course Wednesday night before the big day was a drunken shitshow (as usual) but we had a great time. Thursday I headed to Boston Market and got Thanksgiving lunch, no big deal. Our friend Rosy invited us (Brant and I) to Jupiter for dinner with her and Regina.

They’re a great bunch of friends and we always have great time. Thanks guys for making Thanksgiving something to remember.

Of course hitting Dirty Martini in PGA on the way home made parts hard to remember but I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time. So much fun!

This is by far the highlight of my day during the week. After eating lunch we take a 20 minute nap on the couch. Just little Winston and I.

I took this shot yesterday and felt compelled to share it.

Sunday night I made the 70 mile trek down to South Beach to meet up with my old friend Jay and his girlfriend, Stacy. It was so great to see him again. It’s been at least five years since the last time we hung out and he only lives 4 hours away in Tampa, FL.

So I geared up, hopped on the motorcycle and headed down to Joe’s Stone Crab at the south end of South Beach, right next to Nikki Beach. We had a couple beers, caught up and had some stone crab / oysters.

For those of you who don’t know Jay, we’ve been friends since 2000 or somewhere around there when we used to work together at the now defunct Mercurio Group. After that company went under we both worked at Instant Replay in Cincinnati.

Not long after I moved to Florida he moved to Tampa and after a quick weekend trip to Boca Raton, we kind of lost touch so I was thrilled to hang out once again. He and his girlfriend were on a weekend away in South Beach to catch Sting in concert so he hit me up and invited me to dinner.

Great to see you man, glad to see you’re doing well over there on the flat coast. You’re always welcome to spend a weekend away over here, I’m always more than happy to show you around downtown West Palm Beach.

Yeah, so once again there’s not much really going on. I’ve been spending an enormous amount of time with the puppy during the day, hitting the gym at night and really beginning to hate Daylight Savings time (once again).

The weather’s been mildly overcast the last few days yet warm, the pool is back open and my Netflix que is looking pretty good.

Unfortunately I woke up this morning at 4am for no good reason so I thought I’d update the blog.

So for the past two weeks I thought I’d give a new diet a try, you know just to get rid of the extra weight around my waist and a few other things. It’s the “Slow Carb Diet” and so far it’s been interesting.

The basics are no white anything…rice, bread, pasta, sugar, fruits (sugar) or dairy. what you can eat are beans, meats, vegitables and the all important red wine. For the past two weeks I’ve been living off of black beans, chicken, eggs (hard boiled and egg white omelets with spinach) salsa, diced tomatoes, steamed veggies, water, couple of glasses of red wine a night and black coffee in the morning (no cream or sweetener).

One more very important thing to mention is you can have a cheat day once a week to mix up your metabolism. On the cheat day (mine’s Saturday for obvious reasons) you can eat as much as you want of anything. So chow on cheeseburgers, fries, pizza, beer, tequila, cheese….anything. The writer has a crazy cheat day of starting out with a few bear claws.

Over the last couple weeks I’ve lost 3-4 pounds though I’ve been hitting the gym so I’m sure I packed on a couple of just plain muscle. So far it’s pretty interesting. The only things I’m really missing are pasta, fruits (apples, strawberries) and cream and splenda in my coffee in the morning.

I plan on staying on the diet for a couple months to see how it goes. If you’d like to find out more information you can pick up his book online –

http://www.fourhourbody.com/

There are a bunch of other things in the book you will probably be interested in as well. Here’s a list of the chapters:

Subtracting Fat

Basics
The Slow- Carb Diet I: How to Lose 20 Pounds in 30 Days Without Exercise
The Slow-Carb Diet II: The Finer Points and Common Questions
Damage Control: Preventing Fat Gain When You Binge
The Four Horsemen of Fat-Loss

Advanced
Ice Age: Mastering Temperature to Manipulate Weight
The Glucose Switch: Beautiful Number 100
The Last Mile: Losing the Final 5-10 Pounds

Adding Muscle
Building the Perfect Posterior (or Losing 100+ Pounds)
Six-Minute Abs: Two Exercises That Actually Work
From Geek to Freak: How to Gain 34 Pounds in 28 Days
Occam’s Protocol I: A Minimalist Approach to Mass
Occam’s Protocol II: The Finer Points

Improving Sex
The 15-Minute Female Orgasm-Part Un
The 15-Minute Female Orgasm-Part Deux
Sex Machine I: Adventures in Tripling Testosterone
Happy Endings and Doubling Sperm Count

Perfecting Sleep
Engineering the Perfect Night’s Sleep
Becoming Uberman: Sleeping Less with Polyphasic Sleep

Reversing Injuries
Reversing “Permanent” Injuries
How to Pay for a Beach Vacation with One Hospital Visit
Pre-Hab: Injury-Proofing the Body

Running Faster and Farther
Hacking the NFL Combine I: Preliminaries—Jumping Higher
Hacking the NFL Combine II: Running Faster
Ultraendurance I: Going from 5K to 50K in 12 Weeks—Phase I
Ultraendurance II: Going from 5K to 50K in 12 Weeks—Phase II

So yeah…this happened. I finally got the balls and the opportunity to get a half sleeve tattoo on my right arm. My friend Kelly hooked me up with Horitoyo to do the tattoo in trade. A website for a tattoo since his old site needs some serious updating.

He’s a traditional Japanese Tattoo artists, specializing in Tebori tattoos. I didn’t get the Tebori (big ass needle). He’s a well known and very skilled artist in Japan so when the opportunity came up, I said…”sure, why not?”

So on Monday of this week he came to my house to get started. Six and a half hours on the table (breaks included) and I’m only 1/4 of the way done.

Now I have to wait till December when he comes back from Japan to finish the rest. He’s about half done with the shading, the outline is done and it’ll be about 10 hours of color once that’s done so yay…another 15 of pain to come!

He was actually surprised at how much pain I could endure on the first session (so was Kelly). Right now I’m just in the healing phase and it’s starting to itch (which is good). I can’t wait for the finished tattoo so for now I have to live with the 1/4 finished half sleeve tattoo. It still looks pretty baddass.

The new 610 Clematis website is up and running great. There is still a few items I need to work on and I have to retake some of the photography throughout the building but overall it came out great. Thanks to the 610 Board of Directors for letting me spruce up out online presence. I love living here.

To check out the new and updated website click here: http://www.610clematisstreet.com/

This is Winston, my neighbor’s little King Charles puppy. 2 months old and cute as hell. I’ve agreed to take care of him from time to time, so now I have a little buddy to hang out with during the day which is great since I’m pretty much by myself all day.

We’re still in the pee-pad phase of training but he’s been fantastic. Just sleeps in his little bed next to my desk as I work. For lunch we chill on the couch and watch tv and take a nap.

He still needs a few shots before I can take him outside and get him used to marking his territory.

Nothing quite like puppy breath kisses and a cute face to hang out with during the day.