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

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.

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.............

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.

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

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.