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Kick-Ass Friend Award!

Kick-Ass Friend AwardThis award goes to a ..  well  a Kick-Ass friend!  Some folks will offer you a shoulder to lean on.  Some will like you only if you constantly make them smile.  Some will do favors for you.  Some will do a combination of all of those things.

Then there is one or two in the whole crowd that will make you feel wonderful just by them being who they are.  They will do things for you, and not blink, complain or even have a second thought about the matter.  You don’t find many people like this today.  Hell, in many cases, people can be so shallow that there are deeper mud puddles that won’t even get your feet wet when you step in them.

I’m talking about Gene Gammon.  The she recently helped me secure a place to live when I move back home.

Why am I making such a fuss over it?  It’s because I left Michigan nearly 20 years ago.  Vanishing, but not without a trace.  I’ve always made it relatively easy to find me.  But that’s not the point.  The point is I left and fell out of touch with family and friends.  I let myself fall away from everyone I knew and loved.

When Gene and I reconnected, it was like it had only been hours since we last talked.  We caught back up, we laughed, made plans on doing things and it was excellent.

Then I asked her if she’d do me this favor.  I know it was a lot to ask of her as she works full time and raises 3 teenage girls.  Which I know from experience is tough to do even with two parents.  She’s dealing with a loss and restarting her own life.  Yet, she managed to take time out of her busy schedule and social life to make appointments with people and go visit, inspect and photograph apartments for me.  She’s one kick-ass friend!

Thank you Gene!

Now… I need someone to help me move a body…  Any volunteers?  (just kidding sheesh)

So… There’s this girl…

StaceyI mentioned having a love interest in a previous post.  That interest has changed.  You can say it changed for the better :)

I found someone I’m really beginning to like.  Her name is Stacey.  Isn’t she adorable?!?!  She’s got a shining personality to match.  Just so happens, she lives in my home town :)   Her and I seem to have many of the same interests and see eye to eye on many topics.  She loves animals, loves to go exploring, we spend hours talking and it’s just going very well.  I can’t wait to come home and start spending some time with her.  Someone who will love going to the concerts of my one son, and the games of my other son :)

Get this, she even likes video games!  I mean, could I ask for more?

Getting Better

Click for Larger Image

Click for Larger Image

Here’s how I look today. Fifty pounds lighter, and on my way back to being in good health. Even after 3 miserable heart attacks. I’m coming back kicking ass :)

Still walking daily, still eating good (95% ish).  I’ve got more determination than ever before!

Note: Couldn’t find a person willing to take a more recent pic of me (at least anyone that able to take a non-blurry shot). I know it’s probably idiotic for a guy to take a pic of himself in the mirror and all. Still, it looks loads better than the one from January.

This Old Abandoned House

Halloween is just around the corner.  Though I no longer hold a love for the holiday like I once did.  Thanks to the overly sensitive, wimpy ass society we’ve become.  Protesting things like skeletons hanging from a noose; or using old abandoned insane asylums for haunted houses because it badly portraits insane people…. Ugh… Effing pansy’s…

While things like that remind me of the old west, medieval punishment and scary ass levels in a video game; it also reminds me of a passion of mine that many folks may find weird.  I have an odd love of old abandoned buildings and houses.  Especially if the structure has remained virtually untouched for many years.  I find a kind of beauty or art in the way that mother nature has sculpted it over time.  The way it contrasts the world around it.  How it’s sort of begun to blend in with the tall weeds surrounding it.  I find it very photographic, although I’ve spent little time doing so, and what photos I had are now lost.

I love old houses, hospitals, asylums, old factories and especially train stations.  No matter the size or age.

I like sneaking inside, and exploring what people of the past have left behind.  Many times you’ll find photographs, old newspapers (some in mint condition preserved inside the walls), trinkets and machinery.  While I don’t go there to actually take things, a treasure or two can be found.  I like to photograph and sometimes just stand there using the light through the windows and try to picture what it must have been like when it was nearly new and at it’s peak of usefulness.  How the people may have dressed at the time and if it was a business, what jobs they may have been performing.  I also wonder why it was suddenly left to die.  Why they didn’t take everything.  It’s like the building lets me write a story in my head.

It’s one of the many things I miss about living in Michigan.  You can be out on a horse or motorcycle, walking through some trails and the like and suddenly you can happen upon an old cabin with all the paths overgrown.  Old abandoned cars with trees growing all around them.  Time has made it impossible to remove what at one time simply drove in.

I’ve been known to make favorite places out of these locations.  Either to just hang out by myself for some alone time, or to share it with a friend or loved one.  Some are so pretty, you can make it a spot to picnic at, or watch the fall leaves, or take in the spring flowers.  Even just lay down and look at the day or night sky.

Can’t wait to rediscover those places and new ones.

The person who runs the website English Russia, also has many articles and photographs of places all over Russia like this.

The Good Life

I’ve been a busy beaver of sorts lately.  Just started working a second job to save up money for my upcoming move.  Been making all sorts of plans and putting together a very good road map of how the next couple of years of my life are going to play out.  As I mentioned before, I’m going home.  Home for me is a small town in Northern Lower Michigan.

Things in life work out in interesting ways.  What I once thought I wanted, turns out was only an adventure to what I really needed to do.  I’m not saying it will be easy.  But it will be worth it in the end.

I ran across an old friend a few weeks ago.  Her name is Gene.  I’ve known her for a very long time.  We’re talking almost 30 years, if not more.  We’ve been spending wonderful amounts of time talking late into the nights remembering all the fun we had as kids and how we want to do more fun things when I get back into town.  It’s been more than fantastic to be talking with her again :)

It’s funny.  I left the small town to do things in the big city.  Yet, all the years I’ve been gone, I’ve really missed all that my small town had to offer.  Things the place I live now couldn’t even begin to compare too.  Here I have history, commerce and ocean front beaches.  Sounds nice, but the history is commercialized, the commerce is overpriced and I end up ordering most of what I need online and the ocean is dirty and green.  Makes me ill to look at it.  Especially after seeing what it looks like the world over.

My small town has wide open spaces.  A million places to explore.  History that has mainly remained untouched by time itself.  It has friends that always are there for you.  You can go out at night and watch the stars without street lights blinding you from the view.

Other friends like Jen and John have also chatted with me at some point since my decision to return.  I can’t wait to come back to see them and hang out with them and our children :)

It’s not the glamorous life, it’s going to be the good life.

It’s quiet… Too quiet…

That’s because I’ve been, packing, cleaning and throwing out the tons and tons of garbage that other folks left behind.  I’ve spent the past few weeks overloading the trash pickup with all the clothes, junk, lost remotes, thermometers, bits and bobs of all sorts.  Oddly none of it was mine in the first place.  On top of that, packing my own stuff up, organizing it and getting ready to put some in storage and the rest going with me to a temporary living arrangement.

It will be nice to finally live in a house where the others pickup after themselves.  [Edit] This is the part where I complained of the other inhabitants housekeeping skills or lack there of…  Let’s just say I took pictures just to promise myself never to get into another relationship like that again.  After a few years of that, I finally gave up cleaning up after everyone else and only cleaned up after myself and my pets.

Although I’m not thrilled having a roommate right off the bat.  It does, however, give me the ability to save up some money and prepare to go on my own for a bit.  Then later, should I hook up with anyone after that, then that would be just fine.

“It will be nice to get back to a normal life.” {ahem}

Window Shopping

While at the grocery store today, one of the 6 folks who actually stop by and read my dribble, got to chatting with me.  Talking about work, current events in my life and whether or not I’m still getting exercise due to the immense heat lately.

For anyone else interested, yes, I’m still doing at least something to get some exercise every day.  Though mostly it’s limited to indoor walking in malls and such.  Aside from that, I generally do any yard work really early in the morning on weekends when it’s somewhat not killing me (the aforementioned heavy booted individual standing on my chest discomfort I get in such heat).

In which such events has lead me to doing a lot of Window Shopping for various items I desire in my new future.  At least the future I picture for myself anyways.  Something that is quite out of character for me.  I’ve always wanted a family and always wanted whatever my significant other wanted for home furnishings.  I wouldn’t go as far as saying I’m being Metrosexual (as apparently it doesn’t fit the definition anyways), though I do have a color scheme in mind.  I think it’s because I finally stopped living for someone else and started living for myself.  (and my puppy dog)  Though I don’t know what kind of person that makes me.  If anything, it will at least make me happy :)

My New Bed

If you’ve been reading, you know I’m in a room by myself now.  In a previous post, I also mentioned the discovery of mold on a new memory foam bed that was purchased December of 2009.

In short I’m very happy that it had a 10 year warranty!

I’ve never had been very happy with it.  Though I decided to give it the old college try.  Since I’ve heard so many good things about these magical memory foam beds.  How it never needs turning, and it’s resistant to mold (are you serious?) and they are so comfortable!

It’s never been comfortable, it’s hard to roll over as when you sink in, you have to wake up, and fight to roll over and have to make a new dent.  When you go to wake up and get out, it’s a job and a half because there are no springs to help you bounce out.  I’ve gotten very used to coil spring beds.

So the mold turned out to be a blessing of sorts.  Granted claiming a warranty and sleeping on an air mattress has had it’s down side.  The air mattress is more comfortable, however it’s noisy and too low to the ground.  With my sleeping in a different room now, the bed becomes mine and I was able to pick out a very nice replacement coil bed and even got a free mega body pillow to go with it!  It arrives tomorrow and I’m very excited to finally get back to sleeping in a real bed again.

My New Digs

Some know I’ve been “relocated” and some haven’t heard yet.  According to sources, I snore so loudly now that they have decided I need to sleep in a different room.  What was once our office, is now my bedroom.  I didn’t get much say in the matter and there certainly wasn’t any debate about it.  So for two painful ass days, I’ve been moving my clothing and other things into our office.  Though I was told I could keep the bed and she’d get something different as she doesn’t like the memory foam shit anyways.  Well neither do I, but again, I didn’t have any say in it.  So along with everything else, I lugged that big heavy thing out of the room.  Just to find it was molding between the box spring and mattress.

Bad enough I’ve had things fall on me, trip over, kicked and gouge and cut the back of my legs and stab my feet during this 48 hours of torture.  Now the bed is ruined and we must try to have it replaced under warranty.  No idea how it managed to get mold in such an odd place.  Thus, we are both sleeping on air mattresses.

To top it all off, I don’t like being alone.  Yet for 2 days I’ve been more alone than ever.  The wife has already become quite comfortable in the old bedroom.  Me being me, I made sure her PC was up and running as soon as possible so she could relax a bit after work.  She does have tendency to over work herself.  Yet, she did help me a bit the first afternoon, but then went to her UK WoW while I struggled with my own room issues.  Which are not even close to done yet.  Of course I can’t forget to do the laundry like I do every weekend.  Now I get to put it away in two different rooms.  Joy.

Of course immediately I notice changes in behavioral patterns that unnerve me.  Why would I write about it here?  Because if it isn’t on Facebook or MSN messenger, it won’t get noticed here.

What did I notice?  Well for starters, we never used to close the doors to the bedroom or office when we were home, except if I had to change clothes.  Now her bedroom door is closed all the time.

Tonight I came in to let her watch a movie we rented (since we can’t sit on a real bed and watch it together), and she’s in her undies and what barely qualifies as a shirt, with her web cam on.  Yet she claims that our daughter is the only one who ever uses it to talk with her long distance boyfriend.  Perplexing as WoW is up, so … she isn’t looking back at anyone?  Or why video chat in her skivvies and play wow at the same time…  I’m confused.  But I’m not supposed to think this is weird or anything right?

Or that normally we’re both off the net around 9pm or 10pm yet she’s up much later with her friends online already.  Wonder if that is going to be a new trend as well.  But I’m not supposed to think anything is wrong.  It’s my snoring that was keeping her up right?

Maybe I am just a bit paranoid.  Could it be that it’s because I don’t like my new arrangement?  Also, it’s going to be kind of hard for me to rub her feet before she goes to sleep this way.

Timber!

That would’ve been nice to hear ahead of time, but alas, no one knew it was coming.

Around 10pm, the wife and I were settling in for the night, watching some Doctor Who on Netflix (my boys in the homeland of the U.K. have all the good shows!) over the wireless to our bedroom PC, a loud smash and total darkness and silence.  At first I thought it was a lightening strike but then realized there was no bad weather at that time.  I then quickly realized a tree had fallen.

Turns out it was a dead tree in our neighbors yard that had finally fallen over in the mild wind.  It closely came across the front of our house causing minor damage to the porch and ripping out the supporting eye bolt attached to the side of the house and removed a small section of siding.

Almost instantly neighbors on both sides had come to see if we were alright.  And offering help any way they could.  One is a nice contractor the other is a landscaper.  The landscaper called the power company immediately and they were on the scene within minutes and had our power restored around midnight.  He also offered up to cut up the tree and remove it.  The contractor offered up to help repair the damage and re-affix the eye-bolt so the power company can re-secure the electrical connection.  (yikes too many hyphens!)  I’ve got some great neighbors on either side of me which in and of itself is a miracle considering the neighborhood I live in.  Bless the good ones :)

Sadly the power went out again just about 8am today and wasn’t restored until after noon.  Too bad we can’t fix anything today, it’s too rainy and wet.

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