with what time and money???

so, I'm taking "west coast swing" dancing classes with cheese every Monday night for the next six weeks... my birthday is in two weeks, the following day I'm flying to l.a. to watch a friend graduate from a five year architecture program...flying back the day after that and going to dance class.. work for three days and i am renting a thirty foot r.v to drive six hours to Reno so three buddies of mine and i can watch four days of air races!!! cheese will show up on Friday night with another bud for two nights and then drive back and go to dance class, then I'm working for ten days. jumping in a car with a buddy and his two brothers and going on a four to five day backpacking trip into Yosemite... hopefully some where in there i can squeeze in a trip to Canada to visit family, if not it will be when i get back from Yosemite in early Oct, but before harvest moon.

donations please...

if more people carried guns legally (like this guy at a recent obama protest) than there world be less illegal gun violence happening to bystanders....
for one reason there would be less bystanders, they would be armed citizens.

that's all i feel like posting today....

BURGALRY FOR THE BETTER GOOD

NOT ME... BUT IVE BEEN THERE....

today we had a truck break down in front of someones gate to their house... no way past it, in or out. the drive line sheared off into two pieces... couldn't explain how that happened other than 279,199 miles of fatigue and abuse... anyways... i bang on the front door of the house and no one is home... I've been to this house before and know that in their barn is a welder and supplies... we break into the barn and after some muddling about we find all the shit we need to do the job and two hours later, we are pulling out of the driveway and on to the job....
breaking and entering for the better good of the community!!! how is that for a Tuesday special!!!

RANT

i fucked up my dirt bike on the fourth of July and just ordered some new parts to put it back into action. i think when these parts come in I'll be taking off to the south coast somewhere and set up camp. i need me some camping... Ive done a little bit this year. a real little bit, not enough to suck out and blast away the stresses of the average day... i need to over-libate, and blow the dust off the brain... yeah... and bring some guns. my buddy is going to the gun show and i think I'm going to put in another order... see if he wants to sell my sub-compact and bring me back something a little more useful. I've been looking at "the judge" but we will see...
its almost Friday...
I'm looking forward to that...
then inevitably there will be a Monday shortly there after...
meh...

THIS WAS AN EMAIL I SENT OFF TO MY STEP MOM, BUT IN BLOGGER FORM.

hey, hey... yeah i took cheese and my cousin Tasha down to baja for a whirlwind road trip. we left Saturday morning and headed down the coastal hwy 1 to l.a. where we stayed with a friend for the evening in el Segundo. got up the next day and drove down to estero beach, south of ensenada and found a piece of shit room right next to a four star hotel where we spent the evening. we would have stayed at the hotel as prices there are ridiculously cheap, but most of the peninsula goes to the west coast for cooler weather right now. the hotel was pretty slick and we watched the sunset over the ocean while eating and drinking Cadillac margaritas... we danced to some live music and put cheese to bed early. Tasha and i stayed up late drinking on the back of the pick up truck. got up early and crossed the desert over to San Felipe the next day. the check points were fairly casual and only had to get out of the truck a couple of times in the hundred plus degree weather... stopped for lunch at one of the side of the highway cement boxed building touting lunch and cold beverages. two short heavy set women created a breakfast for us three and their two children showed the ladies where the toilet seat less loo was located and waited for each of them just out side the bathroom "door".

once in San Felipe we got some food and did some preliminary shopping, in short bursts left the air conditioned hotel room and explored the near vacant tourist destination... the hotel was sweet as it was right on the beach and had two bars and a restaurant on site.... spent the night drinking more local beverages and wasted some brain cells watching t.v.got up the following day and searched out some swim goggles and entered the sea of cortez for the first time. the water was near hut tub temperature and was exhausting to swim in for more than ten minutes at a time!! I'll bet it was around ninety five degree water. the beaches were long and flat and to get to water over your head we had to swim out four hundred yards or so. i opted to stay closer to the beach where i could keep an eye out on the beer we had stashed there. we had some phenomenal tacos at one of the restaurants built to hold sixty people or more and we were again one of the only people there... we took cheese out for her birthday and went to a club that could hold a thousand people but once again were the only people there. (save for a few of the bartenders friends.) got cheese to sing some Mexican karaoke and did some dancing to house music before we stumbled back to the truck to head back to the hotel... we went out for another swim about midnight, when surprisingly there were fifty or so people who were doing the same thing!
the tide was out so we could get deeper faster, but the water was only nominally cooler. we spent the rest of that evening doing somersaults and back flops onto the sandy spit we were laying out on under the sliver of moon.
the next day we had planned to spend shopping for touristy shit to bring back to the states, but by ten a.m. in the morning the temp had risen to a balmy 109 degrees, coupled with the 80 percent or so humidity we were rendered useless. it was so hot some stores power was not functioning and had no lights or fans... we decided unanimously to pack our shit and head for cooler beaches on the pacific side of baja.



drove back across the desert and meandered our way back through ensanada and up the coast to Porto nueavo. i had done some preliminary Internet searches of possible places to stay before we had left big sur and we drove up to the manned gate at one of the hotels there... checked into a two story condo directly on the ocean front and were quite happy with the accommodations... fully furnished and accoutremented with two bathrooms, coffee machine, microwave, fridge, two t.v.s, and a complete kitchen set, fold out couches, etc... it was a beautiful place. spent the evening shopping in the lobster village district located a block from the hotel where we sampled some local tequila and bartered for better prices with street vendors... watched a late night movie and finished off a case of beer and drank some over priced/fancy bottled tequila we had purchased to bring back...
after sitting through a couple of hours of border traffic and passing the border patrols silly questions we embarked on our ten hour drive home...
not too bad, we drove almost fifteen hundred miles in five days and were no worse for wear... a few lost brain cells left here and there, some money spent and good times were had....

well now...

i fucking hate it when blogs fade to black. you check and check and check and there is never a new post. some good goddamn blogs have faded into the abyss in the short time I've been exposed to this world.
and here i sit at the forefront of that exact scenario. with nary a post in almost a month, never commenting and rarely commenting back, i have become one of the blogs i detest most... i have no excuses. other than the normal, "I'm busy, I'm tired, I'm too lazy...". so what gives eh?
other than planning cheeses 30th birthday, partying for it, a weeks clean up, planning a Mexican road trip, doing the road trip, recovering from the road trip, catching up with all my missed work, marinating an exploding garden(x2) and all my other house work, i have not been doing anything other than stare off into space for minutes at a time before i pass out exhausted for the night...
work is work and life is going along at its usual pace of way too fucking fast. i turn thirty six next month and the weight of "what the fuck have you done?" is bearing down on me more and more... i feel like i have enough toys, although more guns and a new dirt bike or two are on the horizon... I'd like a newer boat and a bigger garden but who can be too choosy with these things...
not much of a post or update, but I'm zonked and needing to get to Salinas for parts... thanks all for your continued comments and for checking in!!!

MEXICO...

DRINK
DRANK
BIRTHDAY
DRINK
DRIVE
DDRUNK...
BE BACK SOON...

one of those mornings...

fucking people sometimes!!!! rarararargrgrgrgrgrgrggrgrgrhhhghghgg....

for weeks now, closer to three months, management has been trying to get one of our guys to go down to the health center and paint some handi-capped parking strips and a stencil. in the beginning his excuse was "i don't have the paint.". so i ordered him some caution blue highway grade paint. both in a one gallon container and two cases of spray paint. then his excuse was "these cans wont fit in my custom strip painting machine.". i didn't even know we had a custom strip painting fucking machine. so he orders two cases of paint for his machine. and there the paint sat on the table in front of the office for weeks.
i show up to work the other morning and caught wind of an end to a management meeting where the big boss was asking if someone could please go and paint the fucking lines at the health center... i said id do it, i was sick of fucking hearing about this shit and tired of office personnel asking what these boxes of paint were doing on the table...
i grab a guy and we head down to the location. we clean up the area, and go into the office to let the ladies know we are there and planning on painting the handi-fucking-capped area. i showed them a ADA approved painting scheme and asked if there was any questions...
we returned after lunch when the asphalt was dry, knocked on the door to let them know we were back and we would be beginning work and cornering off the area.
we are mostly through the job when their "lunch hour" ends, they unlock the door and come out to see the progress.

"this isn't how Sharron wanted it..."
"it looks nice but its wrong..."
"i think Sharron wanted it differently..."
"i wish we would have known you were here, we got an email during lunch..."

said the ladies of the health center.

"uh, i knocked on the door. i showed you the plans. you said to go ahead with it and begin earlier." i replied.

you all must understand, we are doing this for free. as a contribution to our community, to our health center. i didn't charge for my hours and wasn't planning on writing down the value of the paint and such...

this morning we get a phone call for the chief person there. (a long time family like friend) who is not pleased with new handi-capped parking area. i took my boss down there and showed him what i had done and explained how/why i did it that way... there were four cars parked there in the same way i had painted the lines. the old handi-parking was painted the same way. the handi-parking sign was facing directly forward and the ramp for hand-access is positioned for ambulance parking in that manner as well.

sounds good right.

take into account this is highway grade paint. like the lines you see in the center of the road on every fucking freeway in America. now i have to bring down our large air compressor, my industrial sandblaster, several hundred pounds of bagged kiln dried cement and spend the rest of my day truing to remove this shit. then remeasure it all (if that is successful) and repaint it all diagonal..

i think i will be bringing some beer down for this and blasting some Micheal Jackson during their lunch hour, so they know that im there....

MY LIVER HURTS...

well then... after flipping off my motorcycle twice i decided i was too drunk to be driving that machine. i figured i better try to make it back to the house and park it. once home i saw the quad and said to myself, "hey man, that thing is way more stable!!!" and proceeded to make it about forty feet up my driveway before somehow rolling it on top of my self... uh... is there a lesson i should have been learning there?

with only a ounce or two of flesh missing and a softball sized welt on my right elbow i made it out pretty much unscathed... I'll take a look at the bikes when i get home...

other than that i managed to get into the pool with all my clothes on (including shoes) and be in bed and asleep by ten thirty pm. so not too bad...

have a great week all and hoped you all fared better than me this weekend!!!

PAID DAY OFF

I generally don't do shit when I'm home alone... take this morning for example... cheese is off to work and I'm still sitting around in my birthday suit smokin cigarettes checking out the latest news and bullshit in the intrawebworldorama... its a beautiful day out, i could be golfing, shooting, going on a motorcycle ride, working in the garden, etc... but no... im sitting here doing fuck all.

oh, i got a raise at work. i almost declined it, but i found out several other people got an equally shitty raise. I'm calling it a cost of living increase (if i was a bum on the streets of Sudan). I'm not sure where management lives but where i live a cost of living increase in my pay would have been a whole lot more...

and, I'm having a paid day off... so sitting around naked in my house shirking my chores is actually not such a bad thing after all now is it??? care to join?

years ago i took this bucket of nails and turned it into the piece below.... it took eight hours, almost thirty beers and a pack of smokes... it was a fun project and i still have it on the wood burning stove today!!

i wish i had a better picture of the back...

have a great weekend kids!!!!

two celebs in one day... who is gonna be number three?!?!?!

first farrah fawcett and now dang... micheal jackson just had a heart attack?

PARTY!!!!

on the eighteenth of July we are having a nice size party... would anybody like to come down and hang with us... cheese is turning 30 the next week. one of cheeses bff's is also turning 30, so is one of her friends and perhaps a few more people who are having birthdays that week will be attending the event...
it will be rather small compared to some of the parties we have had in the past, with only sixty or so people showing up. I've had over two hundred people at events in the past, but those months to prepare for and ended being quite costly, monetarily, emotionally and physically. (we all cant party like its nineteen ninety nine any more can we?)
but i think this will be an epic. hopefully lots of people will be spending the night as (at least i have) been billing it as "summer slumber" fest. you know, bring your tents, kids, coolers, food and loads of bug spray!!! we are looking at buying two kegs, another BBQ, tons of champagne (for breakfast) loads of steaks and shit. we've got the badminton net up, the pool filled, a disc golf course in the works, etc. etc...
if any of you have two cents worth of ideas of other things i could do/provide/cater, lemme know!!
but most of all we will be celebrating the thirtieth years of some phenomenal women... should be a fun time... no need to RSVP, just show up sometime Saturday afternoon and get your groove on... happy Tuesday all and enjoy yourselves...

muh....

you know you want to be reading a new post here... its on the way... im taking lunch now so i'll be back...

really old fuckers...

but being dirty is so much more fun...

six months ago this dude brings in this ancient rusty BBQ and want us to do something to it... its been sitting in our metal pile since then. every now and then this dude calls and asks if its done yet. for six months hes been inquiring on its status and who ever answers the phone and talks to this guy writes down a message not addressed to anyone, asking about this fucking BBQ. no one knows exactly what he wants done and/or who to bill for it... we have even pulled it out of the bin every now and then, looked at it, scratched our heads and put it back.

this afternoon this old guy rolls up to my shop inquiring again about this BBQ.

"hey boy, so its not finished yet?" he says with notable irritation.
"what? whats not done yet?" i reply from under a welding mask.
"the BBQ for campground." he growls.

i stop what I'm doing and walk over to the metal bin, yank out this forty year old BBQ, and ask...

"why is this here again?"
"well, i talked with someone here a while back about getting this fixed..."
"who?" i interrupted.
"um, someone here said they could..."
"who?" i interrupted again. "what did they say we would do?"
"listen here sunny, i brought this in so it could be repaired and spoke with someone about it." he stammers.

at this point i am ignoring my guy who is standing around waiting for me to finish welding the brackets on the plate of steel so he can begin welding them into place inside the truck...

"no offence, but I'm really busy. what I'll do is get you a pad of paper and you can perhaps draw a diagram of what you want done to it, or write it down..."

i walk into the office and get him a fresh legal pad and a new pen. walk back out to the barn and give it to him.

"well i need a wire welded to it and some pipe extensions and any cra--"
"I'm sorry, if you could write a description of what you need done, then who ever it is you talked to about doing this can get it done---"

he interrupts me this time...

"hey kiddo, i need some wires welded here, " (he points to something on the tray) "and some pipe welded here---"
"yeah, like i said, I'm sorry but I'm really busy right now and my guy here is waiting for me to finish these brackets so he can do his job---"

fucker cuts me off again...

"HEY NOW BOY, WHAT I NEED IS SOME WIRES WELDED HERE--" he raises his voice like im fucking deaf or speak Spanish and don't understand what he is saying.

"here is the paper---"
"my handwriting isn't that good, that's why I'm telling you about---"
"you need to talk to who ever it is you left this with in the first place---"
"IT NEED SOME WIRES WELDED HERE AND A PIECE OF PIPE ADDED TO THE---"
"so please come back at eight in the morning tomorrow and see who it was that you left this with here and speak with them about what EXACTLY IT IS YOU WANT THEM TO DO..."
"well if i could just tell you--"
"no, I'm not going to weld your BBQ. it will be someone else, this someone you spoke with will be more than happy to do it for you, but right now you've got a dime waiting on a penny and i need to get back to work."
"well I've got another one i need welded to a pipe and sunk in concrete, I'd like to do them both at the same time---"
I'll see you at eight in the morning sir and help you find your someone and they will help you with all of that."

i turn, walk back to my welding table and start blasting away. i feel this man burning holes into my head and damning me to hell. he must have spent another five minutes there telling the back of my head what it is that he wants someone to do for him. i hear his truck start and he drives off.
don't get me wrong, I'm down with old people. but I'm not your "sunny", your "boy", your "hey you" and I'm definitely not your "someone"... so have a little more respect for the people who you asking to do you a favor next time cause i could have done all that welding in about four minutes...

alas....

i seem to have less and less time to do the things i really want to be doing and more and more hobbies to fill the time i don't have... whoa is me right?!?! but i do indeed have too many hobbies...
i golf...
i have a need to shoot guns and plenty to shoot....
i love camping...
i enjoy backpacking, (figured out I've been doing that for twenty three/four years now)...
i like to ride my motorcycle/quad when ever possible...
i garden...
i really,really garden...
i enjoy reading, (although i am too ff-ing tired at the end of the day to even finish the book i started months ago, "the kite runner")...
tattoos? fuck I've got a huge piece on my back needs finishing...
i own a ski boat that hasn't seen water in years...
I've been to the mountains to snowboard and never even got around to it.
i enjoy traveling to other countries, meeting new people and killing them... err... that's not me, that's the army! whoops...

what ever shall i do?!?!


so, this weekend backpacking went really well. we didn't get to do any of the trails we initially planned on due to the fact that there was either a wall of water (due to rain) coming down the trail or the trail was simply not there (due to last years fire and this years rain, coupled with no trail maintenance, means NO TRAIL). but we had a wicked good time for four days and three nights out in the back country of Carmel valley by the river.... the best part? the hardest part of planning the trip? the food!!!

we ate so fucking good. so good...

bagels and cream cheese with lox in the mornings... hard boiled eggs, oatmeal and fresh coffee with whiskey... lunch? first day was sandwiches with cold deli meats, lettuce, tomato etc... all the fixins... every other day was rye triskuts, salami, wicked good cheeses, cliff bars, Gatorade, plenty of ganja, dried mangoes, salted almonds, apricots, etc...
dinners!!! oh fuck....
first night was apple sausage stuffed portobellas, steamed zucchinis, rice, garlic bread and several whiskeys... second night was tritip skewers with sweet onions and three different peppers, steamed veggies and more garlic bread. third night we had chicken breast slices mixed with rice pilaf, steamed broccoli, carrots etc.. another yummy loaf of garlic bread (all with home made garlic butter) we baked an elephant garlic but were all too stuffed to eat any of it save for a few bites and tequila with coffee for dessert....

oh yeah you wanna go camping?!?!?! hahahahahaa....

must go, work calleth me...

JUST IN TIME TO LEAVE AGAIN...

back from a five day motorcycle trip and on to a four day back packing adventure.... tell you all about it soon!

have a great weekend all!!!!

yup, leaving all the dramanators behind and heading up out of the fog and into the sunny, buggy, heat of the south coast!!! hahahahahahaaa..... have a great weekend all!!!!

a week has passed!!

A BACK DOOR VIEW?...

with friends dropping like flies around me I've spent some inner time wondering to myself why... it couldn't be my complete understanding and forgiving nature of all that is green and golden. nor could it be the fact that i hold friendship above all else and am loyal to the bone... perhaps its my "walk all over me, I'm a piece of trash" persona... or may be its that i don't fit into any group or silly little click...
i dunno... i look around and see who is still involved in my life after eleven years and change here in big sur and see who i just say "hey" to. people come and go and the friends i thought would still be here are not. I'm guilty of burning bridges for sure. starting the fire though? not my style. but I'll burn the bridge and stand on the side to watch it burn while flipping off the person on the other side. thats how i've always been, nothing new there.

so... whats it take to be my friend? you might ask? if you've been reading here long enough you might also wonder how i even have any friends at all. well that's my life. i generally surround myself with people just like me. brutally honest, to a fault. someone who can take a joke. people who know how to keep their mouths shut and help others shut theirs when necessary... some one who doesn't mind drinking alot or people who do. i most like people that help them selves. you know the ones, where they work for what they have, sometimes might need help, but will be there working with you to help fix the problem, not just throw their hands up and say what bad luck they have, or they cant do any better... everyone needs help sometimes... especially me!

i have been putting some thought into all this. how do i define my friends... some of my closest friends i hardly ever see or talk to. (hmmm, perhaps there is something to that.) but the ones i do see and hang out with know that for the most part, i have time for those who have time for me. I'm not bending over for anyone. I'm not making plans to see someone cause their ass hurts about something I've done or said.

hey, have a problem with me? did i do something you don't like? hurt your feelings?

call me.
text me.
stop by my work.
leave me a message.

when i hear that your are talking shit, i will do all of the above listed items and if i still don't hear from you i will find you. (I'm good at that.) and i will make effort to figure out what it is that you have stuffed up your ass that involves me. i would expect the same courtesy from you please...

i piss people off from time to time. i cant imagine it, but i hear through the grapevine that i do so... there is another thing that just pisses me right the fuck off!!!

"oh, (so and so) said you were doing this..." or that, or what ever the fuck it is that people say I'm doing/done, why don't they ask me about it. fuckers. lead your own lives, deal with your own drama, go fuck yerselves...

now I'm getting irritable...

i guess what i was trying to get across is, I'll burn that friendship bridge, continue pushing me, I'll burn your house down, still want to play games?, I'll set you on fire. yer not worth the piss it would take to put out the flames.

have a nice day.

that time of year...

I've been busting my ass these weeks... and am currently trying to abort my beer baby. how long should it take to about a twenty pounder?
i haven't had time for much fucking off at work or at home. but i have time for a quick story...

last week there was a tailgate party we were uninvited to, due to the fact that my ex girlfriend lives in proximity of the parking area of the party and she is still acting like a sixteen year old fucking twat. at some point during the evening i was sitting with a group of ten friends or so, all of whom had not been invited to this party either, so i said fuck it! I'll go!!!
i decided since it was early and it was indeed a tailgate party, outside in a parking lot that i could take a little heat for showing up "verbally un-invited".
after a few more drinks and another stop later i thought of how much of a good idea it would be to "surf" a tailgate up the two mile road behind my truck. chain it to the bumper and tie a rope to the front and yahoo my way up the mountain. IT WAS A TAIL GATE PARTY AFTER ALL!!!
cheese didn't think this was such a good idea... i would have to steal a tail gate from somewhere and ride it behind my truck... and show up to a party where i was more than unwelcome! (can you imagine me not welcome somewhere!?!?!? the nerve!!! hahahaha...)
we pulled into my work and looked around for something that would qualify as a tailgate i could ride....
no love, but there was an old truck box... the kind folks put in their truck beds and put tools into and supplies... i axed two holes into the top and side of this tool box, fed a chain through and attached it to my truck... somewhere in this process i thought what a great idea it would be to fill it with ice and spray paint "happy beerthday" onto it....
how cool would that be to ride a tool box up two miles of dirt road filled with ice, a hootin and a hoolerin like i was riding a bucking bronco!!! yeah it woulda been funny.
instead i didn't remember the ice. or the spray paint... and i just dragged this fucking rattle box up the road to the designated parking lot/party area and no one was there...
they were all in the lawn directly in front of the house having a little love in thing. apparently when i arrived it turned into more of a pity party for my ex, understandably upsetting the birthday girl...

side note:funny when i where my "real forest" camo, its cause i don't want to be seen in the woods. not cause i want to pretend to be a red neck on a camp out, i digress....

we parked and some folks came over to see what all the ruckus was about. one of the land owners was there making sure i hadn't rolled my truck or some shit. the care taker popped up and was trying to figure out how to get the truck box in the back of her Subaru.. i assured them both that i would most definitely be dragging it back down the road and not to worry about the noise. it was just me...
we were asked to leave by several people and left with out much of a scene... dropped the truck box at my work and cheese and i went out to dinner afterwards... no harm no foul...

unless you don't have a sense of humor... meh.