May 2-4 was great this year. On Saturday, we had a "Lees going-away party" here at John's house. My good friend James (otherwise known as my brother from another mother) is leaving in a few weeks to do his residency in Vancouver. As he said, this summer, "the House of Lee will be severely diminished."

Anyway, we served up quite the shindig! We made burger patties (with onion bits and secret sauce!), beef skewers, bacon-wrapped beef skewers, veggie skewers, potato salad, caesar salad, a veggie dip tray, a shrimp ring... And on top of that, ppl brought ice cream, and two fantastic cakes from the best cake place in Ottawa. The cakes were so good that although everyone was pretty full, we all managed to put away a cake and a half! It was definitely a good time, and it does seem strange that I had a going-away party about 2 months before I leave, but no time like the present to get the parties going!

Sunday, we went fishing with some of John's buddies. John and I started the usual trash talk of "I'm gonna catch more fish" "I'm gonna catch bigger fish" etc. etc. Fishing's no fun without the trashtalk! It started off pretty quick, we each got bites within the first two casts.... Unfortunately we caught some lame rock bass and a couple of sunfish. John caught two smallish bass, but we had to throw them back because bass season doesn't start for another month. Then he caught a large crappie, which he was quite happy about. I later caught two nice large bass, which got everyone ooh-ing and aah-ing. I also caught a pretty big perch. It was too big for bait-size, so John cut it up and used it for bait. :(
His friends left, so we went to try another spot, where John quickly caught a very large perch and a decent-sized pike. That spot was getting windy and weedy, so we tried one last spot before going home. There wasn't much happening there either, but I found a patch where a bunch of perch were milling about, so I put on a small hook to catch them for fun. I caught one somewhat large one, so I kept him. And then I put my line back in and all of a sudden something snagged my line and took off!! I landed a large pike! I had caught one earlier at the first spot, but it had snapped my line. This one got caught just at the edge of the mouth, in the cheek, so he couldn't bite my line. I took both the pikes and perches to my mom. We went to meet up with his friends, who had spent all that time cleaning and gutting the fish. We bbq'ed and fried 'em up and had a nice fish dinner. mmmm....

Anyway, back to the bbq thing. When I invited a friend to the bbq on Saturday, she asked if she could bring anything. I said not to worry, since we had all the food covered. She said, "you know it's not a white bbq when..." I'm like, "what do you mean?" Apparently, at "white ppl" bbqs it's BYO___, where you bring your own meat, beer, drinks, lawn chair, etc. I mentioned it to John, and his reaction was like, "bring your own meat?! If I brought my own meat, I'd rather just stay at home and bbq it myself!" How strange... is it really only "Chinese" bbqs where the host provides all the food?