Nonsensical Ravings of A Lunatic Mind

Been a LONG time

2007-10-13T09:24:00.000-05:00

Well, I finally had a second to stop in here...... but a second is all.... gotta go!

Mud holes, string, and windchimes

2005-04-11T22:35:00.000-05:00

Following the torrential rains and near hurricane winds we have finally begun the ritual of Spring.

The first order of business is to clean off the back patio which has accumulated more junk than you could imagine over the winter. Then pick up limbs that have fallen out of the maple trees all over the yard in preparation for the first mowing of the year... woooooo hoooooo something else to do when I don't have something to do !

Oh yeah, I also have to back fill an excavation in the back yard that resembles an archeology dig at a Mayan Temple. Remnents of the sewer surprise earlier in the year. I just haven't had the time to get it done before now.

The garden is ready to till for the first time of the year as well but as luck would have it the motor on my Troybilt seems to have ceased to function as designed. That task took the better part of the day on Saturday until I just completely gave up on getting the tiller to run and by that time I was too tired to drag out my much older but still completely functional Ariens tiller. The rain is supposed to start again tonight and last for several days, so tilling is a couple weeks away.

The high winds also took their toll on several of the dozens of whirlygigs and windchimes hanging all around the back yard. Just one more thing to take care of when I get time.....

If I would only win the lottery so that bothersome work thing would go away then I would have almost enough time to get everything done.

It has been a while

2005-03-20T19:18:00.000-05:00

No, I didn't lose the link to my dashboard and no I didn't forget my password. I have just been exceptionally busy with life.

My oldest son has something that he has to do every night of the week and since my wife works until 8 pm most nights I am elected to run the shuttle service. So between trips running him somewhere and picking him up from somewhere I have to figure out what to fix for supper and get it started before she gets home so it will be ready to eat shortly after she hits the door.

The week berfore last was dedicated to getting the house ready for his 14th birthday party. He wanted to have a boy/girl party. Several of the boys that were invited were the same ones that he plays music with so they brought their guitars and amps with them. The girls were mostly the boys girlfriends (duh, imagine that) plus a few un attached females as well.

There were about 15 here for the party, not a huge party, but plenty enough to have fun.

When the pizzas were delivered they attacked like a pack of starving wolves. Five large pizzas and 3 orders of breadsticks dissappeared in nothing flat! They also had a bag of just about every type of chip offered in the chip aisle of the grocery store. Add to that a dozen or so 2 liter bottles of pop and they were set.

Ever had 15 kids around 14 years old in your house enjoying the sugar buzz of a lifetime???? WOW! They played TWISTER in the kitchen (not nude and no crisco) then they retired to the front room for the musical entertainment portion of the evening.

My son and I had spent one whole evening getting the front room ready for this part of the party. We had hung blacklights around the room, set up the lavalamps and the electric storm lights as well. Add a few neon glow item scattered around the room for the "POP" factor when the lights went out and it was almost ready. Last thing that needed done was to weave around the outside of my sons drumkit with flourescent fishing line. Everyone knew it was going to look cool when they noticed the fishing line on the drums earlier in the evening.

What they didn't notice was that we also had taken several feet of that same fishing line and snipped it into random pieces about an inch long and scattered them all over the carpeting .

When the lights went out and the blacklights came on it looked like the floor was covered with little glow worms. They freaked out, it was the coolest thing they had ever seen......... kids are so easy :)

After they tired of jamming to every song they knew how to play and several that they didn't know how to play......... it was nearing 11 pm and time to load up into the van ( yeah, I volunteered to drive em all home) for the ride around town to drop them off in the order that took the longest amount of time and starting with the "single" kids so that the "couples" would have more time to sit together and SNEAK holding hands. Of course my sons Girlfriend had to be the very last one dropped off. Barely got her home before midnight but that was OK with her 'rents cause they knew who she was with and where she was.

All in all his first party was a success, i guess.

Now he is wanting to plan an outside, nightime, bonfire, music jam, dance, party for later this year during the summer so no one has to go home so early.............

Ok, get on with it....

2005-01-22T22:35:00.000-05:00

Well I have finally gotten over my holiday spirit and am now back to normal.

This year the holiday spirit brought fevers that lasted for over a week along with uncontrollable coughing spasms that lasted until you would almost pass out from lack of oxygen.

In the middle of the sickness we got to enjoy a snow storm that dumped a record amount of snow on the ground which led to ice dams on the roof which turned into water leaking through the roof into the house.

This was soon followed by an exploding toilet ( it didn't really explode, but it might as well have ) that and backing up into the floor and tub drain. Since running a snake through it seemed to do no good whatsoever it was decided that I needed to shove the snake down through the vent stack to see if it was clogged. Now remember, Snow, melting, freezing, drizzling rain, dark, I've got a fever going on, dizzy from the fever, and it is cold..... So right up on the roof I go.

No, I didn't fall off and break my neck or any othe appendages either.

The next day it was decided that sometime during the daylight hours it would be a good I dea to dig up the cleanout plug so we could get the snake through it that way. Only problem with that plan was that I have no idea as to the location of said cleanout plug. Through the art of dead reckoning and sheer dumb luck about thirty inches deep I hit sewer pipe and about four feet longer with the trench found the cleanout plug. Not too bad for digging by hand, in the rain, with a fever, and coughing till I almost pass out, and blowing my nose every 5 seconds.

Of course when I opened up the plug I was greeted by a completely empty sewer pipe running to the road.

After several hours, days, weeks, I dunno how long..... It was decided that maybe a real professional plumber with big heavy duty equipment would be usefull.....

Guess what! He got a very large wad of roots out of the toilet drain that might have been the problem.

All better now though.

Today the water heater element burnt out while my son was taking a shower but that is a story for another day.

Happy New Year !

2005-01-01T14:59:00.000-05:00

Well the next one has to be better than the last......

The Most Joyeous Time of the Year

2004-12-18T10:24:00.000-05:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

OK, I SAID IT.... ENOUGH ALREADY.

I'm really not in the spirit of the holiday this year, dunno why but it just ain't happening. But I'll manage to smile and get through it somehow. OK maybe I won't be smiling......

ANYWAY....................

The tree is up and the house is decorated and the stocking are gonna be hung by the chimney with care sometime today. Then it's put away the 157 boxes that were taken out of the attic containing said decorations. Then clean up the mess from cleaning up the mess.

Then it is company and dinners and more company and the unexpected guest bearing gifts and the kid who spills a five gallon cup of red koolaid on the white carpet but neglects to mention the fact to any adult on the premises.

We just decided last night that it would be a good idea to buy some presents for the kids before next weekend gets here. Nothing like waiting until the last moment to go to the stores.

My oldest son (8th grade) went to his first formal (sorta) dance last night. Turns out that he was the only boy that showed up in a suit. He had bought his GirlFriend a carnation wrist corsage and she had gotten him a rose buttoneer. They were the only ones that had flowers on. My son said that every time they went to dance everyone in the place that had a camera came running to take pictures of them because they looked "so cute". They had a great time. She had 3 or 4 of her girlfriends meet at her house and we took him over there so we could get pictures of them too. So he got to make a grand entrance with 4 lovely ladies surrounding him. As usual. He is THE chick magnet of the school. He pretty much has choice of which girl he wants and it's hard to choose when there are ten of them all giggling "pick me"..... poor kid. The one that is his GirlFriend has been all school year. She hasn't ever had a boyfriend and wasn't sure if she wanted one.... playing hard to get works every time! She's a DOLL! and a very nice girl too from a nice family so that is a plus!

It's officially the Holidays now

2004-12-04T15:19:00.000-05:00

Yep that's right it is time for Winter-een-mas again!

If you are saying to yourself "WTH is this wintereenmas thing?" then you need to go here and keep clicking next on the bottom right of the page.
It is pretty self explanatory.

WINTER-EEN-MAS

Tonight is my wifes work Christmas party.... woo.....hooo.

First let me state that I dislike parties, especially Christmas parties, extra especially work Christmas parties, and double extra especially her work Christmas parties. There are people at my workplace that I see every day, they might have been there for the last 3 to 4 years and I have no clue as to what thier names are...... so I REALLY don't need to talk to people that she works with! I'm sure they are all real nice and all but meh.

In the past it has been held in a local pizza parlor that has VERY good pizza so at least there was a little something to look forward to about being dragged kicking and screaming to a place to spend time ( that I do not have ) with people that I barely know.

This years is different though, new managment, new place for the Christmas party!

****clasps hands together nearly swooning**** OH BOY !!!!!

The new place is..... drum roll please.....

A bar

I don't drink.

She doesn't drink either.

Not only is it a bar but it is a really trendy YUPPIE bar.

I'm 45, I'm well past the yuppie stage, I'm also well past my tolerance level for loud mouthed dip shits that are gonna change the world with their limitless expanse of blind hopefulness.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not some prude that is morally opposed to strong drink. I will have a drink on occasion, albeit rarely. I used to drink, used to keep at least 1 bottle each of Jack Daniels black label , Bacardi 151 rum, Wild Turkey, and usually some sort of Schnapps in the refrigerator.

I used to be an unpaid roadie for my buddies band, a bar band. EVERY weekend was spent sitting in a bar, sometimes I would have a drink, most times I would not. Just $5.00 Cokes with a water back. Actually they played in VFW halls mostly. "You don't hafta go HOME, but you can't stay HERE!"

Maybe my tolerance for alcohol is too high and that is why hanging out with a bunch of drunks irritates me.

I would play mind games with them whenever I got the chance, little things like asking them a simple question made up of completely recognizable words.

Like, " Will sheet foam rubber wick?"

See, your brain stuttered for a second or two trying to make sense of it. Didn't it? Yeah it did, go ahead and admit it.

Go ahead, try it out next time you stumble upon an intoxicated person and watch the look on their faceas they attempt to comprehend the words that came out of your mouth..... then they will ask you to repeat yourself, and they will concentrate harder as you speak and they will still have no idea as to what you just said.... this can go on for as long as you like.

Sometimes it is fun to move u to someone quickly like something is amiss and say it with a great urgency in your voice..... kinda like you are letting them know that the hem of their pants leg has seemed to become engulfed in flames by some odd sequence of events. I made a girl cry once this way because she just knew something terrible was happening around her but suddenly I was speaking some alien language.

But I digress.

Bah and Humbug!

BTW, it is MERRY CHRISTMAS not merry xmas or even happy holidays. It is Christmas.

Politically correct can bite my shiny metal ass.

Another Year Older and Deeper in Debt

2004-11-30T22:39:00.000-05:00

Yep, it's birthday time again.

No big deal really.

I had to work today, like any other weekday and she was scheduled to work until 8 oclock this evening so no going out for dinner or anything.

She had put on a crock pot full of chili before she left for work AND baked me a chocolate cake which is my favorite.

Work today was a total pain. Everybody in the place was wanting something done RIGHT NOW and gimme a minute to finish what I'm doing wasn't an option most of the time because we are in full panic mode. Complete lack of management skills by some have made life hell for us all...... But I managed to make everyone as happy as thier little miserable lives would allow so on some level I'm a hero to everyone and appreciated by none. Thier problem not mine.

On the way home my cell rang and it was Mom. She just wanted to wish me a Happy Birthday and to let me know that "they" would be over in a little bit. "They" being Mom, Dad, My sister, her hubby, and thier two kids.

"They" brought me an eight year old Juniper Bonsai tree. It is in a beautiful royal blue rectangular planter, the scale of which matches the size of the tree perfectly. The tree is about 9 inches tall and about 14 inches at the widest branchs tip to tip.

I don't remember ever asking for one or mentioning that I even liked them but I have always thought that they looked really cool. Who knows how much they spent on this tree......

I love it! I hope I can keep it alive!

Cars, don't ya just hate them?

2004-11-27T17:10:00.000-05:00

I have a wonderful land cruiser it's a 1996 Mercury Grand Marquis.

Big, comfortable, powerful, fairly nimble for its size, 27 mpg on the highway and about 20 in the city. Not too shabby.

Only real problem I have had with it other than a poor design on Fords part of the PLASTIC INTAKE MANIFOLD which has a water passage built into it and it tends to crack in said water passageway..... oh and the heater core had to be replaced which entails the complete removal of the entire dashboard.... there is the little problem of it not wanting to maintain an idle.

Not all of the time. Not only when it is cold. Not only when it is cold outside. Not only when it is raining. Not only when it is hot. Notonly when it is hot outside. There is no rhyme or reason as to when it decides not to idle.

Sometimes it will run for several months at a time with no problem then the next time you go to start up it will not idle.

Today while searching the internet for clues as to what the problem may be, I stumbled across a possibility. There is a thing called the air bypass control. It controls the air bypass for idle speed.
It is supposed to be cleaned every 25000 miles(its only 110000 overdue).

I pulled it off the engine and checked it out..... full of carbon deposits! Stuck wide open too! I gave it a good cleaning with some carb and choke cleaner and WOW IT WORKS!

Wish I would have found this out about 3 years ago when it started acting up......

Let's rearrange the computer room furniture today....

2004-11-21T10:09:00.000-05:00

A large high backed "L" shaped computer desk, a large straight computer desk, a large flat desk, a small flat desk, 2 sets of drawers that are 4 feet long and as tall as the desks, a pinball machine, a large antique buffet (approx. 70 inches long), a small antique buffet (approx. 50 inches long), roll around high backed office chairs for each desk.......

This is all in a room 11 1/2 feet wide and 18 1/2 feet long.

One of the long walls is completely open through to the adjoining room with a low bar that protrudes into this room and a standard doorway at each end of the bar.

The other long wall is completely blank, no windows, doors, or anything at all.

The front wall which is a full 11 1/2 feet wide has a set of double windows surrounded by a handmade built in shelving unit. Windows and shelves are about 8 feet long all together.

The other short wall is actually only about 7 1/2 feet long due to the freezer room on the other side of the wall. The bar carries on past this shorter short wall. Total front to rear is 26 feet.... you do the math for the size of the freezer room.

You have to leave about 35 inches walkway / seating space between the bar and any of the furniture placed into the room so the actual usable floor space is about 7 1/2 feet by 18 1/2 feet.

Don't forget that you need a minimum of 16 inches to squeeze though to get to a desk but 24 inches is prefered.

You need around 36 inches to allow the chair to move around.... roll back from the desk to get out of the chair etc.

BTW it can't "LOOK CLUTTERED" either!

Have fun....... I am :)

A Time of PAIN

2004-11-11T19:39:00.000-05:00

What a pain it has been too, let me tell ya!

After getting beat up at the Amusement park by the rides I have been feeling kinda rough around the edges. Worse than I expected by far. Every day has been a little worse than the day before, which is completely wrong.

I should be feeling much better by now.

I'm starting to think that just maybe I'm getting too old for riding such things as the whirling dervish of DEATH and other attractions that they feature.

That was until yesterday morning........ I suddenly realized the pattern of the pain. Creaking grating pain at the base of my neck, sharp aching in my elbow, shooting pains from my shoulder to my wrist. Ibuprophen ( the wonder drug of wonder drugs) is doing VERY LITTLE for pain relief.

My damn GOUT is flairing up.

Yeah, I know, most people get it in thier big toe. So I'm weird, what's new with that?

Time for me to start taking my herbs again, Devils Claw and Yucca. Several capsuls several times a day and lots and lots of water to flush everything out.

I'll give the herbs a week or so to make it go away, which they usually do work quite well, and if not then it is off to the Doctor for a needle in the butt and a round of Steroids.

My Doctor is pretty cool about the herbs,
I asked his opinion one day and he flat out said "If it works then why take the man made drugs. If it does not work then come see me" In ten years I have only had to go see him for meds once after the initial diagnosis which is pretty good since it flairs up about once a year.

Maybe a little more often if I get to have too much seafood. Shellfish is hell on gout.

Oh well, time for more water and another flush........

Family Fun Day

2004-11-07T21:54:00.000-05:00

Today we ventured out to a local amusement park. A fairly large one known as Kings Island. We have been several times in the last month or so due to receiving Gold season passes for next year as gifts.

Let it be known that I am a Roller Coaster freak! I love riding coasters. Bigger, faster, higher, more loops, more helixs, etc. make for a better ride.

Kings Island was opened around 1972 and I was around 12 years old. The first time that I rode the Racers (2 identical tracks side by side) I was hooked. After that I wanted to ride nothing else but Roller Coasters.

Over the years KI has added quite a few new coasters. The year that The Beast went in was amazing, Waiting in line for 3 or more hours to get on that ride was normal, and well worth it too. Many coasters have come and gone over time. Most notable was The Bat. It was the first "hanging" coaster, suspended on a steel track by rollers from above in a small black 2 seat car. That was a wild ride in its time! Of course let a few people get mangled, permanently disfigured, and /or killed and they take a wonderful ride away.....

Then came The Son Of Beast. Longer, higher, and faster than the original Beast. The thing that they left out of the description was ROUGHER! This coaster is like one long painful car wreck. The big drop leaves you weightless as you freefall at a high rate of speed, the drawback to this is that when your weight returns at the bottom of the hill, it returns with a vengence as you careen through a series of highbanked high G 360degree plus turns and several bone rattling direction changes leading up to the tight helix loop (steel) all included on the most violent wooden coaster frame imaginable.

It doesn't scare me, it HURTS me. My neck is stiff and my spine is out of alignment from todays ride. I will try to never ride it again.

More about this later..... I have to try to get in bed, and hopefully I will be able to get OUT of bed in the morning.

IT'S SATURDAY ! ! !

2004-11-06T09:37:00.000-05:00

Saturday, the day to rest and relax.

Well for most normal people that is how it works out but not around here. Oh, no, we couldn't have that.

Not by a long shot.

Here Saturday means stuff to do that was impossible to do throughout the week. You know stuff like dishes, laundry, running the vacuum cleaner, working on the vehicles, remodeling the house, tending the garden (it is done for the year now though), mowing the grass, raking fallen leaves, pouring concrete (which is also finished for the year), etc. etc. etc. You know the normal little things....

Then there are the phone calls.

Hello, FREE 24\7 tech support here, how may I waste my life solving the same problem that you have experienced at least twice a week ever since you first got that computer.

How do I open my E-mail??

Ummmm, have you tried clicking on that little icon that you have clicked on everytime you have opened your e-mail for the last 3 years?

WOW that did it you're such a computer wizz, I don't know how you remember all of this stuff.

DUH!

I got an error message when my computer started up this morning, can you fix that so it doesn't happen again?

Can I cut your hands off so you cannot touch the computer anymore? (I think to myself) What was the error message?
I don't know what it said.
When did you get the error?
When I turned it on, I already told you that!
OK, when EXACTLY did you get the error?
Ohhhh, sorry, it was probably around 9:37 this morning.
(pulling clumps of hair out by the roots now) No, I meant when exactly DURING THE BOOT UP PROCESS did you get the error?
I don't know, I turned it on and went to get a cup of coffee and when I came back it was locked up on an error.
Call me back later after you reboot it and tell me what the error is, then MAYBE we can figure out what is wrong.

I'm thinking it's probably a PEBKAC there are alot of PEBKAC's lately...

(Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair)

My computer seems to be alot slower than it used to be. What's wrong with it?

Have you rebooted your computer to see if that helps? Sometimes you just need to reboot....
Well I'll be, it seems to be fine now. Wonder why that is??
Maybe because you have 18 different chat programs running in the background along with system commander, system restorer, system watcher, system fixer, system solver, 3 different versions of AOL, 19 backdoor trojans, 1385 spywares, 34 email virii, and every piece of junk that is automaticly downloaded when you click here to smack the monkey and win 20 dollars!

Maybe that's it?

You think?

(eye dee ten tee error is your problem = ID10T)

Enough whining for now.....

Another late night

2004-11-05T00:40:00.000-05:00

Need sleep.

At least tomorrow is Friday.

First Post

2004-11-03T21:42:00.000-05:00

This is just the beginning......