Fishing so far in Charleston.

The fishies are not biting like I had hoped so far this season but its just beginning!. Blue Gill seam to be snatching all the bait off me and my friends hooks or slurping, we aren't sure which.  So far at Lake Charleston I personally have caught just two fish out of like the 6 times I been there. A small cat fish and a  medium sized Carp....not very big as far as Carp go though. That is not the only place my friends and I went fishing at, Fox Ridge seems be be a little more plentiful with me catching around 30 blue gill so far and 3 catfish. Not only fish were caught but a Turtle also. A friend of mines girlfriend discovered mushrooms hanging out right next to her when she sat down! lol. Personally I wont eat them but it was interesting.
        The Blue Gill bite around 6'ish or so in the evening and not sure about the catfish around these parts yet. All the good fish seem to still be little young ones.  We have been fishing in a storm, when its cold and windy and when its boiling hot out, been fun! Now I'm going to try using a small curly tailed Jig with a small bobber to try and catch Crappie. Well if anyone reads this and loves fishing, let us know and if you have any good techniques or strategies and advice for fishing around Charleston. Maybe even some good lakes and spots. Just let us know.

College town perks and pitfalls

Now those of you that know Charleston IL you are aware that it is the home of Eastern Illinois University (EIU).  Those of you who don't but follow football this is where Tony Romo played football before joining the NFL, there are also 2 NFL coaches from here which include Coach Shanahan and as the name escapes me the coach of the NO Saints (I think).  That is about our most notorious achievements as of late.  This is a small town that depletes by about 50% during the summer semester. Shops close down business is slow and if you are a party goer it may be a little harder to crash one. As for me, I am past the hard core partying and just want the quiet on occasion or a decent restaurant to go to. Well let's see we have Roc's Blackfront, What's Cooking,  El Rancherito, and numerous fast food places. For the all night partier or the elderly we have Lincoln Garden not top on my recommendation list. Either way the funny thing about a college town of this size is I think it breeds alcoholics. Of the four restaurants I listed by name three serve alcohol. Then we go to the rarity of activities we have around here. A bowling alley that has a bar, a run down theatre that smells of stale popcorn and dirty seats, the local art gallery that is on campus and the bar seen. There are more bars than restaurants. Let's see....Roc's, Friend's, The Uptowner, The Station, The Icy Mug, Lefty's Holler (if this doesn't sound hillbilly or redneck what does), Mike and Stan's, Ike's, The Panther Paw, Marty's, and I am sure that I have missed at least one. Though this is a great opportunity to do social networking with it being a college town I suspect that happens on the lower end of the percentage scale.

Now as a mother of two I would love to take my kids somewhere other than McDonald's for a meal and not have to worry about what might be said in their presence or drunks falling over our table to get to the bathroom.

Now as summer looms before us I look forward to some of the perks of the town being a bit quieter however some things completely shut down when the college is not in full session. Complete bulls#*t if you ask me. However I am an outdoors type person and that makes it a bit more comfortable. We do have many things that are family friendly in the area, one of my family favorites is Fox Ridge State Park which offers camping, hiking, fishing, and all around well maintained facility. We also have The Douglas Hart Nature Center located just east of Mattoon for some smaller yet more educational trails and a visitor center that is amazing and entertaining to kids of all ages. We do have our local parks and festivals that bring out our "townies" as Steve and I refer to them. (These are the folks that have decided to locate here and stay here for 10 or more years or who were born in the area and never left after high school or college.) I am a townie.  maybe that is why my commentary seems a bit jaded but it is a small town and so far the only benefit I can see from it being a college town is more revenue for the local taverns and the lucky few restaurants that actually were able to get a license to serve alcohol. You'd think we could manage a Kohl's, Target or decent electronic store like Best Buy alas we are stuck with Super Wal-Mart for all our needs or the cost of a meal to drive the 35-60 miles to get somewhere to shop at a decent mall.

A little review on my Computer setup and games I like to play.

Newest Computer (built by me!)
Decided to go nuts and spend more money than I probebly should have this year with our tax return money on building my dream pc or pretty close to my dream pc. Here is the setup!.  Roswill "Thor" full tower compter case with fans USB 3.0 ports. The Cpu I chose was based on performance/cost ratio and I went with the AMD FX8150. Also I was going to buy 2 7970 ATI video cards but decided to stay in budget and go with the Radeon HD 6950 2GB's  in crossfire. I'm overly!!!! satisfied with the performance. Another piece of hard ware I'm crazy about is the
Mushkin Enhanced Chronos 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive but also my data hard drive is pretty dang fast for being mechanical and not a Raptor. The data hard drive I choose is the  Western Digital Caviar Black  1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5". There is so  much more to the computer that it will take forever for me to describe and review and since I'm not getting paid to do so I will just list the parts and maybe say a few things. Here is all the items I built my new pc with:

 Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit - OEM

 KINGWIN Lazer LZ-1000 1000W Modular 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC W/ 3-Way LED Switch and Universal Modular Connector Power Supply

RAZER Black USB Wired BlackWidow Ultimate Mechanical Gaming Keyboard

 Recertified: Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

3 x Rosewill 18" Serial ATA Black Flat Cable w/ Locking Latch Support 3 Gbps, and 1.5 Gbps transfer rate Model RC-18"-SA2-BK

1 x RAZER Vespula Dual Sided Gaming Mouse Mat

2 x AMD Gift - Dirt3 Game Coupon - OEM

1 x ASRock 990FX Extreme4 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

1 x Koutech IO-FPM530 Multi-in-1 USB 3.0 Multifunction SuperSpeed Front Panel Card Reader with eSATA / HD Audio Ports (5.

3 x OKGEAR Model OK4380 70cm SATA 6Gbps round cable, straight to right angle, black color

1 x Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - OEM

1 x Noctua NH-D14 120mm & 140mm SSO CPU Cooler

1 x Aluratek 6 ft. SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Type A to B Cable AUC306F

1 x Kaybles Model DHDMI-6BK 6 ft. D-Series Heavy Duty HDMI Cable Standard Speed 28AWG with Gold Plated Connector M-M - OEM

1 x Creative PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series Sound Card

1 x RAZER Megalodon Gold-plated USB Connector Circumaural 7.1 Surround Sound Gaming Headset

1 x ASUS VS248H-P Black 24" HDMI LED Backlight Widescreen LCD Monitor

1 x Sony Optiarc Black 12X Half Height Tray Blu-ray Writer SATA BD-5300S - OEM

1 x Mushkin Enhanced Chronos MKNSSDCR120GB 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

1 x AMD Gift - Battlefield 3 coupon

2 x XFX Double D HD-695X-CDFC Radeon HD 6950 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with

1 x G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model F3-14900CL9Q-16GBXL

1 x Rosewill THOR V2-White Edition, THOR V2-W Gaming ATX Full Tower Computer Case, support up to E-ATX / XL-ATX, come with Four Fans

1 x RAZER Naga Black USB Wired Laser Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming Mouse

1 x AMD FX-8150 Zambezi 3.6GHz Socket AM3+ 125W Eight-Core Desktop Processor FD8150FRGUBOX

1 x BYTECC Model P3V-6 6 ft. Component RGB video Cable - GOLD Plated, Black

1 x Sony Optiarc 24X DVD Burner, Bulk Package Black SATA Model AD-7280S-0B - OEM
Just so you know, I personally selected all the componants and built this computer as my first ever computer build and everything works perfectly. If you want to spen 2500-3000 on a gaming rig then this is a build I highly recommend plus by now some parts probebly cost less. Also I installed a touch screen display by NXT to monitor tempatures in my case and contorll other fans that my case controll is not contorlling and it works great!


Bought an Asus PC a few moths ago {2010} from Best Buy and also a 23.5 inch LCD monitor for around a grand, lol not the PC itself which is worth around 400 dollars refurbished. The monitor you can buy pretty cheap but its still pretty awesome! I love it.
        The computer is just a dual core E5400 with 500 gigabyte hard drive 6 gigabytes ofddr3 ram, DVD/CD burner with windows 7 Ultimate 64. I had just recently replaced the power supply with an Ultra LSP 550 watt power supply. Also installed aXFX Nvidia GTS 250 core edition video card. Now I can play all kinds of games on max settings with no problems...lol well with the newer Crysis game almost maxed, just anti-aliasing is tricky when too high.
    Connected my PC to our television and watched Netflix on the TV while gaming on the monitor, lol was awesome but I moved my PC to the bedroom since I like to play games REALLY loud and the kids drive me nuts, lol but that's what kids are for right... Most people complain about their computer being slow and everything but its simple to upgrade and you don't need anAlienware to play the best games. The keyboard that came with the PC had some problems...uh hehe the space bar quite working but!! I replaced it with  a Saitek keyboard that lights up different colors and is a lot more comfortable to use. The game I STILL! play the most is Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction online lol. The most graphic intense games I play...well almost all of the good ones boyeeee! If you want some opinions on what PC to get or parts whatever just ask. Anyways getting off here and letting Mary throw in some words.

About this Blog.

This Blog is about living in Charleston and Mattoon Illinois. Basically what we have experienced living here. Also for fellow "Chuckers' and "Toonies" to talk and just vent whatever....
Toonies=Mattoon residents and Chuckers=Charleston residents.

"Our" (Steve and Mary) Blog is somewhat of a journal and just a thingy we are trying out. Ask any questions and please leave a comment.

Steve.