Sunday, March 22, 2009

Ok, Now it's Official

Spring arrived in the Northern hemisphere this past Friday at 7:22am, give or take a minute or two. The weather has been bearble for this early in the season and we've even had a few days up near 60°. Last Saturday I drove the bike up to the shop and had 'em put a new rear tire on her along with an oil change. Now, I'm ready for my trip out west again this summer. As long as I can hang onto my stash between now and the first part of July I'm going...period. Mesa Verde is the plan (Southwestern Colorado) but that might change depending on "stuff". We'll see how it goes.
Me and the boys (Mercury and Bailey) went up to camp today to check things out and the plan was to do some wood cutting, but once we got up there I tried for an hour to start the damn chain saw and it just was having nothing to do with firing up. Pissed me off, but it was stupid to not check it out here at home first before dragging it up there so who's to blame? We hung around for about 3 hours, spent some time stacking up wood for cutting later and just sat around for a bit and took in the sights and sounds before heading back home. It's gonna be a couple weeks at least before I open up the camper and get things ready for an overnighter. Got to find some canvas to patch a couple tears. The canvas is getting so old that it's thin and tears easily. Can't afford to fix it right so a patch will have to do. I doubt it's gonna last more than a couple more years and I'm not sure what we'll do then if we can't afford to replace it with what we'd like to have.......who knows if it'll even be an issue in a few years. Long term plans don't seem to make much sense lately.
This past week I did do some spring cleaning....got the garage somewhat cleaned up, at least enough I can get the bike in and out without tripping over stuff. It's kinda of a work in progress. Also did some raking yesterday and got the dog pen all cleaned out too. A regular whirlwind, that's me.
No big plans for the next couple weeks. I'm still working and the next worry is the end of April when Lear comes and gets the rest of their dies. We'll see at that point if there's enough of a future left for the powers that be to keep the place open and in business or call it quits. All bets and plans are off if the place folds. Stay tuned.
Tc

Sunday, March 08, 2009

Spring is on the Horizon

It's been awhile....thought I'd better at least check in.
There's been nothing to report lately other than the fact I've managed to stay employed so far while others all around me lose their jobs due to the economic fiasco that's been brought down on our heads since last fall. This blog isn't big enough, even if I had the energy, to discuss the world situation, but suffice it to say that things are ugly and more than likely will get uglier. We're treading on ground that's never been traveled on before to this degree in this country. Who knows where we'll be by the end of the year.
Economics aside, this has been one long damn winter. Since the last entry life has pretty much been wake up, go to work, come home, eat, take a nap most of the evening, check Email, play with music blog, then go to bed and repeat. Weekends are only different in that I don't have to go to work. My energy levels have been extremely low, at least in part to the world situation and the rest because I'm just stressed and so so sick of cold weather.
It's still winter here now but the rain we've had in the last week has gotten rid of all but the very biggest piles of snow. At least the sidewalks are clear so I can take the dogs out for a walk in the evenings. It's suppose to only be in the 40's for the next week so there's no reason to get excited about spring just yet, but we have made it thru the worst part.
Saturday was Chris' 17th birthday. Hard to believe but it's true. We took him and his girlfriend out to Texas Roadhouse for a steak dinner to celebrate.
Yesterday me and Mercury went up to Big Rapids to visit the folks. It was cloudy and spitting rain on the way up. We got there about 11:30am and stayed until 5:00pm. We had a good dinner and spent time helping mom with the computer and talking to dad about the world while I played stuffed animal catch with Merc. During late afternoon it started to rain pretty hard and get quite dark outside. We even had some pretty good thunder roll thru. When it was time to leave it was still raining quite hard and the streets in town were flooded. We stopped at the D.Q. for some ice cream and then headed thru the downpour for home. It rained all the way home. We got back here about 7:00. I sat down in the chair for a minute and promptly fell asleep until Chris called from work needing a ride. Later on I took a shower and caught up on Email before calling it a weekend. Ready or not here's comes another week.
That's about it for now.....hopefully things will pick up a bit in the near future.
Tc