Grunts: It's What's for Dinner

The other day, Bret and I went to a Vegan Health Food Store at Big Pine Key where we played oversized Chinese Checkers while munching on cauliflower, lentils, cabbage, and other "detox" food. At the store, I picked up an "Energy Times" magazine, some hippy-flaxseed recycled paper publication. In it, there was an article about the healing power of swimming with dolphins.

Inspired, I decided to get into this whole spiritual healing thing. Ok, so I don't need much healing, per se, but still, I figured if it's so wonderful for the depressed and autistic, imagine how wonderful it could be for someone who is happy and social? For 200 bucks at the Dolphin Research Center, I could swim with these geniuses of the sea...

When I got there, they threw me in with a group of seven people who were also doing this "dolphin encounter"...Now, considering my interest in achieving some awesome inter-special communication, I was expecting to be diving in and out of the water, playing ball with the dolphin, or if things turned dark, seeing the dolphin circle a part of my body indicating that I had a tumor or something.

I was not expecting to simply take turns giving hand signals to the dolphin so he could dive, "laugh," or splash. Don't get me wrong, it was quite cute and all, but it sure wasn't 200 dollars-healing my soul cute. The whole thing took a grand total of 45 minutes. One woman kept saying, "This is so worth it, this is so worth it"...and she was totally enamoured by the dolphin and kept asking the trainer to ask the dolphin to give her "a kiss on the cheek." Once her request was granted, she followed with "does it have to be on the cheek?" The trainers went silent for a moment before one spoke up, "We like to keep things platonic here." I wonder if she ever realized that the dolphin was not really giving her a kiss on the cheek, but pressing his mossy snout to her cheek in exchange for some sardines from the trainer?

In any case, fascinating, adorable creatures, but by no means a life-changing encounter- at least for me.

Later on that evening, Bret and I went to a party boat for a Night Fishing Trip. We had had such horrible luck a few days ago fishing from the nearby bridge, that we decided to give the whole fishing thing another shot.

The night was gorgeous: calm seas, a hazy, romantic sunset, and later, a tangerine for a moon- its orange glow reflecting off the black ocean.

The fish? Well, that's another story. We left at 6:30 and the boat would move to a new location every 15-25 minutes. Everyone around us was catching fish after fish. Except for Bret and me. Our rods remained sadly unbent.

Suddenly, at around 10:30, I caught my first fish! Shortly after Bret caught one, and we got on a roll! We got back, collected our grunts, had them filleted, and we're gonna make them tonite.