The Yellow Brick Road

The Other Foot Finally Falls

2009-05-01T17:02:00.003-04:00

Well, I've been called a pessimist in the past for my outlook on the world these days, although I prefer realist, but no matter the label, my worst fears once again came true last Thursday, the 23rd, when the job came to an end and I became another one of the great unwashed and unemployed.

I knew it was a possibilty since the first of the year, but pessimist or not I had a tiny bit of hope I was holding onto until the night of the 22nd when the 6oclock news announced that due to a 47% reduction in auto sales for the 4th month in a row that GM was shutting down the bulk of their operations for the next 2 / 3 months. After hearing that my hopes and stomach sank. It doesn't take an economic genius to figure out the ripple effect on that announcement. The next day, by noon, most of the companies we had orders from had cancelled the orders, by 2 the boss was there to lay me off and by 4 I was home to share the wonderful news with the wife.....for the umpteenth time.

Not sure what's gonna happen, but this time ain't like times in the past....with all the crap that's gone on in the country lately there are millions of people out of work, not just me and with all the automotive problems currently with GM and now Chrysler, (they just filed for bankruptcy and shut down all their plants until it's finalized)......there isn't going to be much demand for CMM programmers let alone anybody else that's tied to automotive.

On top of my situation, for the first time in history, the wife has also had her hours reduced to 32, which is a 20% cut in pay, so in the last couple weeks we've had our income reduced by almost 1,000 bucks a month (assuming I get unemployment). There's no way we can maintain everything with that kind of reduction so it's a matter of importance what gets paid and the rest I guess disappears.........that's easy to say but not very easy to watch happen. It's like a slow motion train wreck.

I won't start a rant about what I think is going on in the world today, but I'm very concerned about this country these days, the direction we're heading and the things that are happening around us. This week alone there's been a Swine flu scare that is so hoeky that it's not funny. With that in mind let me share a quote with you from Fredrick Von Hayek, a famous economist. "Emergencies" have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded. Take it for what it's worth I guess, but at the risk of being a pessimist again, I hope the economic base of this country doesn't collapse completely......if that happens jobs aren't the issue, food and shelter will be.

I really don't know if I'll be writing in here much for awhile.....I don't want to document my life going into the toilet. I'm hoping I'm just being melodramatic and life will be good again before long, but being the pessimist I am I'm gonna hope for the best and try to prepare for the worst.

Wish me luck, I do the same for you. It looks like there's some rough road up ahead. How far it goes and how rough it gets is anybody's guess.

I'm scared that my gut feeling may be right and never more in my life would I love to be completely wrong.

Ok, Now it's Official

2009-03-22T23:16:00.000-04:00

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.

Spring is on the Horizon

2009-03-08T20:02:00.003-04:00

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.

MAKE IT STOP ALREADY!!!!

2009-01-18T21:44:00.004-05:00

AAAArrrrrggggg!!! Snow, Snow and more damn snow! I don't usually get this sick of all the white crap until the last half of February, but this year we've been getting our asses kicked with almost daily lake effect on top of whatever else is on it's way thru.....The sad thing it's only been about 6 weeks since this all started in earnest, but other than a couple day break after christmas it's been a steady and demoralizing bliltz. On top the tons of snow it's also been colder than hell too....temps this past week have been around zero or below. Unless you're a polar bear there's not much you can do in that kinda climate. Like I've said many times before I need to get out of this climate to somewhere where their idea of cold is temps in the 50's. Somewhere where snow is not even possible. I've been reading alot about New Zealand and the more I read the more it sounds ideal for a variety of reasons. I won't go into them all here but the climate is just one big plus of several that appeals to me. It might be a bit hard to get used to having summer in December but I think I could suffer thru.......

Weather aside the economy continues to suck, dropping like a rock and putting people I know out of work almost every day. I'm not quite there myself but this past week we were put on a 4 day work week "until things improve". Well, not holding out a lot of hope for improvement in the near future I hope the job can hold on that long, otherwise I'll be standing in the same line as a shitload of other folks are these days.

This little blog was started to keep track of my adventures in life, but these days I'm gonna include some of my thoughts on where things are going in this country and planet. It's not a rosy outlook for the simple reason there's too much evil out there and it's winning. One only has to look around a bit with an open eye, a critical thinking capacity and a talent for reading in between the lines to see that we're losing freedoms every day that we've had since this country was founded. The sad thing is most folks don't even realize what's going on around 'em. TV fills their heads full of shit and incapacitates their ability to think for themselves. Not to worry, I'm not going to rant from here on out but I'm going to give you some words/phrases to look up next time you're bored or curious and a couple websites that everyone should at least view once. That should be more than enough for now. I'm sure there'll be more later.

Bilderberg

Tri-lateral Commission

Skull and Bones

Illuminati

Federal Reserve

Operation Northwoods

New World Order

http://www.warnthepeople.org/

http://lc911finalcut.com/

Pay attention to what the new, media proclaimed Messiah does in the weeks and months ahead...learn to ask questions and think critically if you want to have a future.

Time for sleep.

Wipping Clean The Slate Once Again

2009-01-02T15:51:00.006-05:00

I've been meaning to write a few lines since Christmas, but a lack of enthusiasm for the subject matter and a general malaise has kept me from getting it done. If you're looking for a warm and fuzzy seasonal post I'd stop now.

So anyhow, as far as the holiday season has gone...pretty much lackluster. With no cash really for gifts there was not much point to being out and about in a crush of people at the mall just to wander around. Thanks to the more than crummy weather around christmas we didn't even make the trip to the folks house, opting instead for a future time when the whole damn world wasn't one big snowball. Heck, we didn't even get around to putting up a tree this year for the first time ever. That's not a big deal though...with no little feet around there's not much point to pretending, plus, the wife was headed to Florida the day after Christmas to chaperon the band bus trip to Disney again so there was nobody here but me to deal with it.

The weather for the month of December has been a monster. By the end of the month we'd had 58" of snow, considerably more than our normal 23" amount. There was so much in such a short amount of time that I simply couldn't keep up with the downfall and until we finally caved in and paid for a snowplow to stop by, we had one lane open at the end of the driveway to get out and the rest of it was buried waste high in county snowplow residue. And then, after two weeks of almost constant snow, the day after Christmas it started warning up and by late Saturday it was almost 60° and raining cats and dogs. By the time it cooled off again a day later, most all the snow but the piles was gone and you could see ground again. The downside to that of course was flooding. There was major flooding up and down the Grand River including an area not 2 miles away from the house. We've only had a couple inches of snow since the thaw and I'm hoping that will last for awhile.

I used my last 3 days of vacation from work to have off from the 24th to January 5th. Due to the economic meltdown that the country is in the middle of dealing with, when I go back on the 5th there's only going to be about a dozen folks out on the floor, running production. Not good. We have to generate enough income for the company to keep the place heated and the lights on, not to mention cover the payroll and if that don't happen I'll be on the street again with the rest of what's left of the crew. We also lost one of our 2 biggest customers this past month and they've been busy pulling their dies out of house the last few weeks. The other big customer is GM and that ain't exactly the best deal in town these days....whether or not they get their billion dollar government bailout. I'm not real clear on how this whole thing is gonna turn around, if it ever does, just because we have a new president. From what I've been reading in the money magazines we headed at a high rate of speed back to 1929 again. Except this time we're not 70% rural, it's more like 20% and so there's gonna be more folks that don't have the capability to feed themselves this time around. Not good.

On the "up" side I just started my 57th orbit around the sun a few days ago. Ri and Adam took me out to dinner and a movie to celebrate the event, which was real nice of 'em with me being here by myself and all.......I was back over to their place again the next evening to play Wii and watch the new year come in. That's better done with company too.

Real early this morning, about 3am to be exact, I was at the high school to pick up the wife on her return to the frozen north country. By the time I got to bed it was almost 5am. While she and the kid were gone I was able to get the laundry room floor painted again and over the past week did a bunch of cleaning so the place has less of that white trash feel to it. I also set my drums back up and been beating the hell outa them the last several nights.

I've got no resolutions for the new year. I have hopes, but they're guarded with a fair amount of reality. I don't see things getting any better in the next 12 months, more than likely they'll get worse and my own selfish self only hopes that it doesn't have to effect us here to the point we're not both working. With all the BS the last couple years from the kid and other sources our cushion is pretty much gone and it wouldn't take much of a bump to fall off the edge of the knife.

Like always though, time will tell and I plan to keep on truckin' until they pull the plug. Stay tuned.

And Already....Home Again

2008-11-30T18:43:00.008-05:00

I guess it should be no surprise to me, or about anyone else that a 4 day trip, with 2 days of it spent on the road, goes by pretty quick.

We were on the road by 5am Wednesday morning and the first couple hours were driven in the dark. By the time it started to get light we were in Indiana and headed towards Illinois at 80mph. The trip for the most part was uneventful. The weather was clear and sunny the whole way. We changed drivers a couple times at fuel stops and by 5:00 CST we were heading down 4th street in Fort Leavenworth, looking for Jen's house.

It was a secret for a couple weeks that Ri was going with us instead of Chris and as we pulled in the driveway and parked, Eric was just pulling in from a trip to daycare to pick up the boys, who seemed real happy to see Ri.

Within an hour or so of arriving we were having Mexican pie for dinner thanks to the wife. The rest of the evening was spent kicked back on the couch, playing with the kids while the women got stuff ready for the Thanksgiving feast the next day.

After a fitful night's sleep and breakfast we ran some errands to get last minute things that we needed for the big meal. When 3:00 came around we were all sitting down to eat Turkey, yams, mashed potatos and gravy, corn and rolls. It was a good feast. The rest of the day went by quickly. Me and Ri took a walk after dinner with one of Jen's puppies that Ri was bringing home and hiked up the hill a couple blocks east of their house for a view of the Missouri River. Their house is literally about 300 yards inside Kansas.

Nobody stayed up too late Thursday night cuz the Polgars were getting up at 4am to go shopping for those Walmart black Friday bargins and the rest of us were just tired out form all the eating and trips back and forth to various stores.

Friday was spent running errands during the morning and then we all made a trip out to the mall / race track to do some shopping at the Nebraska Furniture Mart. A huge freakin' place with way too many people in it for me. We were there on a mission to find a new microwave oven for the Polgar house. Not being much of a shopper I was happy to get the hell outa there and head back to the house. By the time we got back to the house it was time to take the puppies (3) to the vet for their checkups because plans had changed since we arrived. We were now bringing all 3 of them back with us. One for Ri, One for Maynard and the 3rd one for his sister.

Once everyone was back home again from the vet it was time for supper. Wanda had made a big pot of chili so we dived into that with spoons, bowls and crackers. Before long it was time to put the kids to bed and say our goodbyes then as we wouldn't be waking them up in the morning to say goodbye. I'm sure they didn't realize that was the plan at the time we tucked them in. It had been a fast two days made up mostly of eating, napping and shopping.

Saturday came too early and the girls were up and packed before I got up. We packed up the bags and made sure we had everything. Ri went and got the puppies and got them loaded in their travel bag. Jennette had said they were going to get up to see us off but when the time came to go they were still asleep so we fired up the car and headed out of town. It was disappointing not getting to say goodbye to the daughter but it didn't make much sense to wake 'em up just to say Goodbye and send 'em back to bed.

The ride back was almost as uneventful as the ride out but having 3 puppies in the car livened things up a bit. Rest Area stops took longer with having 3 puppies to keep empty and people's questions about how old?, what were they? etc....We had some snow going thru Missouri, but by the time we got back up to Des Moines it had stopped and just stayed grey and cold the rest of the way home. We got back into town about 7:30pm and made a stop at the Greens to show off the puppies and then took the two Ri wasn't keeping over to Maynards place and dropped them off. Once that was done we headed back to the house to pick up Chris and then we headed for Texas Roadhouse for a good meal after a long ride.

It was nice seeing the grandkids again. They all had grown a bit since they were here in May. I got to spend some quality time with all of them, but I never did take any pictures though....inbetween shopping trips, eating and naps I just never got started, so instead of my handiwork I'm including a couple pics that Jen sent from their photo session of a couple weeks ago.

Ryan, Ethan & Jason

Eric, Jen & the boys

It's late and I need some sleep to get ready for the grind in the morning. Had a good time, just went by too damn fast for my tastes.

Road Trip Time...

2008-11-25T20:31:00.002-05:00

We're getting up at 4am tomorrow morning to head off to Kansas to visit with Jen and her family for Thanksgiving. Not tired enough yet to close my eyes so I thought I'd do a bit in here to kill some time.

I don't think I've mentioned it yet but after months of hunting on and off for a suitable place online to show off my camera work it looks like I may have finally found one actually worth paying an annual fee for.....it's called SmugMug and consists of a lot of nice features, including the one that sold me, a full screen slide show format. SmugMug is quite a large community too and as time goes on I hope to get more involved in it. To keep it simple for now though I've got an address to share with you if you're interested in seeing some of my pics. The basic addy is......

http://tceckels.smugmug.com/

All my camera work can be accessed from that one link. SmugMug is set up in Galleries and from this Home page you can click on any of the galleries shown. There's not much to see yet as I'm just getting started, but there's enough there to give you an idea how it'll work.

On a different note.....while putting up some pics from my bike trip to Virginia in May of '06 I rediscovered some video I took at a bluegrass festival we attended. Back then I didn't have a way to upload the files to share 'em but nowadays I do so here are some links to several tunes by a couple different bands. If all works as planned you should be able to play these with Windoze Media player. I'd suggest downloading them first and then playing them unless you have a fast high-speed connection. Along with the music there's also a short clip of a guy we met during a rest stop who pulled in on his bike, a bike that was powered by a Chevy 350 V-8! The video is a short clip of him firing it up and gettng ready to take off.....

After getting back home from this trip I wrote to the guy running the sound board about one band I dug, Crooked Creek and he was nice enough to send me an entire album of their stuff that they'd just gone into the studio to record. Hopefully these links will work for y'all and get that foot atappin.

CROOKED CREEK

http://rapidshare.com/files/167445894/NickelAndDime.mpg

http://rapidshare.com/files/167452596/BlueMoonOfKentucky.mpg

ALL 4 HYM

http://rapidshare.com/files/167455567/ICanFeelHimInMySoul.MPG

V-8 BIKE

http://rapidshare.com/files/167456206/V8_Bike.MPG

Time to go get some sleep, 4am will be here sooner than I want it to be I'm sure. Cya when we return.

It Had To Happen Sooner Or Later...

2008-11-09T23:34:00.002-05:00

...and it finally did this afternoon. It snowed enough to cover the green grass. Ack. And if that wasn't bad enough the whole damn week ahead is suppose to be more of the same. Of course if you really want to get depressing the next 4 or 5 months is gonna be more of the same.......

This past week was pretty quiet as things tend to get this time of year. It was nice enough Monday thru Wednesday to ride the bike to work a couple last times. Which makes today's weather even that much more painful.

I wasn't feeling too good Friday morning, or Thursday night either for that matter, so I decided to take the day off work and just stay home and keep a low profile. I have my computers at work now set up so I can access them from home which is kinda cool. Now I can do some of my work from here and not have to go in......yeah, right.

This past Tuesday was the election and the country voted Democrat this time around and we have someone who as far as I know hasn't even established the fact that he's legally eligible to be president, but I guess that, like so many other things, doesn't matter these days. Nobody can say the guy doesn't have Charisma and the fact he's kinda black has given the black community a new messiah. First one since Martin Luther King I guess. They're comparing him to Kennedy which is pretty funny when he hasn't even done anything yet. I just hope he don't come to the same end as JFK. I think it's a definite possibility. Time will tell, but the next 6 months should be interesting. The economy is so freaking bad that there's talk about General Motors going belly up which will put another million people, at least, on the public dole, including me probably. Gas has gone from July's high of $4.20 a gallon down to $1.99 tonight. I'll stop on that positive note cuz I don't want to start ranting about shit I can't do nothing about. Sit down, strap in and hang on, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

I can't recall if I mentioned it yet or not but we're planning on going out to Fort Leavenworth for Thanksgiving weekend to visit Jennette and her clan. Leaving early morning the 26th and will be back home the evening of the 29th. A short visit. What I like to call a power trip. :-)

Ah well, one day at a time.

All Wrapped Up And Put Away For Another Year

2008-11-02T23:27:00.003-05:00

Although it's raining this evening, it's been a real nice weekend for weather, albeit about a week too late, mostly sunny and in the 60's....

Friday night was halloween. We didn't have a pumpkin or candy so we got the hell out of the house for the evening.

Saturday I woke up at 6:30am and decided to stay up and get stuff around before making a trip up to camp to close everything up for the winter. Me, Mercury and Bailey were on the road by 8:30am and after a couple stops arrived at camp just about 10. The first thing I did was put away the runway lights and put coffee cans over the posts so they wouldn't get all wet and rusty during the winter. Might make it easier come spring to find 'em again too!. After that I spent awhile pulling stuff out of the camper and the shed and getting it boxed up. Prepped the toilet, pulled up the hoses and turn off the electricity. Then, I cranked the camper down and threw the blue plastic tarp over it and wrapped it up in bungee cords to keep some of the weather off it for the next 4 or 5 unhospitable months.

By The time I had all that done it was about 12:30. The weather was so nice that I wasn't in a hurry to leave so I decided to work on the medicine wheel for awhile and managed to finish up the prepatory work by putting the dividers in. The next step would be to gather the rocks that are going in the 4 sections but that'll have to wait for next April. In the meantime I hope to work on the centerpiece and have that ready to go next spring. I haven't done much wood burning in my life but how hard can it be right?

We decided about 3ish that we'd done all we could do so we took one last look around and then headed out. Got back into town about 5 and unpacked the truck.

The rest of the weekend just kinda wasted away in between bursts of energy and naps...watched a bit of a movie this evening on Abbie Hoffman, which seemed appropriate with the election coming up on Tuesday.......hope the doomsayers aren't right about the blood in the streets predictions. I guess we'll see what happens in about 48 hours.

Wind, Rain, Sleet, Slush, Hail and Thunderstorms...

2008-10-27T11:19:00.003-04:00

...and that was just in the space of 15 minutes last night!

I'm a bit behind, I was going to write last Monday about the trip to the folks but here it is, Monday again already.

Last weekend I went up to the folks house for the day Sunday. Took Mercury along with me for company. I recall the days when I used to have kids and a wife but Merc is quieter and less demanding so it's not all bad.

While I was there I spent some time talking with my dad and some time working on Mom's computer to help her solve some problems. Had dinner of chicken and green beans and spent some time outside with Merc throwing the stick. Left for home about 6 and took my time getting home cuz there wasn't gonna be anybody there anyhow......it was a nice sunny day and the fall colors were just about at peak so I enjoyed the ride up and back again. Could've only been better if it'd been warm enough to take the bike instead of the truck.

During the week last week the truck decided to give me more problems, (Just spent 300 bucks fixing it the week before) and the starter started giving me trouble. After crawling underneath the truck a couple times to bang on the starter to get it to fire up I decided to take it back to floyds Friday morning and have him put a new starter on it. That cost me anouther 150 bucks I didn't have.

We had planned on going up to camp for the last time this past weekend but the weather report was less than promising so we ended up staying home. It rained most all day Saturday and Sunday until it got ugly and started raining hail last night so it was a less than ideal weekend for camping. I guess that means next weekend I'll be heading up to put things away for the winter. Crank the camper down and pull up the hoses until it starts to warm up again in the spring.

Last night on a whim I decided to shave off the beard growth that I'd been growing since July 4th. so there's somebody different looking back at me in the mirror today........According to the wife I look younger but I'm not so sure. Don't feel younger, that's for sure.

Not much else to say at the moment so no sense in forcing it.

The Last Weekend At The Castle for 2008?

2008-10-16T12:28:00.007-04:00

Maybe, the weather outlook for the next week or two ain't looking all that good, but we're in Michigan so you never know.....

I've been trying to sit down since I got home Sunday night and write a bit but it's been a blah week and I'm still fighting the effects of the cold or whatever it was.....

It was so nice Friday afternoon, high 70's with lots of sunshine, that I decided to head up to the castle for the weekend. A last minute decision. I packed quickly and was on the road by 6:00pm with my two 4-legged buddies. Because of the time of year by the time we got up there the sun was already setting so I got lights turned on, stuffed opened up and organized, a fire started and then made a meal of baked beans and weiners. After eating it was just a sit around the fire and take it easy kinda evening. We went to bed fairly early cuz it had been a long week and I was beat.

Saturday morning we all got up about 8:00 and took a hike around for about an hour. After we got back I really wasn't hungry enough to make a breakfast so we had some orange juice and oatmeal cookies. After eating and sitting in the warm sun for awhile I grabbed my shovel and headed down to the meadow to finish digging on the medicine wheel. After a couple hours of hard labor I decided to take a break and head up to the lodge for an ice cream break. It was almost supper time by the time I finished the digging part of the project. Now the next step is the put in the seperators and start collecting rocks, either next time this year or next spring.

For supper I had a bowl of canned chili with some bread and butter. After supper I got the guitar out for awhile and did some pickin'. Once my fingers were raw I put it away and spent the rest of the evening next to the firepit listening to Cheryl Wheeler and Randall Bramblett on the Ipod.

Sunday morning we all slept in a bit and it was 9:00am before I started making breakfast of scrambled eggs and corn beef hash. I ate what I could and gave the rest to my buddies.

Then I started working on a different project, the steps from the campsite down to the meadow using some old railroad ties. I went as far as I could with that project (needed my chain saw) and then fired up the lawnmower (after about 50 trys......) did some mowing down in the meadow area for a couple hours. After I was done mowing I sat down in the chair in the sun and snoozed for awhile.

After the nap it was time to pack up, close up and head for home. It was about 6:30 by the time we headed down sippy road for home. It had been a nice two days with lots of sunshine and warm air, beautiful indian summer weather for sure.

And that's pretty much it for now. The weather cooled off monday and now they're predicting highs in the 50's for the next week or two. If the weather is still decent the weekend after this one then I'll spend the weekend camping and then drop down the camper and put everything away until next spring. If it's not nice.....well then it's just pack it all away until next spring.

Cooler Days And Hints Of Color

2008-10-06T23:54:00.001-04:00

Well, nothing really definite or important to say but thought I'd give a bit of an update on things in general.

Been fighting a lousy cold for the last week or more and it just won't go away. Kinda takes what little energy I have right now just to ignore it and keep truckin'.

This past weekend was spent close to home for the most part. I still need to put the last coat of paint on the backside of the garage but I'm beginnning to worry I might not get the chance if the weather doesn't hold a couple days of Indian summer somewhere in there in the next couple weeks.

Last weekend, the 27th, 28th, I went up to camp by myself. I took Mercury and Bailey and we headed up on Saturday morning cuz the weather was just beautiful. Almost 80° and sunny. It felt like the middle of July. We got up there early afternoon and I spent the afternoon working on the wheel of life and did some raking and general clean-up until about 5. I headed up to the lodge at that point and had the young lady there make me a hamburger for supper and one of her great chocolate malts for desert then it was back to camp. I spent about 3 hours playing guitar, until my fingers couldn't take it any longer and then I put on some Cheryl Wheeler and kicked back around the fire until midnight or so....

I woke up Sunday morning and overnight it'd gone from summerlike to fall like. It was cloudy with a misty rain and cool, barely 60°. I went up to the lodge for some breakfast and talked to Mark E for a bit. Had the cook make me a couple extra pancakes to take back for the dogs and then headed back to camp. I wandered around a bit, not really wanting to head home but not wanting to spend the day working in the rain either. Ultimately the weather made up my mind for me when it started to rain at a pretty good pace so I closed things up and we headed back to town.

Today was a day to mark on the calendar too I guess. After 4 or 5 months of tore up road and all the hassles that entailed we came home tonight to the first layer of pavement! woohoo. They'd been putting down sidewalks and curbs the last couple weeks so I knew we were getting close finally but now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and after 20+ year of bitching about not having sidewalk where Hopkins is vacated we now have nice white cement to walk on when heading west. Too bad the kids are all grown up now and not around to ride their bikes on it. With any luck and decent weather I'd say they'll be done this week so I'll have to get out there and get a pic or two of the nice new road and sidewalks.

Time to take a slug of O.J. and head for bed. Damn cold.

Summertime Closes Up Shop For Another Year

2008-09-22T09:02:00.002-04:00

According to the Infoplease.com site today at 11:44am we cross over the line and head off into Autumn and all that entails.....

"At the autumnal equinox (Sept 22, 2008; 11:44:18 A.M. EDT), the Sun appears to cross the celestial equator, from north to south; this marks the beginning of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere."

Since I got home from the Wheatland experience things have been pretty quiet around here. A lack of disposal income has kept me close to home and what I attribute as my S.A.D. kicking in has kept me on the couch for long periods of time, napping the day away. It's really a crime to waste late summer days by being a sloth, but the urge to close my eyes and withdraw presents an overpowering urge at times. Almost like an out-of-the-body experience. "Things can wait, I'll do it later etc....." I hate succumbing to it but sometimes I have to defer to the wisdom of the body. At least this year I won't be crashing like I did last year. I've been staying on the meds and staying aware so that it's a manageable condition. After years of not understanding what was going on and years of denying the need to deal with it I've reached the point in life where I'm trying to do both. Hopefully doing that will make shorter days and longer nights easier to deal with.

Anyhow, with summer coming to a close in a couple hours it begs for a review of the season, but I'll spare y'all and just say that the obvious high point was of course the trip on the bike out to South Dakota. I'm still working on putting together a presentation of the pics that I'm happy with and getting close to having something to share. Over the course of the winter I hope to put up the Travels website and have the whole story with the pics online. We'll see how that project works out.

In a close 2nd place for high points would be the Wheatland weekend. I had no idea when I left Friday morning that I'd be so taken by the experience. I actually can't wait to go back again next year to enjoy that wonderful vibe again.

The rest of the summer kinda went by a day at a time. We had good weather for the most part. A lot of sunny days but very few days that it got really hot. I believe we had only 3 days that it hit the 90's this year. Weekends at the Castle and weekends doing car shows took up a fair share of the free time available.

It was a good summer overall, too short of course, but I enjoyed it as much as humanly possible. Not much else to say at this point really so I'll just say goodbye and thanks for the memories. Now, where did I put those flannel shirts??

The Wheatland Music Festival, My Own Little Piece Of Woodstock

2008-09-08T20:53:00.020-04:00

This is a long one, I was inspired all weekend like I haven't been in years so if you're going to read this one I'd suggest maybe making a sandwich and getting a drink first, get comfortable........

I don’t know what took me so long, I’ve heard about The Wheatland Music Festival for years. I guess maybe I thought it was further away than it is, being too lazy to look it up on the map, or always being able to have the excuse that something else was going on, or that we were too busy, or didn’t have the money, maybe next year. Well, this was the year that I ran out of reasons not to go and with the Refugee’s performing there (Wendy Waldman, Cindy Bullens & Deborah Holland) I had the added incentive I needed to cop a “damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead” attitude. Still I waited until the last day to purchase tickets by mail to send my order in, with money being extremely tight these days the cost for a ticket and the gas to get there and back put further strain on already shell shocked budget, but I simply didn’t feel at my age and with the way the world is going that I could afford to wait another year.
The festival is a 3 day event so I put in for a vacation day for Friday with the thought in mind that I could get up there early in the day and have time to do a walk around of the festival grounds before the music started for the weekend at 6:00pm. Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans….
Last week was a turn down week for a number of reasons, which is why I never got around to doing an entry for labor day weekend....and come Friday morning I was pretty blahed out and moving slowly. It was after 11am before I pointed the truck north and headed out of town towards a 160 acre field just southwest of Remus. As I rolled north I started to get in a better frame of mind. Generally traveling somewhere is good medicine for whatever ails me and as I got close to the grounds I started to get in the holiday spirit. As I came over the last hill to the festival grounds I uttered a quiet “Holy Moly”. As far as I could see there were tents and campers and people everywhere. It was 1:00 pm as I rolled down the hill towards the folks directing traffic. There were two lines, one from the east and one from the south, alternating and I was told to go to the end of the south line, the “shorter one”. So I took off over a hill and there’s more cars….1 mile out, still more cars….another hill at 1 1/2 miles out, still more cars. Finally at 2 miles out, I found the end of the line, wheeled the truck around and parked it. I had thoughts about heading for home at that point, but I squashed them and decided to ride it out. Every 10 minutes or so we’d go a 100 yards ahead and then stop. Inbetween forward movements I’d get out of the truck and shoot the breeze with other folks doing the same thing.
Turns out that the waiting in line for hours to get in was not a normal deal, but the result of 3 inches of rain Thursday night and some emergency road grading Friday morning. As we got closer to the entrance gate the waiting times between moves shortened and finally we came over the last hill to the entrance. I traded in my ticket for my wrist band and then headed off in the direction of where I thought I’d be well off camping. An area called “Walk Up Camping”…of which there were several on the grounds. I parked the truck at the bottom of the hill, grabbed my gear and hiked up the grassy hill to find a place to call home until Sunday. Within minutes I’d found a nice spot back by the tree line. By the time I had the tent up and everything ready to go it was just about 5:00 pm. Music would be starting at 6 so I grabbed the camera gear and headed over to the concession area to find something for supper. After a concession quality taco salad I made my way to the main stage, an impressive work of art in itself. As it is in most of these situations the professionals, or multi-year attendees, have their chair, blankets and whatever already covering the entire seating area so after a chat with one of the workers I planted myself by the split rail fence up front and spent the bulk of the evening there. I don’t want to give a review of each band here but I’ll mention ‘em and give a link when there’s one available. Most of these folks probably got a MySpace page too but I don't have much use for MySpace so I'll let you find those on yer own......
The first band was a Cajun outfit from Louisiana called “The Pine leaf Boys”. They played a rousing set and got everyone up and in the mood quickly. Each band did a 50 minute set, give or take and downtime in between bands was minimal as these folks running the stage and the sound had their act together. The second outfit, “Tim Graves and Cherokee” were also considerably above average. Tim Graves is the nephew of the famous Josh Graves and played some very nice slide Dobro guitar throughout his set. At the completion of his set I had to get up and stretch my legs out with a walk over to the ice cream trailer and missed most of “David “Honeyboy” Edwards” set. With 3 stages on the grounds it was impossible not to miss something if you were one place and all weekend I checked my schedule frequently to minimize the danger of missing something good.
I was back in front by the time the next group “Sole Impact” hit the stage. They consisted of a Fiddle, guitar and hand drummer and 6 high-steppin’ cloggers. They put on a very interesting show of intricate dancing and the music backing them up was no slouch either. The next group was a 4 piece called “The Freight Hoppers” who were great. Their Fiddle player kept me entertained with his footwork and style. To end the night a group all the way from from Ireland called “Slide” put on a rousing rocking set of Irish jigs and folk music. Their fiddle player was nothing short of amazing. Aside from his obvious skill on the fiddle, his footwork was fantastic. From my perspective when he got going it would look like he was floating (or sliding) across the stage and that, along with the rosin from his flailing bow floating in the air, made for quite a sight. After an encore they were done and the main stage got quiet for the night. By then it was 11:30 and I considered going to bed so I could get up early and do my tour of the grounds, but as I was walking past the 2nd stage, Centennial tent, I heard the sound of electric slide guitar call out to me and at that point I discovered Mr. Michael Tarbox and “The Tarbox Ramblers”. They were a 3 piece outfit…Michael on his guitars, a big dude on upright bass who thumped the everlovin' life out of that thing and a very good drummer laying down the beat. By the time they finished their set it was close to 1:30am. At that point I was beat from the long day so I headed for my little tent on the hill for a nap, still hoping to get up early for my stroll around the grounds.
Saturday morning. when I awoke the sun was already up above the trees, almost 8:00am. Damnit! Figured I’d be up by 6am easy. (Note to self….add alarm clock to list for next year). So I beat feet to the concession area for some breakfast, wiping the sleep out of my eyes as I went. I had quite a few choices to pick from, but settled for a couple chocolate donuts and a big Orange Juice. (one cancels out the other and no harm done). Once that task was completed I started my hike around the grounds. Unfortunately I had another camera disc screw up and so now I don’t have any pics now from Friday or early Saturday morning…..I need to get myself a real digital camera and pretty damn soon too, tired of the losing images with no warning crap. Anyhow, I started hiking around and the first interesting thing I came across was a burned out camper over in the Henri campground. Turns out that there was some sort of electric malfunction in it Thursday night and it burnt to the ground. Talk about a bad start to the weekend! From there I strolled around, taking pics of those things strange and / or out of the ordinary. I was shooting a unique trailer when these girls started hollering at me to take their pics. I ended up talking to them for about a half hour and got schooled in how things work at Wheatland. I never did take their pic, which I could kick myself for. Across the street from their camp was a big tent for late night jam sessions and I got invited back but never made it. Too much to do in too little time. Maybe next year.
After saying goodbye to the Jello shot ladies I continued on and not long after I ran across a couple old boy bikers who were kicked back and enjoying the sun. I ended up talking with them for almost an hour about biking, camping, wives, kids and Wheatland. Again I was too stupid to remember to take their pic, but they were cool dudes. One was 60, the other 65, which doesn’t seem that old now as it did 20 years ago. Always looking for hope for the future ya know….. After leaving them I kinda turned back towards the stage area and strolled thru the pines, taking pics and soaking up the ambiance as I went.
After seeing the “Tarbox Ramblers” last night I made a point of being up front when they hit the stage at 1:00pm and spent a very worthwhile 50 minutes listening to what they were putting down. This very unassuming man, with his red ball cap just smoked that guitar, smiling away like he was having the time of his life.
Next was one of the high points of the weekend although I didn’t realize how high until later in the weekend. Wendy, Cindy and Deborah, The Refugee’s, were up next on the schedule, sharing the Centennial Stage with a lady named Cheryl Wheeler. They took turns playing songs for about an hour or so and I was very impressed with Ms. Wheelers song writing and guitar playing skills. She did a song called Dubya, Dubya, to the tune of Louie Louie, which was the best anti-Bush song I’ve heard. She also had a softer side that was quite beautiful. After their set was over I made it over to the performer entrance to say hi to the girls and see I if I could get ‘em to stop long enough for a pic. We all said hi and then headed over to the performers sales area where they were going to autograph CD’s. They were great about posing for a pic and then the lady escort for them asked if I wanted a pic with them and I honestly hadn’t thought of that so I said yeah!, that would be great! so I showed her how to use my camera and then stood next to Wendy and tried to smile with my toothless mouth shut……after being a fan of hers for 35 years I was finally standing next to her and getting a picture taken. I’m sorry, I may be 55 physically, maybe older from what Realage.com says, but right at that moment I felt like a goofy, tongue-tied 16 year old. After the pics were taken I said thanks, have fun with the rest of the weekend and see ya later.
For awhile after that highlight I just wandered around the grounds taking pics and watching the human parade. Then, about 4 I decided to get supper before heading to a Michael Tarbox workshop at 5:30. I wandered over to hunger row and ended up getting a KFC dinner from one of the vendors. Boy did that taste good at that point. After eating half a chicken I got a giant ice cream cone and headed for the workshop. By the time I got there it was already going on so I stood off to the side and enjoyed the goings on. Next year I’ll have my chops up to the point that I’ll feel good about carrying my guitar around and participating. Least that’s my goal if I can stick to it.
After the workshop ended I headed down to the main stage and caught the last half of Slide’s 2nd performance. Once they finished it was time for dinner break and having already had dinner I took that opportunity to hike around the back half of the joint. Checked out the drumming area and strolled thru some of the trails just checking out the camping setups and making notes for next year.
By the time I got back to main stage “Dale Watson” and his crew was finishing up and the next performer was Cheryl Wheeler again. I’d been impressed enough the first time that I grabbed a spot by the fence and sat there listening to her hilarious stories and beautiful songs. By the end of that second set I was pretty much a fan for life.
In between her set and the next Refugees set was the Bichini Bia Congo Dance Theatre Company. African dumming and dancing. It was impressive, but with no melody or harmony 20 minutes would’ve been enough for me.
And now it’s 9:40 Saturday night and The Refugees are front and center on the main stage. I’d have loved to be the one doing the introduction cuz the person doing it didn’t have a clue who he had up there, but once they started playing the audience was on their side. They got a much more worthwhile response to their efforts at Wheatland than they did with that pissy little group at the Ark back in June.
After the girls were done and even did an encore the last group on the main stage for the night was called “Crooked Still”. I don’t know much about them, they were a young group and quite good. After they were done I wandered over to the centennial tent for awhile to watch and listen to “The Ragbirds” who never got a chance at the main stage. I sat there listening them and fighting to stay awake so about 1:00am I finally gave it and headed for the tent.
Sunday. I woke up just a tick before 9:00am. (Definitely bringing an alarm clock next year). I headed over to the concession area for Orange juice and pancakes and by the time I was done with breakfast I was ready for another full day. The music started on the main stage at 10:30 with a gospel sing and then The Refugees were doing their last set. I got over in time to hear the last half of the Gospel sing, including a version of the tune “Hard Times (Come No More)” which Deborah did an excellent version of on the Soccer Mom album. The Gospel sing ended with the most amazing( I know I’m using a lot of superlatives but it was the most amazing) version of Amazing Grace I’ve ever heard. I didn’t catch what the young ladie's name was, but lord she could sing. A couple times I got a chill and there were folks out in the audience crying when she was done. The announcer called her by name and then said she’d been singing that song every year at Wheatland since she was 8. So, I have hopes I’ll catch it again next year.
When the girls came up to do their last set I was right by the fence and there was a large crowd to do them justice. They did another excellent set and added one of my favorite Deborah songs “On My Way” to the lineup. After they were finished I decided to act like an idiot again and hollered at Deborah, who stopped, smiled and shook my hand. Classy lady. I told her I’d gotten the Animal Logic CD’s and then told her not only how much I loved Soccer Mom, but how I felt about "On My Way". I told her “great set” and let her go on her way. While I was standing there Wendy came by and I said quietly, almost to myself, thanks Wendy and she smiled and returned the thanks for the support with a beautiful smile.
After The Refugees were done Dale Watson was up again and then Cheryl Wheeler. Now that I was a bonofide devotee I headed for my spot by the fence and thoroughly enjoyed the funny stories and amazing songs she sang.
I had to take a break from the input after her set and went strolling thru the pines area again until I came upon a gentleman playing an old Dobro with a standard guitar neck and using fingerpicks. What he was doing sounded fine so I stopped to listen and take a couple pics. We got to talking in between tunes and he was very interesting to talk with. He played a version of Bob Dylan’s tune Mississippi that was very cool and I now have the urge to dig up some Dylan. We no doubt would've talked longer, but he had to put on his red shirt, being a volunteer and go do his time. I said goodbye and hoped to bump into him again later in the day, but it never happened.
I wandered back by the main stage in time to catch the last bit of the cloggers “Sole Impact” last set. After them the 3 days of music ended with “The Cherryholmes Band”. A family band consisting of mom and day along with 2 brothers and 2 sisters. Just the family lineup was impressive, but when they started singing I was knocked out. Really intricate harmonies and strong singing all around. Their whole set was a joy to listen to and all too soon it was over. They finished off an encore with an acapella piece and then it got quiet. I really wasn’t ready to go home so I hung around a bit watching them tear down, but then came the time to call it a weekend and head for home. I thought it’d be a tough one to get out of there in under and hour, but during the day probably 2/3’s of the people had left at some point and I was able to jump in the truck, fire it up, drive right out the gate and head down the road for home.
I made it in the door a bit before 9:00pm. Unpacked, threw stuff in the washing machine, made myself a sandwich and started winding down.
I have a feeling I’ll be reviewing this weekend in my head for awhile to come. Heard more good music then I’ll able to afford for the next several months. Gotta start laying my hands on that guitar everyday too somehow….I’m sure it’d make me feel better anyway you look at it. I had a real good time the whole weekend and I’ll be ready for the next one by the time it comes back around again, Lord willin’.
Here’s a batch of pics from the weekend. Enjoy.

The direction of my tent, off in the trees.

Performers check-in building & hospitality

Good advice and not all that hard to do at Wheatland

Walk in camping in the pines area.

The Crowd Sunday afternoon

The view from my campsite looking North east

Early Sunday morning before gospel service.

Jammin during the dinner hour Saturday

The Dancing platform, well used all weekend.

A Quiet Weekend At Home

2008-08-26T12:34:00.005-04:00

For the most part....

Friday evening after work I took a cruise up to Ross Park to attend a free concert with the Oat Bran Boys, a local Bluegrass outfit. Got there about 6:30, they started playing about 7 and wrapped it up about 8:30. They weren't bad but not anything to write home about either, just your standard bluegrass fare. It was a beautiful evening though and it beat sitting at home and falling asleep on the couch.

As a postscript, a couple days later I got this pic from the promoter and lo and behold there I am in the orange shirt, sitting on the ground, right in between the bass player and the banjo player on the end! Fame is surely imminent!

I had given serious thought to going over to Grand Rapids Saturday morning for the metro cruise, but when morning rolled around I decided to snooze a bit longer and pass on the trip. I went over there last year and it was a mess trying to get around anywhere. Too many cars and too much waiting in line so I stayed home instead and ended up snoozing on and off most of the morning and afternoon. All week I'd been up late, averaging 4 hours of sleep a night and by the end of the week it's caught up with me and I end up losing the extra time I tried to bank during the week. Kinda stupid I know, It's a bad habit started long ago. At any rate I was well rested by the time the wife decided she wanted to go get dinner and so we headed off to our favorite spot these days, the Texas Roadhouse, for a steak dinner. We managed to kill an hour and a half there and had another above average meal. Afterwards we made a stop at the grocery store for some staples and then headed for home. Later on me and Bailey took a ride around town and got some ice cream. When I got back Ri and Adam had stopped over so we chatted a bit until they had to leave. Once they left that was pretty much it for the day.

Sunday morning I got up and made breakfast and after everyone had had their fill I grabbed the paint brush and scrapper and headed out to the garage. First I put the final coat on side 3 and then I put the ladder up on the backside, grabbed my scrapper and spent the next 3 hours or so getting rid of all the flaky paint. What a mess that was. By the time I had it all scrapped good enough for painting it was past 4pm so I changed clothes and headed over to home depot to get some paint, repair parts for the toilet and check out prices on windows and a door for the garage.

By the time I got back home it was time to take the kid to work so I dropped him off at Pizza Hut and then headed to Butch's for supper. Stopped at Dairy Treat for desert and then headed home to do laundry and work on website stuff. Before I knew it the wife was back home again and the weekend was pretty much shot.

This coming weekend is Labor Day weekend, already and the tentative plan is to go up to camp for at least a couple days. There's a Pow Wow going on at the Fair grounds in Hart Saturday and Sunday and I'd like to attend at least one day of the two. Other than that no big plans for the big weekend......Would love to go up to the bridge and do the bridgewalk but even if I had the finances to make the trip there isn't enough tread left on the rear tire of the bike to make the trip safely and it's a $250.00 cost to have a new tire installed so it ain't gonna happen this week. I'd love to at least get another day ride in before the season's gone but it ain't looking good right now. Maybe I'll get the van sold, that'd help.......We'll see how it goes.

A Weekend at the Castle

2008-08-21T23:52:00.003-04:00

I’ve been meaning to write all week but between painting the garage, cleaning up the bike and snoozing during the evening, the week kinda got away from me.
Anyhow, I got out of work Friday, came home and loaded up the truck, grabbed Mercury and Bailey and headed out of town. We made a stop in Hart at the grocery store for some basics and then made it to camp just about 7:00. I started cooking some dinner right away while I got things opened up and organized and it wasn’t long before I was dining on macaroni and cheese with polish sausage & corn on the cob. I was hungry so it tasted pretty darn good. After my plate was clean we headed up to the lodge for some ice cream. By the time we got back to camp it was getting dark so I got a good fire going and we hung out close by until about 11:30 when I decided to call it a day and get some good sleep.
Saturday I woke up about 8am and while I made breakfast for me and the boys I vowed that I wouldn’t run myself ragged all weekend. It’d been a month since I’d been up to camp but because of the really dry weather we’ve had the grass hadn’t hardly grown at all and there were only a minimal number of ferns so I got out the weed wacker and cleaned up the whole west side in less than an hour.
Next thing was to fire up the lawnmower and mow the flatlands area around the pines. That was about the only place where the ferns had really grown since my last visit. It took awhile to clean up the whole flatlands area and then I got the bright idea to take some of the stakes I’d been carrying around in the truck since the Spread the Music concert last month and Hammer one in at each pine tree as kind of a height and placement marker. I may have to do something more before it snows but that’ll do for now.
After I was done with the mower I got out the chain saw next to clean up a mess that someone made…somebody cut down the bush / tree that was on the corner since I was last at camp. I know why they did it…..for visibility, but it still ticked me off a bit because not only did whoever do it, do it without asking, but they didn’t have the decency to clean up the mess they made. They just cut the limbs down and left it all in a big pile right on the corner. So, I drug all the limbs out of the pile and cut off the ends and piled up the logs for firewood. By the time I got done with that the chainsaw blade was in need of sharpening and I was pooped so I called it a day about 4:00 and headed up to the lodge for a shower and some ice cream. I putzed around camp after I got back until about 7 and then I made dinner for the 3 of us….some hamburger helper and more corn on the cob. After dinner we hit the lodge again and then took a ride around the grounds for awhile. When we got back to camp it was time to start a fire and kick back. I got the guitar out and picked on that for awhile. Spent some time trying to recall all the chords and words to “These Days”. If I could just sing it without making myself cringe I’d be a happy camper. It was after midnight before I gave it up and went to get horizontal.
Sunday after breakfast (Cinnamon rolls and orange juice) I decided to start in on the Medicine wheel project so I grabbed the shovel, wheel barrow and saw and headed to the site. I spent the bulk of the day working on it and I got the frame pretty much in the ground. Next step is the walkways and then digging up the sod to put the painted rocks in each of the 4 sections. I may or may not get that far this year. I’m also going to work on the centerpiece during the winter. It’ll be a 3 foot in diameter piece of wood that I’ll burn the face of a compass on and then clear coat it a dozen times so it’ll handle the outside and then next spring I’ll attach it to the stump. Don’t ask me why I’m doing it…I just like being creative and designing and building things. Here’s a pic of the one out at the Ben Riefle Visitor Center in the Badlands that gave me the idea to do my own…..it's in pretty bad shape, needs to be weeded and the rocks should be white for North, red for East, black for West and yellow for South.

Anyhow, it was about 5 when I decided to call it a day. It took an hour to put everything away and lock up so we were on our way out of came about 6:15. Got home about 8 and didn’t do much of anything when we got home.
That’s pretty much it for last week. This week I’ve been working or napping, depending on how I feel at the moment. This coming weekend is the Metro Cruise but the weather is looking iffy for the weekend so I haven’t decided if I’m gonna get involved with it this year. I plan on staying around the house for the most part and hitting the last side of the garage….the worst side. Once the outside is done then I can try and get some stuff organized on the inside with the warm weather days we have left at that point.
No pics from camp this week…..I just never got around to pulling the camera out.

Gettin' To The Back Side Of Summer

2008-08-13T15:57:00.004-04:00

Well I think I gave a review of this past week last week and not much else happened until Friday night when I pulled the car out of the garage, picked up Larry and headed out to Coopersville for the Cruise portion of the weekend events. They’d changed the route this year and did hand out directions, but a map would’ve been nicer. Luckily for me I had a co-pilot this time in case we lost the train, but that was never an issue. After rolling thru the countryside and hitting a couple of the new housing developments the cruise ended up back where it started. They were going to have a sock-hop there, starting later in the evening than I wanted to wait for so we headed back to the high school and got something to eat there at the food booths and then sat in the stands for awhile while we ate. By the time we were done dining it was 8:30 and time to head back to Grand Haven. I dropped Larry off and then did the route around town once before coming home and calling it a day.
Saturday morning I was up before dawn (5am) and headed back to Coopersville for a good parking spot for the show and breakfast at the Country Café. I parked the hot rod right at the top of the hill that rolls down to the park, under a nice big shady tree, and then headed off to the Café for my favorite breakfast, Scrambled eggs and corn beef hash. By the time I was done stuffing my face it was light outside so I headed back to the car and spent about an hour or so polishing and cleaning. From that point on until the end of the show I divided my time between hikes around to check out the hardware and time outs in the chair resting….it was 3:00pm before I knew it and by the time I got down to the park they were already into the awards presentation. I hung around until the trophy’s were all spoken for and then headed back to the car and packed up the display. I got home about 4ish and the wife was there, having returned from her week up north at band camp, so after a bit of chatting we headed out to the Texas Steakhouse and spent a couple hours there talking and eating. After the chow was all gone we headed back home and took it easy.
Sunday I slept in till 9, just cuz I could and then got up and made pancakes for me and the doggies. Once breakfast was history I put on my painter clothes and headed out to put what would hopefully be the finish coat on the front of the garage. It took a couple hours to finish the front and once that was done I decided to keep going so I scrapped and primer’d the left side. When I was done with that project for the day I got out the lawnmower and did the whole yard. By the time I was done being a tear-ass it was going on 6:00pm so I came in the house, sat down in the chair for a minute and ended up waking up when Chris called about 9:00pm saying he needed a ride home from work. (dunno if I mentioned it or not but he got a job working at Pizza Hut). After I got him delivered home I took a shower and got all the paint and grass off me. The rest of the evening was spent trying to learn how to use some new music downloading software.....
This coming week I have nothing pressing planned, may try to spend some more time with the garage, we’ll see how the weather acts. The plan for the weekend is to head up to Meadowview castle and mow some ferns……..looks like I’ll be going by myself again but that’s nothing new so we’ll see what happens.

TC

Coast Guard Festival 08 Post Mortem

2008-08-07T12:18:00.014-04:00

Well here it is already Thursday and I'm just now getting to this. You'd think with no wife at home this week that I'd be taking it easy but nope...ain't that smart. Spent most of Monday night pulling weeds and cleaning up the patio area so it looks like someone lives here, Tuesday night I put the first coat of primer on the front of the garage. Just doing that makes it look quite a bit better. Hopefully one coat of the good stuff will suffice to finish the front. Last night I stopped a U-sell-it place over in Spring Lake to see about putting the van there and because it looks promising and I'm taking it over there tonight, I spent the bulk of last night fixing the wiring to the headlights (now they all work again Yay!) and cleaning it up a bit.

So, last week.....Monday night I took Mercury for a hike on the pier and shot some good shots during the hike, only to have the camera crash later when I tried to finalize 'em and eat the disc. That ticked me off and kinda killed my plan to shoot some pics each night for the whole week for a festival presentation. I really need to come up with some cash for a real (DSLR) camera somehow.....I didn't even go downtown Tuesday night, but Wednesday I grabbed the gear and went down to try again. Hiked around for awhile and went and did a boat tour on one of the smaller ones. A big ship from Canada had came in during the afternoon, but they weren't open for tours until Thursday night and I never did get back down there to climb on board.

All of a sudden it was Saturday morning so I was up early. Parked the truck by the old high school and started hoofing around. I went down to Central Park to check out the art show and spent a couple hours there checking stuff out and talking with folks. About 10:30 or so I started heading back to the parade route to find a spot to sit my carcass and got back there just in time to witness the Clown Band's annual pre-parade old folks home performance. After that I found my spot and kicked back with the Ipod going until I saw the flashing lights of the cop cars leading the festivities. For the next couple hours I shot pics, had candy thrown at me and had an enjoyable parade. One of the high points was having the studebaker club going by when not one, but two of their vehicles died right in front of us and had to be pushed to the end of the route, several blocks away. And you wonder why Studebaker ain't in the business of making cars any longer?

Once the parade was over I headed for the truck and then for home. I'd gotten an invite from neighbor and engineering manager at work, Nick, to stop over for a pig roast and some conversation so when I woke up from my little nap about 4:30 I headed over there. Wanda came with and for the next couple hours we hung out there. Lots of good food and some interesting folks too.

About 7 or so we left Nick's house, Wanda headed for home and I headed for downtown and the impending fireworks display. Ri had called and invited me to sit with them in Bicentennial Park (Ground Zero for fireworks viewing). I strolled downtown and shot pics of the carnival as I went by. I was resting and trying to call Ri on the cell phone when her and Adam just walked up to me. Adam asked if I'd seen the statue guy and not knowing what the heck he was talking about he led me over to where this guy was sitting on a park bench, frozen in motion, painted entirely in a copper color, scaring the hell out of folks when they were going by and realized it was a real person. He looked like a statue, really cool. we spent probably a half hour there taking pics and watching folks reactions to him. I sent some pics I took to him via his business card's request. Here's the link to checking this cat out.......

http://www.livestatue.com/

After our fun with the statue man we headed for their blanket and hung out there while it got dark and the lights came on. It was a bit after 10 when the Musical Fountain fired up and not long after that they started shooting off the fireworks. they lasted a good 20 minutes, maybe longer and once the grand finale faded from the sky everyone in the park clapped, stood up and headed for their cars like they just couldn't wait to get in that 4 hour traffic jam straight ahead of 'em.......

I said goodbyes to Ri and Adam and starting making my way back home. I took a break for awhile on Grant and Beacon Blvd just to watch the long lines of headlights not going anywhere fast. After I rested up a bit I finished the trip home, getting there a bit after midnight.

Sunday morning we were up early again. Wanda was headed up north to band camp for the week as a champeron and I was headed to the folks for the annual, smaller every year, family reunion. Had a nice ride up on the bike, first one since getting back from S.D., and got there about 12:30pm. Not long after we were eating and then not long after that people left. I ended up talking to uncle Noel until about 4:00 and was the last one there that didn't live there. I stopped by the folks house for about an hour before heading for home. Got back in town about 8 and pretty much called it a day.

So there ya have it, last week and most of this week. Plans for the weekend are the Del Shannon Car Cruise on Friday night and the car show Saturday. Don't have anything shaking for Sunday yet but I can fix that!

Tom

A Car Show Week

2008-07-28T23:12:00.002-04:00

Well, as it happens some times plans change and so I didn’t make up to camp this past weekend. Instead, it turned into the week of the hot rod.
I had wanted to go to Quicks Tuesday night but for some reason that didn’t happen so when Wednesday evening rolled around I decided I’d go check out the new cruise-in that Russ’ restaurant was sponsoring up in Muskegon. I took Bailey with me and met up with Adam once we got there. It was a small affair, about 30 / 40 cars, but they had the DJ and the 50/50 drawings so they were working on it…We hung out there till 8 and then headed for home.
Thursday night Culvers restaurant in G.H. was having their little twice a month cruise-in and because we hadn’t been around to make one yet we decided to go over there for awhile and get a hamburger. Their get together was even a smaller affair than Russ’ with less than 2 dozen cars in attendance. While sitting there I got the idea to go up to Whitehall Friday night for the cruise / parade from Whitehall, over the river into Montague. I’d been up there to check it out before but never participated.
So, once the decision was made to do that I decided to drive the car up to work Friday morning to avoid having to go back home and try to get it out of town with Friday afternoon traffic clogging the roadways.
That plan worked fine and by 5:45 we (Chris had decided to go so Wanda dropped him off at work) were sitting in line at Whitehall high School. We had some time to kill before the 7pm start time for the parade so we hiked around, checking out the rides. It was really quite amazing that a small burg in the middle of nowhere could pull in the kind of participation that we witnessed. I heard later that evening that the car count was right around 500! It took almost an hour and a half for the parade to pass from start to finish.
Not long after the 7:00 start time motors close by us started firing up so we got in the car and in a couple minutes we were edging our way to Colby ave and the official start. From our seat the whole affair took less than 10 minutes before we were parked in Montague and heading “downtown” to watch the rest of the cars pile into the melee. On the way over the river I had gotten a bit wild and burned a bit of rubber to the approving cheers of the crowd. Both sides of the street were packed with folks all the way down the route.
After parking the car we went searching for food. After eating we spent awhile strolling around taking pics and talking with folks we knew. About 10:30 we decided to head out for home as things were winding down.
Saturday was a stay at home day. I got up fairly early but napped on and off until noonish when I decided I could put it off no longer and got up and went to Home Depot to buy some paint and supplies so I could start working on the garage. I spent most of the afternoon and early evening on the ladder and got the whole front side scrapped down and ready for primer before calling it quits and diverting my attention to putting stuff away and sweeping the floor inside the garage.
By the time that project was complete it was time to eat so I fired up the hot rod, grabbed the little lady and we headed up to the Dog and Suds in Norton Shores for a couple chili dogs and a big frosty Root beer. With the neon lights, car hops in short shorts and tray on the window it had a decided 50’s feel to it. After we flipped on the light for tray pickup we headed back down towards home and cruised town once before calling it a day.
I’d decided sometime early in the weekend that cuz I wasn’t going up to camp that I’d do the car show Sunday, even though I was just there for the other one a couple weeks ago. So, I headed downtown about 7ish with Mercury in tow and was surprised to find more cars already there than I thought there’d be there. I parked on the 3rd block, got the display stuff out and then took a hike around once to see who / what was there. I didn’t do much picture taking with Mercury along. Ron, from the car club stopped by too and we spent most of the day shooting the breeze. A handful of folks I knew stopped by to say hi and the time went by quickly. They started giving out the awards about 2:30 and by 3:30 I was on the couch, kicking back. After a nap I made some supper and then hit the Dairy Treat for a hot fudge malt. I finished up the day doing laundry cuz they won’t let me come to work naked……..
This coming week is Coast Guard Festival week and the plan is to get out and about as much as possible to see the sights. We’ll see how that goes.
Time for bed.

Meadowview Castle After A Month Away.....

2008-07-21T15:26:00.004-04:00

.....Ferns, ferns and more damn ferns! I’m convinced the word infernal is derivative from this pesky plant. In just 4 short weeks the ferns had reclaimed a larger portion of my mowed area. In fact I couldn’t see some of my pine trees cuz the blasted ferns had grown taller in just 4 weeks than the pines.
I got up to camp Friday night about 6:30 to find out that our electric meter had been blown up by the last couple weeks thunderstorms. Wanda and Chris had gotten there earlier in the day and discovered the problem and managed to get Great Lakes Electric out to put in a new meter and fix the problem except for the plug that I discovered had been fried along with the meter. Not wanting to do without my running lights I rigged up a couple extension cords to get everything working until I could get to Home Depot Saturday for a new plug assembly.
Not long after that we were eating hamburgers grilled on our new little 9 dollar table top grill. By the time we got done eating it was going on 9pm. A quick ride up to the lodge for ice cream was for naught as they had already closed up shop and went home so it was back to camp for the remainder of the day. Got a fire going and kicked back until I stumbled off to bed about 1am.I got up early Saturday (6am) and me, Bailey and Mercury took a hike around the camp ground for an hour or so. Came back, made breakfast, ate and then while Chris started mowing I went around and trimmed and pruned stuff.
About 11am we took off for Home Depot. I got my receptacle, made a stop at the Dairy Barn and headed back to camp. After we got back to camp I replaced the plug which then worked again but then found out that the extension cord to the fridge seemed to be toasted so I made plans to dig up my pcv pipe and replace the extension cord Sunday and then continued to reclaim land from the fern army until right up to suppertime. I went up to the lodge for a quick shower and then back to camp for steak and fried taters. After dinner it was back to the lodge for ice cream and then a cruise around the campground.
The rest of the evening was spent in camp. Wanda and Chris played the dice game (dunno what it’s called…) while I walked around the newly reclaimed kingdom deciding where to put my medicine wheel. After some internal debate I decided to put it around the huge stump in the flatlands and use the stump as the centerpiece of the wheel. It’s going to be a work in progress for most of the rest of this season I figure….I also am looking for a old fashioned porch swing to hang from one of the study limbs of the tree by the medicine wheel, but after looking for a couple weeks now I’m not sure it’s going to be as easy to find as I’d hoped.
Sunday morning I slept in until Mercury put his face in my face. It was almost 9am by then so I got up and started making breakfast. Eggs for the other two humans and pancakes for all us dogs….
Wanda and Chris took off about noon and at that point I started in on replacing the extension cord that seemed to be dead. I got it all dug up, replaced the cord, reburied the pipe and got everything back to normal. Later on when I tested each individual cord they all seemed to work fine but rather than stress over the work already done I just chalked it up to a loose connection somewhere from the lightening strike.
I sat down after that project was complete, closed my eyes for a minute and when I opened them back up it was 3:30pm. So I jumped back up, fired up the mower and finished up the fern attack. By the time I was done with all that and had put everything always, locked things up and shut things up it was almost 6:30pm. I stopped at the lodge on the way out to dump off the garbage and decided to get a dose of ice cream for the road.
On the way home we were making good time when all of a sudden, coming into Rothbury, there’s a State bull’s car parked in the middle of the highway with it’s lights on and flashing. I woah’d up and as we came under the bridge and around the corner we could see tow trucks and people all over the place. As we passed they were trying to get a badly beaten up Ford SUV up on a rollback along with what looked to be the remains of a decent sized camping trailer. We didn’t know it at the time of course but later found out that a 51 year old lady had died in the wreck. The husband and the grandkids with her were bruised up but still around.
When we got back in town I stopped by Butch’s Burrito’s first for something to eat before heading home to a hot shower. I spent the rest of the evening doing laundry and taking it easy.
Nothing much planned for this week. I should be working on the garage but I haven’t even finished cleaning the bike up yet from the trip to we’ll see how far I get with one before I tackle the other. Tentative plan for next weekend is to go back up to camp, now that I got all the work done…..but we’ll see what pops up, if anything, during the week before I start packing my bag.

P.S.
Thursday evening we had some storms come thru with awesome cloud formations and luckily I happened to have the camera with me so here’s a couple pics to check out. Not long after these were shot it got real wet and windy for awhile. Keep in mind it was only about 7:00pm, 2 hours before sunset.

No Rest For The Weary

2008-07-16T23:46:00.007-04:00

Well, as I said in the last entry, I got home from my little trip out west at 6:02pm on Friday, the 11th. After hello's and howdy's I headed for the shower and got some of the road dust washed off my hide. After that we headed for the Texas roadhouse for a big steak dinner. After several days of juice and trail mix I was ready for something more substantial. We didn't leave until almost 9:00 and then it was straight home to wind down because we had to get up early and be to Harbor Island for the Spread The Music volunteering gig.

So, We were up and over to Harbor Island alittle bit after 9, putting up the canopy and organizing things. We had to change the exit road because the storms that came thru during the night had made some spots in the field pretty much impassable.

Wanda & Gigi

There was to be a car show as one of the draws but with the weather looking iffy I'd left the car home. I changed my mind later though and brought the hot rod. People starting showing up about 10 and by noon family fun day was in full swing. I divided my time during the afternoon between parking cars and taking pics of the festivities. By the time 4pm rolled around most of the party was over and we were getting ready to take off home for a break before the night's events kicked into gear. I managed an hour's worth of naptime and then it was time to head for Pizza Hut for some supper.

After dinner we were back at Harbor Island where the beer tent was in full swing. the first band was just finishing up their set so I didn't get much of a chance to hear 'em. The second band was a blues band that was adequate but nothing to write home about. By the time they finished their set I was tired and antsy so when the 3rd and final band of the night started I wandered up front to watch them for a bit. Their bass player was quite good but the band's sound over all was not that impressive. They were, or seemed to be at least, jamming most of their set and many folks lost interest and wandered off or went home. I decided that I'd do something constructive and start taking down the stakes and caution tape early so that we weren't gonna still be there at 1am. Tony helped me and we were just finishing up when the show came to an end and the crowd headed for home.

I've always missed the Wheels Of Grand Haven car show cuz we have something else going on but this year I was home for the weekend so I decided I'd do it and skip the Coast Guard one this year. So the alarm went off at 5:30am Sunday morning. I got up about 6:30 and scurried around getting camera gear together and was downtown parking the car just a bit before 7am. Registration was open yet so I went down the street to the Delite and ordered breakfast. While I was waiting for it I ran into a friend, Tony Sheriff and he pulled up a chair and we shot the breeze for an hour or so while we ate our breakfasts. One of his friends joined us later on and we talked about those things that are on the minds of most everyone nowadays........

After saying our goodbyes I headed back to the car and cleaned her up a bit while I waited for registration to open. Once I had my goodie bag and dash plaque it was time to go hike around a bit and shoot some frames. I ran into the older gentleman with the 1923 Durant that I'd met the first part of June at the car show in Muskegon and we talked awhile. After leaving him I wandered around some more, shooting frames and then after making a complete pass went back to the car for a break. I had a 60's Thunderbird on the left side of me and on the right side a guy had pulled in with a 1954 Vette in mint shape. I ended up talking with him quite a bit on and off during the day. He'd just finished restoring the car and this was his second car show.

There were over 320 cars lining Washington street by noon. It was about then that I took my ballot and pen and walked around voting for my favorites. Once that was done I just hung out until 3pm when they started the award presentations. I wasn't able to snag a trophy this time but luckily for me I don't do car shows to collect dust catchers....I do it for the fun of doing it and to be a part of something that I love. When a trophy does come along it's just icing on the cake.

Once all the trophys' were disbersed, motors were fired up and people started heading out. I waited about 15 minutes and took some pics of the other cars heading out before heading out myself. After getting back home I ate a bit of lunch and kicked back for awhile. I'd thought about going down to Holland to do the cruise-in at the D&W but the skies looked they were going to dump some rain so I decided to hang close to home instead and get stuff unpacked and organized a bit.

Here it is Wednesday now and I still haven't gone thru all my pics yet, or put stuff away entirely. It's denial, I know it is, but I'm back home again, already and South Dakota and those night skies are a 1,000+ miles away. Lord Willin' I believe I'll be heading back out that way again in the not too distant future. There was just too many things I didn't get to see that need to be seen and time is running short.....no sense wasting any more time than I already have.

Night.

Home Again

2008-07-14T23:29:00.000-04:00

Actually I pulled in the driveway at 6:02pm on Friday the 12th, but I still haven't had time yet to really catch my breath or go thru my 800+ pics. Been going 90mph since I got home. I spent most of last evening cleaning up the bike (that performed flawlessly the whole trip) and trying to remove the bug guts that I aquired from haulin' ass thru 6 different states. It's gonna take another night or two just to finish that project. I also need to do some repair work to my backpacks...had a couple straps come undone thanks to shitty factory sewing.

I'm gonna put the pics and stories from this trip in a area all it's own and I'll probably upload it by chapter (day) just so I can get stuff online in a fairly decent timeframe. Look for a new icon on the main page that looks like it has something to do with traveling and that's where you should find the story of the South Dakota trip along with others from the past in the future......

Just for the record, I had the time of my life. One of the best trips, if not the best trip, I've ever took. Met a bunch of interesting people, saw some amazing stuff and got myself right with the world for almost a whole week. Weather was beautiful, blue skies and warm the whole time. I put a total of 2,757 miles on the bike 8 days, roughly 55 gallons of fuel @ a cost of right around $220.00. On 4 wheels that wouldn't have even gotten me out there let alone around and back again.....

I'll recap the weekend after I got back in town in the next day or two and I'll be working on the travelogue and uploading it a chapter at a time as quickly as I can. Be patient, I'm still in denial that I'm already back home again.

A Weekend At Home For Trip Preparation

2008-06-30T23:34:00.005-04:00

Well here we are in the final hours of June, 2008, already. I know I say it all the time but damn that went by quick!
It was a quiet week this past one. Didn’t do much of anything constructive during the week and hung around the house for most of the weekend. We did go up to Quicks Tuesday night for the Cruise-in. There was a good sized crowd and we wandered around for a bit, checking out the rides until they started calling off the ticket numbers. After that it was back home again.

The biggest thing that happened was going to Muskegon’s Summer Celebration Saturday night to see Jonny Lang and Kansas. If you want to read about that adventure then hit this link….
http://tcsoldnewmusicreview.blogspot.com/2008/06/jonny-lang-kansas-june-28th-muskegon-mi.html

We got our “economic incentive” check Saturday morning so we went to the bank and split that up so now the trip out west is a 100% go. After we got back from the bank I went and put up the tent to check for leaks and problems. It looks like it’ll work out just fine with a bedroll.
Sunday I had a couple things in mind to do but the weather was cool and cloudy and it looked like it’d rain anytime so I ended up snoozing on and off in the chair until Wanda left for Bingo. Once I got up and going I grilled some chicken legs she’d gotten ready and ate a good meal. That was followed by a cruise down to the beach with the intention of walking on the pier with Mercury but when we got down there it was windy and cool enough to be uncomfortable without a jacket, which I didn’t have so we went back home and started getting stuff around the trip.
Tonight and for the rest of this short week I’m spending time making sure I’ve got what I need to make the ride comfortable and staying pretty close to home. Still gotta do some route planning and surfing for events that’ll be happening while I’m there but for the most part I’m just gonna play it by ear and see what happens.
I won’t be writing again until I get back and probably not soon after either. I’m planning on starting a new website of just the trips we’ve taken over the years and this one will be the road test for the web site to see how well it works out. I’m gonna keep notes on the events of each day so I don’t forget anything….not that I would mind ya…..just a precaution
See ya when I get back from my own little “wild Hogs” adventure.

TC

A Weekend Of Solitude, Fresh Air And Exercise

2008-06-24T23:18:00.005-04:00

Now that it's officially summer I guess it's safe to say that it's going by quickly. No surprise there. Here it is the 24th already and one week left before we head into July, which I'm sure will go by even quicker.

As I said last week I had nothing big planned for the week and true to my word I didn't do much of anything. I should be working on painting the garage, or at least cleaning it out and organizing my work area, but rather than get that ambitious I did some work on the sideyard that needed doing. Cleaned up the huge pile of leaves from last fall along side the garage and got out the hedge trimmers and cut back the spirea bushes so there was room to walk between them and the dog pen again. Just doing that killed a couple evenings and I'm not done yet. I've done even less so far this week than last but I will get out there and finish it up before it snows again.

During the week it came to light that the wife was going to have to stay home for the weekend because of a special event at the high school so I determined that I was going up to camp anyhow. Christopher didn't want to go along cuz of the girlfriend in town so Friday afternoon after work I packed up some stuff in the truck quckly, Opened the door so Mercury and Bailey could jump in and headed up north to camp. We made a stop in Muskegon at a lady I work with's house and picked up a "sit and spin" that we had plans to use at camp. More on that later.... We got there about 7:00 and after opening the place up I set about making myself a hamburger for supper. After dinner we all jumped in the truck and headed up to the lodge to see if our favorite girl was there to make us a malt. She was and after paying the lady we took a ride around the roads while we polished off the ice cream. When we got back to camp I got a fire going and we spent the rest of the evening taking turns snoozing around the firepit.

Saturday morning I got up early so I pulled the leashes down and the 3 of us took a hike for about an hour, down past the lake and back around thru the hills. When we got back it was time to make breakfast, bacon and eggs over easy. I was going to start off quietly but by the time I finished eating the guy across the way already had his tractor out so I pulled out the mower and fought with that damn thing for about 10 minutes until I gave up, jumped in the truck and headed into Scottville for a new spark plug. That trip killed an hour easy so when we got back I put the plug in, gave the old thing a couple serious pulls and it decided to come to life. I spent the next couple hours mowing the east side. I took a break about 1 and made a PB & J sandwich for lunch and then ended up napping for an hour.

After recharging I fired up the mower again and went after the ferns that had taken over the tire swing. I also mowed out an area where I wanted to plant the remaining pine trees. Once the mowing was done I undid the tire from the tire swing and replaced it with the large, circular plastic seat that had been the largest part of the Sit and Spin. The tire just wasn't getting it....it was heavy, hard to swing on and retained water in the bottom half. The light plastic disk from the Sit and Spin worked great. I put several knots in the rope to hold the seat in place and then gave it a test with my bulky frame. I figured if it could hold my fat ass in the air for a couple swings back and forth then it'd hold anybody else likely to get on it in the days and months ahead. I also had to restack one of the woodpiles as it had decided to fall over again. This time I didn't stack it quite so high. By the time I got that done it was time for supper. I got out all my fixin's to make tacos and had a small feast. I gave each of the boys a plate too, minus the shells and their plates were cleaner, quicker than mine.

After dinner I decided a shower would be a great idea so I grabbed a towel and the shampoo and headed up to the lodge. After a nice long, hot shower I had the girl make me my chocolate malt and we did a repeat performance of the night before, riding around the place until it was time to go back and get a fire going. I got out the guitar and actually played it for awhile. Once my fingers got too sore to play I put it away and turned on the Ipod for the remainder of the evening. It was a beautiful night, lots of stars and night sounds, owls hooting....no coyotes this time though....we all finally gave up and went to bed about 12:30

Sunday was another busy day. I didn't get out of the sack until Mercury's insistent pawing got me going. It was 8:30 by then so I set about making breakfast right away. We all had pancakes and bacon and then I started right in on digging a shallow trench from the deck to the outhouse to lay the patio blocks flush to the ground in. There hadn't been a cloud in the sky when I got up but that changed and while I was laying the blocks it started to sprinkle, which was good cuz it got rid of the gnats. After a while though it started coming down hard and with the thunder and lightening there was nothing else to do but get under the awning, put some Lyle Lovett on the Ipod and take a break.

A short nap later the sun was shining again so I got up and finished the patio walkway. After that project was finished I got the wheelbarrow and shovel and went about planting the rest of the pines that we didn't get to a couple weeks ago. The next project after the pine planting was complete was to get the weedwacker out and clean up the east side of the driveway, down by the road. Once the weeds were gone I hauled the big rocks me and Chris had gathered up last time and put them in a nice row down to where the trees started. By the time I got that done I was runnning out of gas so I decided to finish off the day with some more mowng down on the east side. I wanted to finish cleaning up that section but it was slowing going and I just ran out of gumption and decided to call it a day, It was 5:00 by then and it took an hour to clean up, put things away and lock stuff up so we got head home. I got in the truck after putting the chain up and started heading down the road before I remembered I didn't take any pics of what I did, but I was too tired at that point to care so next visit I'll shoot pics of my "improvements". I never took one shot all weekend. Pretty abnormal for me.

We got home about 8:00 and after a shower and some crummy pizza for supper I was pretty much done for the day, It was a beautiful weather weekend and I really enjoyed just bumming around with my 4-legged buddies. We'll more than likely be doing that again come fall and the football season.

One more thing I wanted to mention that I haven't mentioned in awhile was the road project.They started tearing up our sidewalks and street last week and so I got out there and took some pics of what it looks like around here these days. It's a pain in the butt to get in and out of here on the bike and the hot rod cuz of the very bumpy dirt road but so far it's not been too big of a pain......it's gonna be going on until the end of September so we'll just shut up and make the best of it.

More next week.

Live Music, Road Trips, Strawberry Moons & Hot Rods

2008-06-17T12:28:00.009-04:00

Since Thursday I've been going pretty much non-stop......well, I did take a long nap Saturday morning, but other than that it's been busy. We made our trip to Ann Arbor Thursday to see the Refugees and it was a good time all around. If you want to read about the trip and the concert just click on this link.

http://tcsoldnewmusicreview.blogspot.com/2008/06/refugees-live-at-ark-ann-arbor-michigan.html

We'll start with Friday here...It was a long day at work running on 3 hours sleep but I managed to last. After supper the time was spent cleaning and polishing the hot rod for Sunday's show at Chalton Park until it got too dark to see it.

Saturday I got up pretty early cuz I woke up early, but after a couple hours of sitting around (Baaad Idea, I shoulda got up and got outside and did something) I nodded off again for awhile. when I woke up I got up and headed out to the garage to push the hot rod back out and continue on with the cleaning and polishing. It was about 2:00pm when I remembered about the Feast of the Strawberry Moon Festival over on Harbor Island so I put the car away, jumped in the truck and headed over there with the camera gear and kid in tow for a couple hours. The festival has grown quite a bit since it's inception and there was lots to see. Many eras and nationalities were represented with everything from candle making to an old time lathe were on display. I find the old stuff pretty amazing.....even more so if you look around at what all our technology builds for us these days......look at difference between old buildings with their scalloped designs and intricate brick patterns (I noticed this again in Ann Arbor) to what we're putting up in the air nowadays....new buildings have no art to them, just a bunch of cement blocks piled up.....same with cars, look at the design of a 1920's car and the art and skill that was involved in making it with limitied tooling and then look at the shoeboxes that are being designed today. I used to be able to tell every car from a distance as a kid but nowadays they all look alike and they all suck. Maybe there's something to the more technology we have the less we design with art and soul in mind. (/Rant)

Anyhow, we spent a couple hours wandering around the grounds, talking with folks about what they were doing and why. We also caught the last magic show of the day which of course was for littler kids than either of us, but we still enjoyed the performance. By the time the show was over the day was winding down so we started a slow wander back to the truck and home. Chris' girlfriend, who has been in Germany since Christmas, was coming home this day and the kid was antsy to say the least. We hadn't been in the house 5 minutes when he got "the call" so I drove him over to their "summer home" out on Stickney Ridge and then came back home.....just in time to get elected to go grocery shopping with the wife. We came home from there with a couple steaks that I threw on the grill. A trip to Dairy Treat afterwards for some Ice cream and a ride to go pick up the kid wrapped things up for saturday.

Sunday morning I woke up at 4:55am, 5 minutes before the alarm was set to go off. I tried as quietly as possible to get out without waking anybody up but when I fired up the car the silence was pretty much shattered until I headed down the road. I had to stop and get gas.....another $45.00 just to get to Hastings and back. It was dark when I started out but by the time I got to Byron Center the sun had risen and it looked to be a real nice day.

I pulled onto Charlton Park road and was surprised to find that there was a line of cars and the gates weren't opened yet so I shot the breeze with the guys ahead of me until the line of hot rods started moving ahead of us. I hadn't really given it any thought but with all the torrential downpours we've been having the last week or two there has been quite a bit of flooding in the low lying areas. Well, Charlton Park sits right next to the Thornapple river and up until a couple days before the show, quite a bit of the park was still under water, When I went to park in my old spot between the river and the road I noticed a fair amount of moisture so I ended up parking across the street where the ground was a foot or two higher. I heard from other folks during the day that the park officials had been telling folks who called to inquire about the water that the show would probably not go on and that pretty much explains why there was about 1/2 as many cars this year as last. Couple that the gas prices and it's easy to see why the numbers were reduced. The quality of the rides wasn't though, some very nice cars were in attendance.

I popped the hood, put up the show board, grabbed the camera gear and headed down the road for the first walk around of the day. After a couple hours of chatting with folks and snapping pics my stomach started to growl so I headed over to the food booths and got myself a polish dog, I hiked back to the car, grabbed a pop and sat down for awhile. It was a bit after noon when I got back up and started round 2. Because of the show being 1/2 the size it usually is I was able to cover pretty much the whole area by the time it was awards time. I hung around to see who got the top prizes and money awards. After the awards were over I headed back to the car and shot all the cars I dug as they went by on their way home. Once most of the procession was over I got in the car, fired her up and headed out the park gate for home. It was a nice ride home and I did nothing after I got there except eat some supper and kick back.

Nothing big planned for the coming week. If the weather is nice I plan to go up to the castle for the weekend. it'll be the last time I can go until the middle of July because of the impending trip out west. This coming Friday is the first day of summer so It'd be a good time to go and fight some ferns, check on my pine seedlings and take a nap around the campfire. Hopefully the weather will cooperate.

A Wild Weather Weekend

2008-06-09T12:43:00.006-04:00

A Busy weekend! A wet and stormy one too. You know it was a busy one when I can't even recall what I did Friday night! Saturday morning I got up early with the intention of hitting an estate sale in town but ended up napping for awhile instead. It had been a busy, fast week too so it felt good just to stay put and rest the eyeballs.

About noon though the 3 of us headed out to Dave Palmer's house for his "Sounds of Summer" party. He's the guy who runs the "Spread The Music" foundation which donates musical instruments to kids who can't afford them among other things. Anyhow, he was having a mini woodstock at his house out on 152nd by the river for the day and so we went and hung out with Tony and Gigi and Adam and Ri for the afternoon. Some of the music was decidedly amateur but as the day went on the bands seemed to get better and towards the end of our time there, there was a bluesy band jamming up a storm. I would've loved to sit in with them but would've probably embarrassed myself so it was best I didn't.

During the afternoon I ran into Doug Ransom, who I haven't talked to or even seen for several years and so we spent awhile catching up. His youngest boy is now 26 and out in Ankorage Alaska in the Air Force these days. Eveybody's kids grow up fast I guess.....

It had been a breezy day all day, but about 6 the breeze had started to blow in some big ole black clouds so at that point we decided it was time to head out. Me and Chis had decided that we were going to head up to camp so after dropping the wife off at home we loaded up the pine trees and Bailey, put some gas in the truck and headed north. It was dark and cloudy all the way up to camp, but it didn't really rain on us till later in the evening. After we got there we opened everything and got a fire going and just kinda hung out. About 10 or so it did start to rain and we got some pretty good thunder and lightening to go with it, but not as bad as they got at home. Chris went to bed after it started raining, I stayed up for awhile and watched nature's light show until the eyes got heavy.

Sunday morning I got up about 7 or so and decided to go up to the lodge for some pancakes and sasauge. Chris wanted to stay at the camper and sleep so I went by myself and had a good breakfast. When I got back to camp I started in on the project for the day, getting my row of pine trees planted. First we measured to get the spacing between the pine trees and the road correct and then Chris started digging holes. The weather was pretty iffy and it sprinkled on us a couple times which was actually a relief from the gnats that were driving us nuts when it wasn't raining.

It took until almost noon to get the holes dug and the trees planted and then while Chris mowed the west yard I wheeled buckets of water in the wheelbarrow down to the pines until every last one had had a good drink. Then, While he mowed the east yard I laid down the patio bricks from the deck to the outhouse which will make it easier to find your way to the john late at night, not to mention keep your feet out of the mud and water on days like the one we were having at that point. I had 5 extra pines, that weren't really extras and was going to plant them along the south side, down by the corner where there's an opening I want to close when all of a sudden the sky got real dark and opened up on us. Having gotten the bulk of what we wanted to do done at that point we decided to close up shop and head for home. After being bite half to death by gnats and rained on it seemed like a good idea.

We got back home about the time Wanda was leaving for Bingo and for most of the rest of the day I just took it easy and napped a bit, ate some dinner and played on the computer.

the coming week is going to bring Father's day on Sunday & the Charlton Park Car show and unless I change my mind due to finances me and the wife are taking off a half day on Thursday and heading to Ann Arbor for a concert. The Refugees, which consists of Cindy Bullens, Wendy Waldman and Deb Holland should be worth the trip. It may be my only chance to ever see Wendy Waldman live in this lifetime and I'd like to say howdy to Cindy again like we did a couple years ago when she played at the Morris in South Bend with Dan Fogelberg.....

I guess we'll see how it goes......

Hey, I just remembered....I mowed the lawn Friday night. :)

Back To Normal

2008-06-01T23:20:00.002-04:00

Whew, it's quiet here tonight after the last 3 weeks.

Yesterday everyone was up fairly early. I made breakfast, pancakes for the munchkins and me and then we hung around the house while Jen ran some last minute errands. It was noon before the van was packed with toys and kids and ready to roll down to Indiana to visit the other set of grandparents. I took off about the same time they did and headed up to Metric Motorsports to have the idle on the bike looked at. That took all of 2 minutes for the guy to show me where it was and how to adjust it and then I was on my way back home again.

I just hung out around the house for the afternoon and then about 5 me and the wife decided to go to Texas Roadhouse for a nice dinner. We got there at the right time and didn't have to wait for a seat. We had excellent steaks with all the trimmings and stuffed ourselves. Once we got back home I decided to take a bike ride. The weather the first half of the day had been crummy but during the afternoon it cleared up nicely so I pushed the bike outa the garage and headed down lakeshore drive towards Holland. I decided to stop at the used CD store and spent awhile there rummaging thru the bins until I found a couple things to bring home. I got back home just about sunset and decided to finish off the day with a cruise in the '56. Bailey rode shotgun.

Today I got up early and headed up towards north Muskegon to do a car show at Northway Lanes as part of their East side summer spectacular. I parked next to an older gentleman with a 1923 Durant. He was friendly and we spent most of the day shooting the breeze. We both partook in the Lions all you can eat pancake breakfast but they were the kind of pancakes that soak up a half bottle of syrup so my one helping of 3 was enough.

Along with being befriended by Ken Vandenbrink one other thing to happen was running into Tony Meyers and his wife Dotty. They've been out in Arizona for the past 7 / 8 years but this year decided to come back here for the summer. they've been doing the ice cream wagon thing at carivals and art shows etc and having a good time doing it. They'd just sold the Ice cream wagon to a relative and went into the business of making and selling Kettle Corn. Really fluffy, sweetened popcorn. I noticed him from the car and hiked over to say howdy. It was a pleasant surprise to see the two of them after all this time.....we shot the breeze on and off during the day and got caught up on what's been going on in the last decade or so. I'm hoping we'll get another chance to hang out before they head back to Arizona in the fall.

The last surprise for the day happened during the awards ceremony for the show. I had chosen to be in the Street Rod - Sedan class for this show and lo and behold I got a nice 3rd place trophy for showing up. Second place was the green and silver rod and the 1st place winner was the purple sedan. After all the awards were given out I went over and said goodbye to Tony and Dotty and then fired up the hot rod and headed down the highway for home. I got there just about the time Wanda was leaving for Bingo.

After having my leftovers from Texas Roadhouse for dinner I decided to take Mercury and Bailey down to the state park for a walk on the pier on a nice blue sky day in June. We spent a little while sitting out on the end before coming back home and calling it a day.

No big plans for this week. Gonna try to do some time cleaning up the garage. The weatherman says it's gonna be warm and wet alot of the time so we'll have to play it by ear. Dave Palmers music party is this coming Saturday and I'm torn between going there or heading up to camp for the weekend. Guess we'll see how I feel come Friday. Until then I'm signing off.

Memorial Day Weekend

2008-05-27T12:45:00.010-04:00

Whew, I'm pooped out and a bit sore after a 3 day weekend. Still haven't learned how to pace myself I guess.
I had dropped the bike off at Metric Motorsports Wednesday to have it gone over and didn't figure on getting it back until this week but they called late Thursday and said it was done so I hung around the house until 9am Friday morning and had Jen and the kids drive me up there to piok it up. The bill was a bit more than what was quoted cuz they put new rear brake pads on her, tightened up the seat, changed the oil and made sure everything else was copasetic. The idle is set a bit too high for my tastes so I'm gonna have to run it back up there for an adjustment.
Anyhow, got to work late and was headed home for the day right at lunchtime. Nice short day. I packed up the truck with the stuff we needed for the weekend at the castle and hung around until Chris showed up. We headed up North a bit before 3, but didn't get to camp until almost 5 because of a protracted visit to the grocery store in Hart.
Once we got there I started in by mowing the side yard stacking firewood we'd cut up last time there. About 7 we called it quits and I started cooking hamburgers. By the time we got done chowing on them it was almost 8pm so we headed up to the lodge to see if there was anybody there making ice cream treats. Sure enough there was so we got our usuals and took a cruise around the campground to see who all was up for the weekend.
I made it up till about 1am and then the bed sounded like too good an idea to ignore.

Saturday morning, after I got done sleeping in instead of taking the dogs for our morning stroll, I made breakfast and then we got busy doing some raking until the whole crew showed up about 10:30am. In retrospect I guess I was expecting too much outa the little critters cuz the whole camping thing and being in the woods was just too much new input I guess. After a couple hours of trying to get them to calm down and take a nap for awhile Jennette got fustrated with the situation and loaded them back up in the van and by 1:00pm they were all headed back to Grand Haven. Well, that didn't work out too well....

Me and Chris decided to stay over Saturday night instead of going home so we spent the rest of the afternoon working on little projects until about 4:00 when we got cleaned up a bit and headed up to the lodge, at Adam's invite, for the potluck and party going on that night. When we all finally sat down to eat about 6 it was quite the affair. A varitable cornocopia of smells and tastes. Sliced beef was the main course and along with that were several dozens options. I was starving so I took a bit of lots of different things and filled my plate twice before calling it quits. It was quite the meal.

After dinner there was a disc jockey playing music for the rest of the evening. I hung around for a bit and then went back to camp to ge things ready for dark. After that task was completed I headed back up to the lodge and was surprised to find it full of folks dancing to the music. Again I hung around for awhile, watching the festivities until about 10 when I decided to go back to camp. Chris wanted to stay so I asked Adam to drop him off when they were ready to call it a day. I went back and me and the dogs hung around the campfire, listening to tunes and night sounds until about 1am when the boys showed up. We didn't stay up too much longer after that......

Sunday the original plan was to head back home after breakfast but it was a beautiful day and Chris had met a girl the night before so while I mowed most of the morning and afternoon he was out and about hanging out. We had gone up to the lodge for breakfast....pancakes, all you can eat for a buck and a half is too much of a deal to pass up, especially when I don't have dirty dishes to wash after I'm done eating. By the time 5 oclock rolled around I had finished mowing the area on the west side that I wanted tamed and managed to do a big swath of the east side lowland too. Once I get that all done the plan is to get a porch swing and hang it down there from one of the giant limbs.
Anyhow, it was about 6 by the time we were rolling outa camp and heading home. It was after 8 before I got a hot shower and got cleaned up. After that the only thing to do was kick back and take it easy.
Monday morning we were up early to hit the Memorial day parades. First, the Grand Haven one at 9:30, then the Spring Lake one at 10:30. I believe this was the first time the kids had seen parades and they weren't real sure what to make of all the commotion and the candy that people kept throwing at them.....After that we went back home to regroup and then me and Jennette and the two oldest boys headed for Fruitport to catch some of the parade there. As luck would

have it we had to park a ways away from the carnival area and just as we were going down the hill to where the parade route finished here came the leading cop car. So, we decided to stop at a nice grassy spot and watch the whole parade go by. Ri and Adam caught up with us midway thru the parade and after it was over and gone we all headed down to the carnvial. We didn't spend much time there...just long enough for Jen and Ri to ride the Zipper and Gravitron and then we tried to get the boys on the kiddie train for a ride but Jason wasn't impressed a bit and wailed the whole time he was riding. Ryan took it a bit more instride but after that we all decided to head out and go home for dinner that the wife had made before she took off

for the bingo deal. After dinner and a nap me and Jen took the boys down to the beach and walked 'em all thru the sand and let 'em get their feet wet for awhile. The water was cold of course so they didn't stay by the shore for long, they decided it'd be more fun to chase the Sea gulls. after some of that we loaded 'em back up in the car and headed back home. Baths were in order and after them it started to get quiet again.

We're down to the last several days now...Jen is heading down to the relatives house for some quality time this coming Saturday morning.

That's about it for now, it was a good weekend and a fun time for the most part.....I've got no complaints.

No More Teenage Girls....

2008-05-22T23:08:00.027-04:00

Well there were times when it felt like it'd never happen and other times when it felt like it wouldn't be soon enough to retain any sanity, but now that it's happened....it went by real quickly. Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 was Ri's 20th birthday. Look at that cake! Do you realize what a fire permit costs these days!!!

For Ri's Birthday dinner we had lasagna and garlic bread and of course Ice cream and some of that cake for desert. After dinner, when things quieted down a bit me and Ri took a bike ride for awhile. Cruised around town and then went out North shore road to the end and back again. On the way out there I had to whoa it up for deer in the road. It was sunset time and their time to be on the move.

For some reason I can still recall about every move I made that day in 1988. I got up to go to work and got told by

the wife that I should stick around instead so to kill some time I went out and played in the garden. It was the time of year for preping things, getting ready to plant so I was out there throwing bags of leaves in the paths and putting up stakes and string......about 11am Wanda decided she wanted to take a walk on the boardwalk so I loaded her up in the truck and drove down to the boardwalk parking lot. We hadn't waddled more than a couple hundred yards down the boardwalk towards the pier when she decided it was time for another course correction and we started to head back to the truck again. From the boardwalk to the hospital took about 20 minutes and about a half hour after that Ri decided to show up! Good thing we hadn't gotten a whole lot further out on the pier or our water baby would've been born on the boardwalk!

1988 was the summer that we had temps in the 90's for a couple months straight and every night we'd go out to North beach and stay close to the water. Ri was in her baby seat, at the beach, for most of the first 3 months of her life.

Since Tuesday night we've been hanging close to home, trying not to spend any money until the weekend trip up to camp. In anticipation of the trip I went and bought gas last night, now at $4.09 a gallon! 40 bucks is the minimum for a trip to camp now......but I guess that's still fairly cheap entertainment cuz we really don't spend any other money when we're up there, other than groceries and I'm going to be eating wherever I am so that's not an issue.

Anyhow, the plan for the weekend is to go up tomorrow afternoon and have a quiet evening. Saturday the whole gang arrives and hopefully will spend the night. That's still up in the air though....Sunday we'll be back home and Monday is Memorial day and parades. Thats all for now........here's a couple pics to finish with.......

Ethan & Wanda

Ethan

Now is that one happy little critter or what?

A Full & Busy Week In Munchkinland...

2008-05-18T23:51:00.007-04:00

...has already come and gone. It's been a hoot for the most part too, but I do know now why parents raise the kids and grandparents are second stringers. I just don't have the amount of energy these days needed to keep up with 20 million questions and the 30 minor crisis that pop up in the course of a normal day. All in all though it's been a fun week and looking forward to more of the same this coming week.
Taking off from where I left off early Saturday morning.....I woke up to cool but very blue skies. So I grabbed the camera gear and headed out the door. Fired up the hot rod and headed off for the Ball Park. It was early, a bit after 7:15am so I just took my time and cruised about 60mph all the way into G.R. enjoying the scenery and the brilliant early morning blue and greens of May. Once I got to the park and paid my entry fee I parked the car and popped the hood, got the display board up and then spent awhile shining and polishing stuff that needed attention while a steady stream of cars started to pour into the lot. After I'd gotten all the cleaning that I felt like doing I grabbed the camera gear and for the next couple hours just wandered around, checking out the old stuff I'd seen before and the new stuff that appearred over the winter.

I took a break around noon to grab a hamburg and then kicked back in the chair for an hour and watched the crowds go by while I listened to some Boomers on the Ipod. Before I knew it almost it was awards time so I went up to see who got the recognition this time around. Once the awards were all handed out it was time to head for home to pick up the daughter and head for the racetrack.

By the we got to the track it was right around 5:00pm and after not being there much in the last couple years, things were different. The late models had the weekend off and in there place, over 40 entrys of front wheel drive, 4
Cylinder American and Jap compacts. Bone stock and ready to rock and roll. I talked to several guys about them and what it took to get in the division and for less than 1500 bucks I could be living out one more little dream. It's cheap racing to keep things interesting at the track cuz there's fewer and fewer folks these days that can afford to run a late model. I don't see it happening in the next 12 months but ya never know what I'll pull outa my hat.

Anyhow, we spent the evening wandering around from spot to spot, taking pics and talking to folks we hadn't seen in awhile and some we just met. There was some good racing during the evening and the 4 bangers were a hoot out on the track, going 3 and 4 wide like they were at Talladega. The night finished up with a school bus race. Certainly the other end of the spectrum from the little cars and not as interesting either.....only 4 of 'em and they were still all on the wheels at the end. What fun is that??

By the time the show was over it was almost midnight and gettin' pretty chilly so we headed for the truck and some warmth. I didn't get more than 5 miles down the road before Jennette was crashed out in the passenger seat. Just like years ago.

Sunday I slept in a bit. Got up, made breakfast and then sat around most of the morning playing with Ethan who seems to like me for some reason. We sat on the couch and made noises at each other and played with his different toys. At some point everyone kinda crashed out for awhile and when I woke up it was close to 3. Those busy days really poop me out the day after I guess. Wanda and Jen took off for Bingo about 3 and Ri got to the house to save me about 4:30. I went downstairs to check email and pull my pics from the weekend off the discs and onto the computer and because I was still half out of it I did a stupid thing and wiped out one whole disc of Car pics from the Show. I hit the damn format tab instead of finalize and boom, they're gone. Pretty helpless feeling cuz once those little 1's and 2's are gone there ain't no bringin' 'em back. I blaming it on Sony though as a design flaw. They shouldn't have put the two features so close together and then gave them both words that started with an F. Easy to mess up and it's not the first time I've done it either so there may be operator training issues going on too.......

So after that I decided to go get some cheap pizza for supper and after choking down a slice or two of that me and Ri packed up the kids, along with Bailey and Chris and took 'em down to sluka field to play on the equipment for awhile. By the time we got back home from there it was after 8 already. Me and Bailey decided to take a cruise around town once before calling it a weekend, stopped at Dairy Treat to share a bit of ice cream and then headed for home.

That's about all I've got to report for the moment. We got another whole week ahead of us so there's plenty of time to cover some more ground. I also need to get the old mower fixed and my chain saw blade sharpened before Friday so when I head up to camp Friday I can get things looking good before everybody else gets there Saturday. Also, the bikes going in for a checkup and an oil change Wednesday so it's ready for the trip at the end of June. I am thinking about moving the trip back a week or two but haven't acted on the thought yet. Kansas is coming to play a concert on the day I would originally be leaving and I'd kinda like to see 'em again, for old times sake if nothing else. If I could sell the van or at least have the clown prince send me my economic incentive cash soon I'd be in fine shape to get all this stuff taken care of in time.

'bout time for bed and another week of grandparenting........I'll be putting up pics tomorrow night and during the week.

The End of a Busy Week

2008-05-17T01:45:00.004-04:00

I'm too pooped at this point to write much so I thought I'd just drop in some pics I've shot this week. I haven't managed to get as many grandkid shots as I planned on cuz the little critters don't sit still long enough for me to snatch more than a random frame here and there. It was a fast week.
I got out voted on going camping...seems the womenfolk think that it'd be too much trouble to take the little ones up to the camper for the weekend. I think they're being wussies but my thinking don't change the fact we're still here and not around a campfire. The plan now is to take 'em up for the day next Saturday and let 'em run wild. I will be going up Friday night so that I get at least one campfire for my $40.00 worth of gasoline. 40 bucks just to drive to Pentwater and back, jeeez, used to be able to drive to the bridge and most of the way back for that much cash. As a matter of record gas hit $3.999 here this past week...the magic number. At least now it's easy to figure out.....$40.00 equals just a tick over 150 miles.
Anyhow, because we're staying in town I'll be getting up in about...oh.....4 hours to head to 5/3 ballpark for the first car show of the year, the Burn Survivors Benefit. the weather is suppose to be cool and iffy so we'll see how that goes. After the car show me and Jennette are heading to Berlin for the races. By the time we get back from there the day will be shot. Dunno about Sunday yet, guess we're playing that one loose and sloppy.
Enjoy the pics until next time....
Naptime!
Jennette & Ethan

Belle

Jasper

Mercury & Jennette

The homestead after the ceremonial first mowing of the yard.

A House Full of Flashback

2008-05-13T12:17:00.009-04:00

Well it was just two months ago that me and the wife(and the dogs of course) had the whole house to ourselves. The juvenile deliquent son was living at a friends house and things were pretty quiet, old people quiet. Well, that all changed this past Saturday evening when Jennette arrived from Kansas with minivan full of munchkins. 3 of 'em to be exact. Ryan, who's gonna be 3 in September, Jason who'll be 2 in July and Ethan Thomas (had to get that in there) who'll be turning 1 in July. Don't ask me which days I can't keep 'em straight.
To say it's been a bit chaotic is understatment but I ain't complainin', it's cool to have some little ones around for awhile, finally. This time around I can spoil 'em and send 'em home and I ain't changing any shitty diapers, that's where I put my foot down. My job as grandpa is to spoil 'em, play with 'em and teach 'em what little I know. To explain how this adventure has started off I need to go back to the beginning of the weekend.
Friday afternoon me and Chris took off for Meadowview Castle (thanks for the handle Wolfgang). The plan was to just stay Friday night and come back home Saturday evening because Sunday was Mother's day. We got up there about 6 and started working on stuff until it started to get dark. We hung around the fire for the remainder of the evening and I called it a day a bit after midnight.
Saturday it was 38° when I got out of a nice warm camper. invigorating to say the least. I got a small fire going to warm the bones and then once I got the blood moving me and the dogs took a hike around the campground for awhile looking for deer and turkeys. Saw tracks but no live animals during the jaunt. When we got back to camp I started in making breakfast. After sausage and pancakes I was feeling feisty so we started in hauling wood into piles to cut and then later in the morning fired up the chain saw and went over to the next lot and started in logging a big ole Oak tree that had fallen over and couldn't get up any longer. Now about here is where experience in life is suppose to kick in.....normally when working in the woods and fields it's wise to keep the body completely covered to avoid coming into contact with nasty things.....ticks, spiders, plants that make ya itch......but no, I'm out there with just a short sleeved T shirt on and without a care in the world. We spent a couple hours cutting up the big limbs of the old oak and hauled it over to the wood piled and stacked it. By the time that was done we were ready for a bit to eat so Chris make us up and couple cans of spagetti and meatballs which tasted pretty good in the out-of-doors.
After luggin' all that heavy wood around all morning I decided to work on cleaning up the piles of leaves that I'd raked up the night before. They were much lighter. After a couple hours of that it was breaktime again. Chris wandered off into the camper and I sat down in a chair by the fire pit and both of us crashed out for a good hour or so. After nappy time was over we decided it was time to pick up, lock up and head for home cuz we just gotten a text message on the phone that said Jen was on the way to Grand Haven with the midget army.
We figured that we'd beat them there and have time for a shower but when we came down the street to the house the place was overrun with cars and inside was a group of folks all there to celebrate the arrival. Saturday evening went by quick.
Sunday morning I got up, got stuff around and headed off to the folks house with Mercury in the co-pilot seat as pre-planned. We made a stop at Bill's on the way up to get a potted plant (potted plant, not a pot plant) for mom. We got there a bit before noon and left about 5:30. In between I showed off Mercury's tricks to the folks, played soccer with him for awhile, had hamburgers and french fries for lunch, spent some time on mom's computer helping with stuff and then before heading home took a nap for an hour or so cuz I was just pooped.....from all the excitement of the night before no doubt. During the course of the afternoon my right arm started to feel very warm and it looked like there might be some kind of infection going on. It was uncomfortable but not painful and it wasn't until later that night that I realized what I was dealing with.....it was Poison oak! somehow Saturday up at camp, while cutting wood, I must've run into a plant with issues and it lashed out at me. Later on when my arm started to swell up and puss started oozing out I was certain what the problem was and vowed a trip to the doctor first thing Monday morning.
I got back home about 7:30 and Ri was there babysitting and had everything under control so with my condition and not wanting to share it I headed for the basement for the rest of the evening.
Monday morning as promised I was at the doctor at 9am. I got a shot in the butt and two different medicines to kill off the swelling and the itching. I also have some topical spray to keep the burning under control. All will be well again by the end of the week I hope. I don't dare touch the grandkids until I'm whole again...nobody else needs this crap, that's for sure.
I expect it's gonna be a busy week and I plan to take as many grandkid pics as I can so there should be another entry before too long. Not sure what's happening yet for the upcoming weekend. The Burn Survivors car show is Saturday but we might take the whole crew up to the castle if the weather cooperates but the way it looks right now car shows and camping trips are both gonna be iffy affairs. We'll see, there's plenty of time yet for those overpaid guessers to change their minds for the weekend. Pics to come later.

Ethan, Jason & Ryan @ tubtime.

The First Weekend at Meadowview Castle for 2008

2008-05-07T23:23:00.004-04:00

Dang, only May and I'm already falling behind.

I ended up having to work the bulk of the weekend April 26th / 27th so that the guys doing the retro-fit on my CMM could get the job finished after being there for two weeks. The weather was mostly crummy and cold anyhow so having to wait another 7 days wasn't a big sacrifice. The weather for this past weekend was exactly stellar either but after some himin' and hawin' we decided to make a run for it and just go and see what happens.Wanda and Chris got about an hour's head start on me, but we were all up there and getting dinner ready by 6ish. I made my first project gettting the "landing lights" back out and working again. To my surprise and delight there were no problems and no burned out, broken or lost bulbs!

Ri and Adam were at camp also and we all sat down to eat hamburgers and chips, demolishing 2lbs of hamburger in short order. After dinner Adam and Chris played sequence and Wanda an Ri shot the breeze while I restacked the to wood that had fallen over from the earthquake a couple weeks ago. (I failed to mention that when it happened I guess). It was about 9:30 or so when it started to rain so it wasn't long until Adam and Ri took off and Wanda and Chris decided to go to bed. I sat out on the deck, under the canopy, listening to The Boomers on the Ipod. After awhile the rain stopped, the sky cleared up and the stars came out by the millions. I soaked up the heat from the embers of the fire for awhile before giving in and heading for my pillow.

Wanda and Adam had early morning plans to drive up to Manistee to hit the Casino for awhile so I said goodbye to the wife in the 6am darkness and closed my eyes again until about 8am. At that point I was mostly awake and completely hungry so I cooked up a bunch of bacon and scrambled eggs for the 3 of us left behind. It was a beautiful blue sky morning so after we were done eating I got out the lawnmower and the chain saw and got them both ready to go. Me and Chris first went around clearing up all the fallen logs that I never got around to cleaning up last spring before the grass hid them from view. That project killed a couple hours quick and then I fired up the mower and went after the west side yard. By the time we got that all mowed and cleaned up of debris it was almost 2 in the afternoon so it was time to take that ride into Ludington and hit the Home Depot. I needed 50 ft of good rope for the tire swing I was putting up plus some other smaller items. As luck would have it, just as we were heading out of camp, here comes the wife and son-in-law back from the casino. Adam couldn't wait to show off his tax slip which showed that he'd made $1,350 for his efforts! Not bad pay for a couple hours worth of work. I'm thinking maybe I should go and try to get lucky....I could use some help with the gas fund for the summer months. $3.65 a gallon is a real kick in the butt.

By the time we got back to camp from our trip to town it was past 4pm and getting cloudy We had an excellent meal of pork chops and fried potatoes, a personal favorite. Not long after dinner though the clouds that had been building up finally decided to let go of the precipitation they were holding. Over the next couple hours the rained increased in intensity and finally about 9:30 we all decided to call it a day and just get some extra sleep

Sunday morning we woke up to frost! It was nippy to say the least. Of course, as it always happens, the propane ran out sometime during the night so the first thing I did was switch tanks and then set about to make breakfast. By the time I was done stuffing myself with bacon and pancakes it'd warmed up enough to be bareable so I set about with my project for the day, a tire swing for the grandkids when they come up in the old oak tree on the corner.

The first thing that had to be done was remove one limb that was in the way. I had no ladder so I used the next best thing, the wheelbarrow. I propped it up against the base of the tree, fired up the saw and climbed in. It gave me just enough leverage to reach the limb. The thought occurred to me about then that I'd seen basically the same thing I was doing in a Safety video years ago with bad results, but in my best "that'll never happen to me" voice I forged ahead and in about 2 minutes the limb and myself were both on the ground again.

After we got the limb cut up and moved out of the way the next trick was to get the rope up and over the 40ft high limb. I found a suitable log, tied some clothesline rope to it and taped the other end of that rope to the heavy sisal rope and after several attempts got the log up and over the limb where I wanted it. After pulling the sisal rope up and over we put the slip knot in it and pulled it tight. Ta Da!

Now, the only thing missing was a tire! Not having one in our possession at that point we jumped in the truck and headed over to the utility building by the lodge to see if there were any dead tires laying around that needed a purpose in life. Within a matter of minutes we had found our candidate, white lettered no less, tossed it in the back of the pick-up and headed back to camp.

It was at this point that we had to enlist the aid of the wife due to our inability to tie a decent knot around the tire that would hold. She came to our rescue and using one of her knitting knots put a cinch on the tire that kept it at the right height. After a couple test runs we deemed the project phase 1 complete and went and took a break.

By then it was almost noon and so Wanda loaded up the car with her stuff, 3 dogs and one junvenile deliquent and headed back to town leaving me and Mercury to enjoy the fresh air and sunshine of the afternoon. At that point phase II started with the lawnmower and clearing a wide swath from the top of the hill to the bottom in the area of where the tire would swing in any direction. After mowing it was raking time, Phase III. Mercury napped while I put on the headphones and listened to the Boomers while I raked the hillside area and made it safe for barefeet. By the time that was complete it was a bit past 3pm

I decided to do more mowing in the lowlands area, along side the road and a section where I'd like to maybe build a pond someday.....by the time I was finished with that little project I was pooped and done for the day. I packed up, locked up, jumped in the truck and headed for home.

Last night I pulled the hot rod out of the garage after supper and headed up to Quicks to see if things were back to normal with Tuesday night cruise-in's and the answer is yes! There's a new Quicks, built from bricks this time and there was around 120 cars show up for opening night of the season. We hung around until they finished calling off the lucky numbers and then came back to town, made a stop at Dairy Treat, rode around town once and then called it a day and headed for home.

Not sure what's happening yet this weekend. There's a chance Jennette and the grandkids will be up Saturday night. If not this weekend then next weekend I guess, depends on when she gets her incentive cash. I may go up to camp Friday night either way and spend at least Saturday with the chain saw again. gotta get the fallen stuff picked up before the ferns and grass take over again.

At any rate, that's it for now, time to sleep.

Longer Days and Less Time

2008-04-23T23:14:00.004-04:00

Well I've been meaning to drop a line or two since Sunday night but I keep falling asleep everytime I sit down in this chair. I either must be under a lot of stress that I don't know about yet or I need to up my thryoid meds another notch or two.

This past weekend was a 1st class spring weekend and I managed to get some things done. Actually been pretty busy since the last entry. Saturday it was suppose to rain but never did. Wanda went up to Mt. Pleasant with her sister to play at the casino for the day so after napping in until about 10 and then making breakfast I went over to Home Depot and bought a new wheelbarrow that I really needed cuz my old one just finally fell apart. Wanda bought it for me, for father's day I think way back when the girls were little and I spent quite a bit of time out in the garden, which is now the dogpen. Anyhow, after the stop at H.D. We (Bailey was my ride along buddy) paid a visit to Dairy Treat which was celebrating it's first day open for the 2008 season. After sharing a hot fudge malt we headed back home and after a bit of wandering around the house I decided to jump in with both feet and clean up the truck from a long, cold and dirty winter. So for the rest of the afternoon I scrubbed and polished, cleaned windows and basically gave it the once over. By the time I was tired of labouring it was 7:00 so I took a break to make some supper. After supper me and Bailey took another ride around town, this time in the hot rod before sunset and after that we headed back home and took it easy until the wife got back home from her trip.

Sunday the plan was to head up to the campground and open up the trailer and get it cleaned up and air'd out for the summer, so that's what we did (Chris went with me, along with Bailey and Mercury). From the time we got there, late morning, until about 6:00pm we were busy cleaning, raking and organizing stuff. Most of my time was spent with the camper. after scrubbing it down from top to bottom I got her cranked up and opened and then pulled out the cushions, cleaned out the cupboards, put up the screen house, hooked up the water to the outhouse, turned on the electric, got the fridge running and a half dozen other things before calling it a day and heading back home. The plan was to go up for the weekend this coming weekend but that might change depending on weather and work.

This week and last week folks from Brown and Sharpe have been at Burnside, retro fitting my CMM with all new guts to the tune of about 30 grand. Along with the money then spent to get my machine up to snuff I also got a substantial raise a couple weeks ago which was pretty cool. I really hope things continue to go well there cuz I'd really like to stick around for awhile and get that lab running at 100%

Last night we were invited over to Ri and Adams for dinner so we were there with our appetites about 6:30. After dining on some tasty chicked, green beans and a baked potato we spent the rest of the evening playing Wii, Which for those who don't know is interactive computer gaming. We played Baseball, Tennis and some Golf and to play you have to stand there and go thru the motions of the game, swing a bat, or a racket, or a club. While it's probably not equal to a 10K run it is a bit of exercise and quite a hoot.

I guess that's pretty much it for now. If we make it up to camp this weekend I'll probably write soon, if we don't go this weekend it'll probably be next weekend for sure, unless the weather is really suckin'...I'm looking forward to my first nap around the campfire with stars overhead :-)

Spring Is Finally Here

2008-04-06T11:06:00.000-04:00

A beautiful weekend has just about come to a close. Yesteday the temps made it to the mid 60's and today it hit 72°! Now, if we can just avoid any relapses life will be good.

Saturday was spent for the most part doing clean-up work around the house and yard. I started out doing the dishes but it was just too nice outside to stay indoors so I grabbed the rake and made my first project cleaning up the dog pen. After a long winter it needed it. I also swept up the breezeway. All those hairy little paws bring in a fair amount of dirt this time of year. After that was completed I played some soccer with the critters cuz they'd been bugging me all day with the ball.

After playtime I grabbed my trusty rake again and headed out to do some raking in the front of the house. I decided I'd do the side yard and make the neighbors happy. So with the ipod hooked up and rocking to some James McMurtry I spent the next couple hours raking and triming back the grass that had grown over the edge of the cement. Once that task was complete I went and hooked up the hose and washed the dirt off the cement. Then I did the same thing to the patio.

The next task was to get the van parked in position to put the For Sale sign back in again and see if we can have any better luck this year with a reduced price.

By now it was almost 6pm so I decided I'd been putting it off long enough and took the cover off the bike and pushed it out of the garage before firing her up. While it was warming up I went and got my coat and helmet and then proceeded to take a cruise around town for awhile just to make sure I hadn't forgot how to ride it. Once I'd passed that test I brought her back home and parked her in the garage. My plan from here on out is to ride it to work as many days as I can, depending on temps and precipitation.

After the bike ride it was time for some supper so while Wanda worked on our taxes I went to Papa Murphy's and bought a pizza. After pigging out on that it was pretty much time to kick back. I stayed up until about 3:30am ripping albums and uploading.

This morning I got up about 9:30am and proceeded to make the standard Sunday morning breakfast. Eggs and bacon for the wife and pancakes for me and the dogs. Once breakfast was finished I grabbed the camera gear, a couple dogs (Bailey and Mercury) and headed up to the compound for the first time since the start of the year. There was still quite a bit of snow on the north side slopes in the woods but our site was snow free! I wandered around a bit checking things out and then decided to start the 2008 clean up project with some raking. I started with the yard area and after several hours and some tired arms got most of the leaves moved on down the hill. The wind kept messing with me....all of a sudden there'd be a gust that would send thousands of leaves rolling down the hill in the correct direction and then 5 minutes later another gust would come along and blow against my efforts.

To give my arms a break I got the dogs hooked up to leashes and we took a hike around parts of the campground. We made a stop at the lake and Bailey just walked right into the water right up to his chin and proceeded to lap away. Mercury on the other hand wanted nothing to do with getting wet and put his feet in just far enough to get a drink. After the break was over we headed back to camp, got out the spray paint and went looking for a dozen suitable trees that we could use for the fence project that wouldn't make a dent in the overall look of our forest spot. After awhile of wandering up and down hill I found enough trees and marked them to give myself a good start on at least the south side fence. I want to get some fast growing pine trees for the east side, along with the fence, so we can have a bit more privacy eventually. I need to do some research on that pretty soon here.

After marking the trees we took a break and ate some ritz crackers and washed it down with some cold well water. The dogs were kicked back at that point so I laid back on the deck with the sun shining on me and dozed off for a little bit. By the time the nap was over it was getting on to 5:00pm so I went around and locked things back up and turned off the power. Took one last look around and then headed down the road for home. We got back here about 6:30 and by the time dinner was over and I'd had a shower it was a bit past 8. The rest of the evening has been spent down here with the headphones on boppin' to Marshall Tucker Band.

Eyes are heavy now so it's time to call it a weekend and go get some sleep. I have a feeling I'm gonna be a bit stiff in the morning If now is any indication.........hope I didn't overdo it too much, not into pain.

Night.

The End Of Hibernation

2008-04-02T23:31:00.001-04:00

Just a short note tonight.

After I got home from work Wanda wanted to go get something to eat at the newly reopened Quizno's where brother-in-law Tony is now the manager so that's what we did. While we were sitting there eating I decided that due to the fact that it was April, the sun was out and I was sick of waiting to get the Hot Rod out when we got back home. So, that's what I did. Fired her up, backed her out onto the driveway and let her warm up for a bit while I did a quick check once around. When the temp gage started to register I got the co-pilot, Bailey, out of the breezeeway and we took off down the road. We did the once around town, cruised the beach and went out to Harbor Island where I jumped out and took a couple pics with my camera phone. From there we went back thru town and then headed out south, down the highway to wind her up and clean that carbon out of the pipes. Wound her up to just about 90mph and then lifted. Nothing like the sound of an unrestricted V-8. Does the ole heart good. We came back home via Mercury drive, pulled into the garage and called it a cruise.

The weatherman says it might hit 60° this weekend so a short trip around on the bike might be in order. we'll see though...I hate to have 6 layers of clothes on just to ride. If it does get that warm out I'll probably go up to the compound and do some maintenence. Too soon to pop open the camper but if the snows gone up there like around here then I can at least do some clean-up work and start marking some suitable trees to log for the fence project this summer.

Time for bed now....been draggin' a bit this week with a stuffy nose and red eyes.

Good Things Come To Those Who Wait

2008-03-31T01:07:00.002-04:00

Not a whole lot to report this week....Spring is still pretty much holding off on getting started so the bulk of the weekend was spent around the house catnapping and playing music. The BIG deal for the week happened Friday night at the Frauenthal Theatre in Muskegon and rather than repeat myself here I'm going to refer you to my music blog for the big (for me) news. Just follow this link and you should end up in the right place.

http://tcsoldnewmusicreview.blogspot.com/

that's all for now.

A Wintery Easter Weekend

2008-03-25T21:30:00.007-04:00

After being in a healthy mental and physical condition most all winter, now that it's spring I've been fighting a bit of a cold the last week so that's why this is a couple days behind. I spent most of last evening wrapped up in a blanket cat napping.

Last Thursday, the 20th, was the first day of spring, but as anyone who's lived in Michigan for a year or more knows, just because the calendar says spring doesn't mean it's gotta act like it and this year was a prime example of where that cynical attitude comes from....Friday, the first full day of spring, brought us a snowstorm and about 8 more inches of the white flufffy shit. I had the day off work so I was down here in the den most of the morning piddling around. About 2:00pm I decided to go upstairs for some lunch and lo and behold it's snowing like crazy. It continued to show thru the rest of the afternoon and into the evening.
Rather than be snowed in on a Friday night we decided to go out to dinner with the brother-in-law and his wife and the music director of G.H. High School and his wife. We got to Red Lobster about 6:00. We had a good meal and a good time and didn't leave to head for home untlil about 9:00. By then most of the snowing had stopped but the roads were a sloppy, slippery mess all the way home.

Saturday the sun came out and started melting what had fallen the day before but there was too much around to make it all disappear in one day. We didn't do much all day but hang around the house. The high point of the day was probably getting a haircut or maybe getting the oil changed in the truck, it's a toss up.

Sunday morning I got up and made a quick breakfast for the two of us and then I got my stuff around, grabbed Mercury and headed up North to the folks house for Easter dinner. I made a stop at Big Johns store on the way up to check out some stuff I want to get for the compound this year but didn't buy anything. After a 10 minute stop there we made the rest of the trip to the folks non-stop and got there a bit after 11. They weren't home from church yet so me and Merc took a hike out in the woods.

Between 11am and about 5pm when we took off, we had a good meal of ham, sweet potatoes and rolls with Chocolate pie for desert, spent some time on the computer answering my mother's questions and spent awhile playing catch with Merc to show my dad what a good catch he was. After we said our goodbyes and took off we drove out past gramps old farm, which ain't much to look at these days and then turned the truck towards home. We got back here about 7:00 and the rest of the evening pretty much was spent taking it easy.

In other news...the American Axle strike is still going on and I'm still working so it's still a draw. So far, So good.

Not much else to say so I'll leave ya with a couple pics of my folks, one of me and Mercury and an editorial cartoon that pretty much says it all for me without saying a word. Gas prices this week are $3.38 a gallon. Talk about terrorists......

Spring Is In The Air

2008-03-16T23:26:00.000-04:00

Nope, no Robins or Hyacinths yet but a lot of the snow has gone away as the last week has seen temperatures over the freezing mark every day. The weather for the coming week is more of the same......We're suppose to be having both snow and thunderstorms in the next several days so while it's not exactly motorcycle weather for me yet, it's getting close and that's a good thing.

Not much has been going on around here the last couple weeks. Been pretty quiet which is ok. I like quiet.

The biggest news I guess would be the American Axle strike, which has shut down most of GM, which in turn has shut down a lot of 3rd tier outfits, like Burnside for one. As of Friday all the production workers were laid off until the strike is over and some of the salary folks were given the time off too. I count myself lucky in that I'm one of a handful who get to go in tomorrow morning like usual and use this quiet time to try and catch up a bit. I'm hoping I can keep right on working until the strike is over, but of course there are a lot of variables involved with this situation so things could change at any time. For tomorrow at least things are still cool. I really don't want any time off right now, it would just mess the plans for the summer up all the more and I really hate dealing with the state beauracacy and unemployment. Been there, done that, way too many times.

Friday evening I got out of the house for awhile and went up to Muskegon high school where there was a drum clinic going on. Several professional drummers were there along with one local boy who made good. There were 3 kits set up on the stage, along with the rest of a band's gear. Each drummer came out to give a talk, spend sometime showing off their chops on the drums and answering questions. At the end of the evening all 3 drummers came out along with the full band and took turns trading 4's within the context of the jam. It was very cool and gave me a bit of inspiration. After it was all over I went down to ask some questions about drum tuning and I plan on taking the advice as soon as I can find a drum key around here somewhere. Like so much of my stuff around here, it seems all 3 drum keys have walked off. I feel like the borrower's are living in the walls here........

That's about it for now I guess, it's late and I need to get horizontal. If things change with the strike for better or worse I'll give out a shout.

Night.

We've leapt into March

2008-03-01T23:38:00.002-05:00

I was going to write somethng cute yesterday as it was the 29th day of February, the day that gets added every year to the shortest month of the year, but I nodded off before I could realize my plan. So you're going to have to suffer thru it a day late.

I don't know who's idea it was to add that bonus day to the end of February, but it had to be a mean spirited desk jockey in some govermental agency somewhere because any organization with more than a small amount of common sense would've added that day to the end of June. I mean, cmon....both July and August have 31 days so why not give June a chance at 31 days at least once every 4 years. I'd have to believe that unless you're a polar bear an added day in June to lay on the beach and swim in the lake would be a whole lot more enjoyable than another cold miserable day in February where the main form of entertainment would be to shovel the driveway, again......

Not much has happened out of the ordinary the last 3 weeks, hence the lack of an entry. The biggest news I guess is something I'd rather not talk about at the moment and I'm deferring to the old adage, some things are better left unsaid. Other that that I believe that we set some kind of record this year for the most snow ever in February. I'm not sure I got that entirely right but it wouldn't surprise me. I sure had to shovel enough of the damn stuff the last 4 weeks. Just to be fair though I have to admit that there were a couple evenings there, when I was outside, later in the evening, and the sky was clear, Full of stars and the air was cold and crisp and it felt good breathing it in and out again. Of course once you get to be 55 or so just breathing in and out feels good, even more so if you've gone thru what I went thru back in November. Coming to grips with your own mortality can really make a person sit up and take notice.

I dont have any cute jokes or videos this time to share and it's hard to drag myself out in this weather to shoot pictures so you're stuck with just text this time. Not much else to report either. Work is going good for the most part. I went in this morning for awhile to get a couple things done. We're busy right now with new work which is a good place to be in this shitty economic time. Just found out today that the city is going to rip up our road starting in April to put in new sewers, curbs, the whole nine yards. I'm going to the meeting at City Hall later this month to put in my two cents for fixing the Hopkins street curbs that I wanted fixed 20 years ago when the kids were little and couldn't ride their bikes down the sidewalk without falling off the curb. Of course as soon as they finish this project the property tax assessment will likely go up but I'll be down there to fight any increase next time because of the fact they're assessment is about 30,000 bucks over what realtors have told us it's worth. If I've got to get a bank to come out and do an official look over then I will. The money that'll cost will be returned by what I won't have to give to the city in property tax. We'll see how that one goes.

Daylight savings time starts in a week or two nowadays and I just don't think that's right. Hell, the world is still covered in 2 feet of snow and it ain't even officially Spring for 3 weeks yet. Another stupid bureaucrat came up with the idea to move the date up from the first weekend in April and for the life of me I don't know why, farmers aren't out plowing their fields this early in the season, who benefits from the change?.....damn people just can't leave well enough alone.

Anyhow, that's about it for now.....time for a nap before breakfast.

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow.....

2008-02-10T23:32:00.000-05:00

It's not like I could stop it anyhow...

We're having some first class winter weather this weekend. something we haven't had in several years if not longer. It started getting windy and snowing last evening, rattling the windows and piling up the drifts while we slept and by the time I got up this morning the world outside had a decidedly artic look to it. During the day today winds have been up to 40mph which gave us wind chills around -25°. The blowing snow was bad enough at times that the houses across the street weren't visible. Not exactly snow man building weather. Even the dogs were only out long enough to do their business before they were barking to be let back inside. At this point, Sunday evening, the winds are dying down and the worst seems to be over although it's still a bit chilly as this intellicast forecast indicates.

and to indicate exactly what the term lake effect means.....this intellicast image from this evening tells the tale.

So much for the weather report.
The only other thing that comes to mind is the issue I had with the truck this past week. Tuesday evening while we were out and about Wanda went to lower the window and it decided it had had enough of the constant up and down and stop moving. No matter how much she or I pushed our buttons to make it go back up it would not move and given the time of year it made for an uncomfortable ride home. For the next couple days I put plastic over it to keep the snow out while parked but going back and forth to work was a breezy affair. I finally got it into the shop Thursday afternoon expecting it to cost me a couple hundred bucks I didn't have and was pleasantly surprised to have to only shell out fifty bucks for a new switch, to replace the one that had burnt itself out. Given the weather this weekend I'm real glad I spent the money to get it fixed.
Time to head for bed now and get ready for the coming week.

"It is astounding what God allows the human race to get away with, when lightning is so cheap."

2008-02-01T23:18:00.000-05:00

The above quote is attributed to Mark Twain. At least the source I got it from attributes it to Mr. Twain. I did a little research, but couldn't find it on the Quotation sites I visited. I'll keep looking, but I guess it's not really too important who gets credit for the thought as long as the quote is a valid observation. Not only that, but it made me chuckle and anything that can make me chuckle in the dead of winter would be a belly laugh in summertime.......

It's February 1st, already. That's not good....When January zooms past as fast as it did this time around then I have some concern for how fast the summer will go by......I've been fairly busy with my little projects this winter. Been working on the websites again, which is theraputic and continuing to digitize the vinyl collection. After a year of being an Ipod devotee I've finally managed to fill it up entirely and now I find myself removing albums from Itunes to make room for new stuff. Sometime in the not too distant future I'm going to need another external Hard drive just for music storage. Best Buy had 350gig HD's for $120 and I'm wrestling with the wisdom of plastic carding one.

The weather this past month has been weird to say the least. Everything from spring-like weather to wind-chill temps that make it wise to stay indoors, wrapped in a blanket with a dog or 3 close by for added warmth. Just this past week we had pouring rain with temps in the 40's and 6 hours later temps in the 20's, with serious wind chill and 8 inches of snow on the ground. I went out to go to work the next morning and the doors on the truck were froze shut because of the moisture from the rain and the quick deep freeze temps that followed. We got dumped on again today and so after supper this evening I spent a couple hours out shoveling the driveway, removing what the snow plow deposited. The stars were out, with Orion high in the southern sky and the cold air actually felt good in my lungs.

This has been a better winter health-wise this time around after some rough times the last couple years. Since my trip to the emergency room back in November I've been feeling pretty good and having no problems at all with the lungs not wanting to do their job. That's a good thing. I've been to another doctor a couple times since that trip to the E.R. and after that scare have been being pretty good about following his suggestions and taking the meds. I've come to the totally unprofessional conclusion that more than likely the new meds I'd started back in November were the cause of my problem. Wasn't having a problem before I started them and haven't had a problem since I stopped. Of course the downside to a visit to the E.R. is the cost of having them entertain you. Hopefully the insurance will take care of the bulk of the bill but I'm still gonna be paying a stipend every month for quite awhile. The basic bill for 3 hours in E.R. was right around $1,700 and I wasn't in a whole lot better shape when I left than I was when I got there.

Look at that.....they say when ya get old most all your discussions revolve around the weather or your health. Hey, I'm not dead yet. Let's talk about plans for the coming year. Once the green returns to the land I plan to take lots of dog walks, put lots of miles on the bike and the hot rod, do some car shows, spend as many weekends up at camp as I can get away with and the capper? taking a bike trip out west for a week by myself. How is that gonna happen? Well, possibly thanks to the idiot we have for a president's economic incentive plan, if that becomes a reality. Otherwise, I'll just be behind a little further for awhile. I can travel pretty cheap by myself on a bike with a tent and sleeping bag so I don't expect the trip to cost much at all and the advantages to such an endeavor, both mentally and physically, far outweigh any downside. I have wanted to travel to the Dakota's, see the Badlands and Mount Rushmore since the kids were little. I had a trip planned as a family at one point years ago but it was never realized for a variety of reasons so this is a better late than never adventure that I really need to do. I am already planning the route, figuring out how far I can get from day to day and listing what I want to see. Hopefully nothing will come along to squash the plan.

For right now though the plan is to stay warm, stay mellow, keep breathing and try to find something in every day that makes me glad to be alive and kickin'. With that said my plans for the weekend are to do all the above plus shovel the driveway, play on the puter, maybe go to a movie if I can talk the wifey into it and play with my 4 legged buddies who are all crashed out around me at the moment.

In closing this time, because I've taken no pictures lately, here are a couple graphics. The first one I find humorous. One of the guys on a Audio equipment list I'm on had it as his avatar and I thought it was quite funny. If you've read George Orwell's book and know anything about the current situation of the government, it's funny.

The second one I'm not sure where I found it, I simply think it's a beautiful image.

I've even included a joke that gave me a belly laugh AND YouTube video of Mrs Hughes. This lady is one funny grandma......the first time I saw this I laughed so hard I had tears rollin' down my cheeks. Her timing and inflection are impecable. Spend the 5 minutes and see if it doesn't make you feel better.........

Night.

I was depressed last night so I called Lifeline.

I got a call center in Pakistan.

I told them I was suicidal.

They got all excited and asked if I could drive a truck.

Milestone Birthdays and Car Shows

2008-01-13T11:31:00.000-05:00

Well, here we are almost to the mid point of January already. Not a good sign when the slow part of the year is zippin' right by. The old saying "older you get the faster it goes" seems to be pretty much on the mark based on my experiences of late.For the most part the last couple weeks been quiet and the winter routine has been wake up (duh), go to work, come home, eat supper, play on the computer or watch some TV, or both and then go to bed, later than I should, to start the whole process over again.

This past Friday, the 11th, was the better half's 50th birthday and I wanted it to be a bit memorable so I sent her an Email birthday card to start off the day, followed with a personally delivered bouquet of flowers at lunchtime....the standard, or traditional for the less cynical, 12 Carnations with a single rose sticking out of the middle, along with some greens in a glass vase and this year, due to the number of birthdays involved, I included 3 black balloons that floated above the flowers. I delivered all this to her at work, after she expressly said the night before how she didn't want anybody at work to know about her special day. Whooops, bad me!

I got to the lobby and gave her a call to come up and of course by then she knew something was up. She took it quite well and as luck would have it one of the guys came back from lunch about then so I had to mention to him what was going on and as if I had it planned out in advance he went straight to the intercom and announced Wanda's birthday to the entire plant! Whoooops again! At that point my work there was done so I headed back to the shop to finish out the day.

After work we, along with Ri and the Greens, went to The Texas Steak House and proceeded to stuff ourselves with lot of good chow. Somehow the waitress found out that it was the wife's birthday (hey, stop looking at me!) and unbeknownst to me (1st time we'd been there) after we'd pretty much finished dinner she came out to our table with a sawhorse that had a saddle attached to it. The deal was the birthday girl had to go sit on the saddle. It took a minute or two to convince her that it was the thing to do and there was a threat made about me sleeping in the garage, but she finally got up and went over to sit on the saddle. At that point our waitress stood up on the seat of our booth and at the top of her lungs announced to the entire place that it was Wanda's 21st birthday (good move!) and that everyone should give her a big Yeehaa. So, that's what the whole place did.....YEEEEHAAAA...it was loud! So after that event we settled up the tab and headed back home for a quick break before heading off to the movies to see, of all things, "The Bucket List". Just the flick for someone that's wrestling with being 50 all of a sudden.

It was a good movie, funny / sad with a bit of a message. I'd recommend it as one worth seeing although I wished they'd have added more to certain parts of it. The ending was quite predictable, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
It was a bit after midnight when we got home and the birthday girl was ready for bed. My work was done and I didn't have to sleep in the garage!

Satuday I got up, made some breakfast and then got my camera gear around to make a little trip to G.R. to see this year's Autorama car show. I got there about 11 and stayed till about 3, taking pics and shooting the breeze with people I knew and people I didn't know.....watched a little campy entertainment and then, once I'd seen it all, I headed out the door and back home. There was homemade chili waiting when I got there so I filled up on that and spent the rest of the evening digitizing albums and playing with my websites.

Today was nap day. Again I got up, made breakfast, goofed around downstairs awhile and then crawled into my chair, threw my favorite blanket over me and made up for the lack of sleep I get during the week. When I finally decided to get back up it was suppertime.....geez eat, sleep, eat, sleep..........hey it's winter and it's time to hibernate. I think I'll go do some more of that right now.....another week is only 8 hours away.

Night.

Time to hang up the new calendar

2008-01-01T23:50:00.000-05:00

Well, here it is the end of the first day of the new year and the end of the "holidays". It's not a new years resolution or anything but I've decided I'm going to attempt a project that I've thought about for a couple years now but never acted on and no, it's not another diet. For lack of a better name I'm calling it the PicADay project. What I'm going to try and do is take at least one decent pic a day that represents where I am or what I'm doing. Some days, particulary this time of year, it's gonna be tough to snag a good shot. I expect you'll see more than a few shots of my 4-legged friends in the months ahead, but then there'll be days during the warm months when it'll be hard to pick just one shot. We'll see how it works and how long I can keep the momentum up. I got today's shot so that's one down and 364 to go!

Last weeks short workweek went by quick enough without too many problems. We're in the process of painting the lab and sprucing things up. They bought me about 2 grand worth of tables and cabinets to store gages and tooling in and once the reorganizing is done I plan to tie up some loose ends that have been bothering me since I arrived.

Saturday evening we celebrated my birthday a day early by going up to Caminoes for dinner. The daughter of the original owner happened to be there and ended up waiting on us herself. That was cool. We've been eating there since our first date in early 1980 and it still hits the spot 28 years later. We came back home after dinner and hung around for awhile until it was movie time. We headed over to the Cinema 9 to see "I Am Legend". I won't go into the plot but I enjoyed the movie even though it was a bit out of character. Pretty scary in places. Wanda didn't care much for it because of that I guess. There were a couple incidences where we both were leaning back in our seats as far as we could get........We were home by midnight from the show and that was it for Saturday.

Not much happened on Sunday, just hung around the house. Ma and Jennette both called to wish me a happy birthday but that was about it. No cake or anything like that......not that I need a cake anyhow.....the fire permit for 55 candles would probably cost more than we can afford so it's just as well.

Yesterday I took a drive up to the compound to make sure that everything was still battened down securely. I took Bailey, Mercury and Jasper with me and they had a ball romping thru the 16 inches of snow they had up there. We hung around for a bit, took some pics and then got back in the truck and headed back for home. Probably won't go back up again until I can open the camper or at least fire up the chain saw once the snow is all gone.

I guess that's about it for now. I haven't decided yet how I'm going to present the PicADay shots. Either do it in here, start a new blog just for the pics or start a new folder in Flickr called PicADay. The last one is probably the way I'll go but alittle testing is in order first.

night.

It's Christmas Eve....

2007-12-24T23:40:00.000-05:00

.....already. It kinda snuck up on me this year, which is probably a good thing. I've never been a big fan of the gigantic interruption in the normal ebb and flow of life that it causes. I don't really think I'm a scrooge, but this time of year tends to bring out a lot of hypocrisy in people and I could do without any more of the negative side of things than is absolutely necessary. There's no other time of the year that gets the attention that this one day gets and with the current attitude of taking anything religious out of the holiday I'm not sure I understand what the point is any longer except to maybe give the economy a shot in the arm and make up for sagging sales numbers the first 11 months of the year. Hmmm, maybe I am a scrooge.

Anyhow, this has been a fairly quiet holiday season around here and the biggest event has already come and gone. Due to a death in the Polgar family, Eric, Jen and the kids had to leave Kansas and head back to Indiana for a funeral this past Saturday. So, while Eric stayed in Hobart and took care of business, Jen loaded up the van with all 3 munchkins and drove up here for the day, yesterday. They got here about 10 and between 3 kids, 4 dogs and an undertermined number of adults it got chaotic quick. Ri and Adam were here for the visit also. I made breakfast for everyone and then for about the next 6 hours we sat around and talked, played with the kids and had a good, albeit hectic time. The weather outside was crappy, snowy and very windy so it was an inside day for everyone.

As to be expected I guess, when you only see someone once in awhile, they grow up quick and the biggest difference was in Jason, who now is the official family holy terror. the boy is up and running and the world is his to explore. Only problem with that is he don't know yet that there's places in the world where you can fall right off the edge so mom and dad are gonna have to keep an eye and maybe a leash on that boy so he's still around to watch graduate from high school.

We finally got to meet Ethan Thomas too.....now that he's 5 / 6 months old. He's a cute little bugger with big eyes and big smile. I got a chance at alittle quality time amid the chaos and held and fed him a bottle. He was almost asleep when he got snatched up by someone else. Wanda had to head out for bingo about 3:30 and because of the weather Jen decided to head back South a bit early so right around 4:00 we packed up the toys, the diaper bags and the kids and reloaded the van for her trip back to Hooiserland. Adam and Ri took off the same time Jen and the kids did and then the house got quiet again.

I had only got about 3 hours sleep the night before so after everyone was gone me and my 4-legged buddies all curled up in our favorite spots and napped for a couple hours. Jen called when she got down to Hobart to let me know she got there safely and it was at that point that the light came on and I realized in all the whoopla that I'd forgotten all about bringing the camera out and getting some shots of the kids. Guess I was more tired than I thought I was....that ticked me off cuz who knows when I'll see the kids again. What an idiot I am sometimes........so I've included a pic of Ethan that Jen sent recently that I like.......that'll have to do for now.

Today me and the wife did some last minute shopping and then later in the afternoon we went out to Tony and Gigi's for a little get-together. Ate sloppy joes and snacked on sugary treats until about 9:30 when we headed back home. We're heading up to the folks in the morning and that'll take care of most of tomorrow. Then it's back off to work for the rest of the week. Not much else to say at this point. I could tell my favorite Christmas story about when the kids were little but I think I did that last year.......

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

One Of The Great Ones Leaves Us For Higher Ground

2007-12-20T23:24:00.000-05:00

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Dear friends,

Dan left us this morning at 6:00am . He fought a brave battle with cancer and died peacefully at home in Maine with his wife Jean at his side. His strength, dignity, and grace in the face of the daunting challenges of this disease were an inspiration to all who knew him.

http://www.danfogelberg.com/

It's taken a couple days now since I first heard the news for the awful finality of it to really kick in and hit me fully. What really did it was putting Netherlands on the turntable last night and realizing that not only was it a work of art so close to perfect that no mere mortal could have created those melodies and wrote those words without backing from a higher power, but that even now, after not having played it for years, that I still know every word, every melody, every nuance from the first piano notes of Netherlands to the final chords of False Faces.

I've been to a lot of concerts in my life. Some great ones and some not so memorable, but I remember the first time I saw Dan Fogelberg and I remember it like it was yesteday. It was 1974 and myself and my buddy David were at Grand Valley's Field House for the final night of the Eagles "On the Border" tour. We were up front, as was usually the case in those days, and although my memory is not 100% I seem to recall Glen Frey coming out to announce that they'd brought a friend of their's to open the show for them, a guy named Dan Fogelberg. Well, we were there to see the Eagles, had never heard of this Dan guy, but when Dan walked out on stage with just his guitar and a chair to sit on we gave him our full attention and over the next hour we were blown away by this one guy and one guitar. What a voice, what songs......the next day I went out to the record store and bought Dan's first album and proceeded to play it until it was burned into my being.

That was 1974. Just 3 years later he gave us his 4th album, Netherlands. By then he was well known all over the planet for his music and words. He continued to make albums thru the 80's and although they continued to be high quality offerings they explored other musical areas and were less "spiritual" then Netherlands and 1981's "The Innocent Age". I"m ashamed to say that I don't recall exactly when I saw him the second time but it was in Grand Rapids and it was just him, several guitars and a piano. I brought my wife this time, not a buddy, so I'd say mid 80's would be a safe guess. I do recall vividly though the 3rd and last time I saw him. It was 2003, in South Bend, Indiana at the Morris Civic center. A place I've seen a number of concerts over the years. This time It was the 30 year anniversary tour and Dan was touring with a full band. A real Treat because I finally got to hear him do tunes that I'd sung along with for years. He was enjoying himself and even let loose enough to do some great rock n roll along with the beautiful ballads. We didn't know it at the time of course, but that was going to be Dan's last tour and looking back now I'm damn glad we made the drive to South Bend. Not long after that tour he was diagnosed with advance Prostrate cancer and although he battled for several years ultimately the cancer won and this past Sunday, the 16th of December, 2007 Dan passed away and one of the most beautiful voices I ever heard will be heard no more.

I could ramble on with more stories, but I think I'd rather put on the headphones and listen to Netherlands one more time before I call it a day. If you're so inclined to do such things you can visit the living legacy website

http://www.thelivinglegacy.net/News.html

and light a candle for Dan, or just visit and read the notes that people all over the world have left to honor his memory. If you tend to get emotional some kleenex near by might not be a bad idea. I don't know if Dan realized fully while he was here the effect his songs had on people and the power those songs had to heal souls, but I'm pretty sure that from where he's sitting now, he does.

"And the Chords struck at birth
Grow more distant
Yet, we strike them again and again.
And we plead and we pray
For a glimmer of day
As the night folds it's wings
And decends...
Exposing the loose ends".

Thanks for the moments of peace Daniel.

I'm including this article because it's the only one I've read this week that made me smile. I'll be racing that guy to the stage should our fantasy ever come to life......

Fogelberg's death a loss to entire generation

Loss of folk/rock singer and songwriter reminds columnist of mortality
Date published: 12/20/2007

It's not quite the same as losing Elvis or even, for that matter, John Lennon. But my sense of immortality flagged a bit this week when I read about the death of Dan Fogelberg, a songwriter and folk/rock singer who was a favorite of mine.The fact that he was only 56--not that much older than my 51--accentuated the loss of the "Power of Gold" and "Leader of the Band" writer to prostate cancer.
Yes, people in my generation have lost our share of favorite performers through the years. To be sure, Lennon, Janis Joplin, Keith Moon, Jim Morrison, Jimmy Hendrix, Jim Croce, Duane Allman, Stevie Ray Vaughn and scads of other performers loved by us baby boomers have gone by the wayside. But most of them went either from their own excesses, in accidents or had their brilliant careers snuffed out by a killer. Somehow, having a favorite performer from your high school and college years succumb to prostate cancer pretty sharply undercuts the irreverent and immortal essence of rock 'n' roll.
While some see Fogelberg as a soft-rocker best known for tunes that play in malls and elevators, I have a stack of CDs with tunes that both rock and relate the wonders of life and love. My first thought on hearing he had lost his long battle with cancer was remembering Fogelberg at a concert at Paramount's Kings Dominion. That made me smile, because I attended the concert with a buddy who also enjoyed Fogelberg's range of music, from rock to jazz to country. My pal and I hadn't thought a lot about who'd be at the concert; we were just glad to have the chance to see him at a nearby venue. That evening featured Fogelberg alone, alternating between a guitar and keyboards. I remember leaving with the thought that I had just seen someone who truly understood using music and words to tell a story and evoking emotion. From "Longer" to "Dancing Shoes" to "Missing You" to "Rhythm of the Rain" and so many more tunes I'll listen to for years, he had a unique style and voice that used soft tones and harmonic melodies to reel listeners in.
While the loss of Fogelberg has made me accept the fact that this will occur more and more as the years go by, I'm not giving up on another rock 'n' roll connection. It's the fantasy, surely shared by many jackleg musicians, where I'm at a concert for say, oh, the Dave Matthews Band. Suddenly, an announcement's made about how the drummer has sprained his ankle and can't go on. "Anyone out there who could fill in for him, get instantly famous and make a million bucks, please run up here right away," says the announcer. Even when I'm 80, I'm not giving up on that one.
I'll still be out there with my sticks in my back pocket, and my feet tapping--even if they never call on me.

Rob Hedelt: 540/374-5415 Email: rhedelt@freelancestar.com

Dan Singing "Leader of the Band"

Back From The Dead, Or At Least The Comatose

2007-12-16T23:05:00.000-05:00

Howdy, It's been awhile, I know. When things got quiet it was still late summer. The trees were green, the air warm and life was well, life. Now, here it is, a week or so before Christmas and as you might expect, the trees are bare, the air is damn cold and life is well, still life.

What happened? why did I stop writing? Would you believe me if I told you it was because of the constant harrassment from English teachers all over America who don't approve of my writing style and grammar? No? I Didn't think so. Actually I don't really want to say a whole lot about it because I don't want people to percieve me differently than they already do, or worse yet treat me differently because of something I've had to deal with most all of my life. I wouldn't tell ya if I had cancer either until it was obvious because I wouldn't want to be treated differently and I wouldn't want people around me all mopey about something that nothing can be done about. That said, I will say that what happened back in late August was what I basically call a "crash" and something can be done about them. I doubt it's a medical term, but for me at least pretty aptly describes what happens. First one I've had in several years and somewhat preventable had I acted sooner, although that's easier said than done.

This past year has been a motherf***** on a number of different levels. Between money problems, Another job change, major kid problems with the 15 year old, some heath issues and the ensuing need to take meds as a part of normal life and a ton of fustration for not being smarter than I am and not seeing things coming that I should've seen coming, realizing that I'm in my 50's, not my 30's and running out of time to get things accomplished.........I just kinda blew a fuse.

Research I've done over the years to get to the bottom of this has taught me that it's a physical condition that can affect the mental condition. The body isn't generating some of the juices that we need to function normally on a daily basis. I seem to be for some reason, deficient in a couple of those juices and although most of the time it's not an issue, there are times when it is and that's when there's a crash. The last thing I'm gonna say about this is the next time someone tells you...."aaawwww it's all in your head" you just look at 'em like their a moron and say "yes it is...and where else do you think it could possibly be??"

Now that the crash has been repaired and we're back to moving again I've been spending as much of my time as possible doing things I enjoy doing. Playing with the computer and my websites, filing up my Ipod with old and new music, playing with my 4 legged buddies and if I can find the time I plan to start teaching myself to play this piano that sits 10 feet away from me. I still believe there's alot of music inside that needs to get out althought I'm not sure for what reason at this stage in life. I plan to write again soon because I like to do it and right now that's all the reason I need to do something. Hmmmm, maybe I should apply that mindset to learning the piano too?

Festival Time

2007-08-09T23:40:00.000-04:00

Well another Coast Guard Festival week has come and gone. It was a relatively quiet week from where I was standing….Wednesday night me and Mercury went for a walk and ended up walking downtown, hanging out on the steps of the power plant for awhile watching the parade of humanity and wheeled conveyances roll by before heading back home. Friday night me and the little lady went down to the carnival and ended up running into Tony and Gigi and hanging out with them for a bit.

Saturday arrived and I did what I’ve usually been doing in recent years passed…..hiked on down to the parade route, found myself a spot and watched the parade go by, all by my little ole self, no wife, no kids, no grandkids, no dogs….well, you get the point. By the time the parade was done it was almost 2 so I hiked back home and had some lunch, rested my eyes for a little while and then about 5 headed back downtown for the evenings festivities. After getting a hoagie from one of the booths downtown for supper I ended up hiking out to the end of the pier and sat out there for awhile just soaking up the cool air and the view. About 8 or so I headed back up towards town and found myself a spot on the government basin to watch the fireworks from and just hung out there for the remainder of the evening, watching the goings on around me. The firework display this year was about average compared to recent years passed….at least they didn’t burn half the hill down this year, even with it being as dry as it’s been around here. After the last burst of color faded away I pulled myself up and headed for home along with thousands of other folks. It’s quite a sight to see the wave of humanity all get up and flow off in all directions. It was midnight by the time I got home. I didn’t stay up long after arriving.

Sunday I got up and made us breakfast before Wanda took off for band camp for the week to act as a chaperone. After she’d left I wandered around the house for a bit and then decided I’d head up to camp, paint the cooking cabinet and kill some ferns and most of the day. Bailey and Mercury went along for the ride. We got there about noon and I set about putting the first of two coats of dark green paint on the cabinet. Once the first coat was on I got out the weed whacker and leveled another generations worth of them pesky, resilient plants. With the dryness we’ve had this summer the grass hadn’t grown an inch since we last mowed but them damn ferns just don’t know when to quit. By the time I finished putting on the second coat of paint and cleaning up my mess it was almost 5 so I locked things up, looked around once more and then headed for home.

So far this week it’s been real quiet. Work all day, come home and eat, walk dogs, watch a little TV or play on the computer and then go to bed. This coming weekend is the Coopersville Friday Cruise and Saturday car show. I’m planning on doing both as long as the weather cooperates. Wanda will be back home Saturday afternoon by the time I get back from the show.

That’s about it for now. Still can’t report on plans or things that may happen, looks like it’s gonna be awhile before I can say anything too so that’s the last word on it until it’s past tense. Time to call it a day.

Night.

S**t Rolls Downhill & Everywhere I Look Is Up

2007-08-02T23:21:00.000-04:00

Well. Last week for the most part was a continuation of the last several weeks before it, pissy mood and all and so far this week the ante has been upped another notch or two. I probably should be logging in a couple posts a day over in my Rants and Raves blog, but truth be told I just don’t have energy to waste on bitchin’ about all that’s wrong these days. Money is the issue and not having enough is the problem and that’s pretty much all there is to it. This week’s battle was with the gas company who decided to send a shut-off notice with a demand for an additional 199 bucks along with removing us from their “budget plan” service. The fact that we’ve been paying utilities before anything else made me wonder just where the hell they came up with this request for more money. My idea of a how a budget is supposed to work is that you pay the same amount every month, year round. So, after several hours on the phone, stretched out over 2 days they came to the determination that maybe they’d made a mistake (implied) and that I should just send my usual payment and once that’s been posted I can call back (Oh joy, another hour on hold) and they will reinstate us in the “Budget plan” once again, we’ll start a new year with a new budget amount (which I’d be willing to bet ya will be considerably higher than it was before this latest round of coercion) and life will be wonderful. I suspect, but can’t prove, that their accounting department is full of Spanish speaking illegals with a 3rd grade education……..why else would I have to send my Michigan Gas Utilities bill to San Antonio Texas??? The lady I talked to had a decided Texas Twang in her voice so I’m not sure who they think they’re kiddin’ with the name on the bill. Pirates are pirates no matter what flag they’re flying.

Guess I did have some energy for a rant eh? Anyhow, there are things in the works to maybe make things better or at least more manageable around here, but it’s not stuff that I’m at liberty (self-imposed) to talk about in here at this point in time. Once the details are all finalized then I can share, assuming my blood pressure from dealing with these bastards doesn’t kill me first.

Amid all the crap there has been a couple things happen that actually made me smile and I can share them now. First one is, I’m a granddaddy again! Jennette had boy # 3 last Friday afternoon, July 27th. His name is Ethan Thomas (NO E.T. jokes please) and I believe he was around 7lbs and 19” give or take a bit in either category. Regardless of the way the pic looks he is healthy and not suffering from some type of green malaise. Somebody, give them kids a camera that works! Actually I think it’s a federal law that if you’re not within a 3 hour driving distance window of your child’s grandparents than you’re required to send frequent, quality photographs so we can at least see what they look like from a distance…… I’m pretty sure Ethan ain’t green and blurry (NO E.T. jokes please). Hopefully I’ll get to see him before he’s up and walking……..can you say guilt trip? I knew you could. Good job Jennette, proud of ya….ya make good looking babies….now…..give it a rest for a couple years girl, or you’ll look like Auntie Em before you’re 30. You should have enough to keep you busy now for the next 20 years easy.

The only other thing I can recall that’s made me smile this past week happened during the Grand Haven Car show last Sunday. I got there fairly early and got a spot right in front of the old theater. Set up the display and then wandered around for awhile taking pics. I spent the show time talking with folks and sitting in my chair watching them stroll by. Doug Ransom stopped by to say hi…hadn’t seen him in several years and he just lives a mile away. The time went by quickly and before I knew it, it was time for the awards. So I strolled down to the registration booth to see who’d take home the hardware. This year they were giving out awards for the top 20 cars at the show and those cars were to be picked by Coast Guard folks, in keeping with the Coast Guard Festival theme no doubt. I was standing there, talking to another car guy when all of a sudden I heard my name called out and I’ll be doggoned if they hadn’t called off my name and car number! There were over 150 cars there and a lot of nice rides so I had no idea that I’d be a recipient of an award. It was a nice little boost nonetheless, especially after I'd skipped the Whitehall cruise Friday night and the Wayland show Saturday due to funding issues. I took my award and headed for home and spent the rest of what was mostly a crappy weekend at home, doing domestic stuff.

Guess that’s about enough for now. We’re in the middle of Coast Guard week and the town is packed with every nitwit from a dozen states with 3 bucks in their pocket. It’s pretty much like a combination of the circus and the zoo coming to town at the same time! We’ll be staying home again this weekend for the most part. Wanda leaves for band camp early Sunday and won’t be back until the next Saturday. I got plans for the week but we all know how that goes…….

More later,

TC

Summertime Blues and Broken Records

2007-07-24T23:31:00.000-04:00

I know I sound like a broken record but dang….another week of summer gone. Can’t complain about the weather we been getting though…it’s been sunny and warm most every day. I could handle this for the rest of my days easily, who needs 4 seasons anyhow?

Today is / was Jennette's 22nd birthday. Hard to believe that she's an old married lady with kids. Hope ya had a good day kiddo....maybe we can get together for the 23rd one.

This past week was pretty much a quiet one. I spent a couple evenings working on my little cooking cabinet project for the campsite, did some dog walking at dusk and tried to make the most of the warm summer evenings while they’re here.

For the weekend we headed up to the compound once again. Wanda and Chris took off during the afternoon, I left about 5:45 and pulled into camp right at 7:00. We had our traditional Friday evening camp meal of hamburgers and chips. After dinner I putzed around camp a bit until the light gave out on us. The days are already getting shorter and in the woods it gets dark quick once the sun goes down. Wanda and Chris were in bed by 10:30 leaving me, Mercury and Bailey to tend the fire and stand watch. It was a clear, cool evening and the stars were out in full force. You could easily see the Milky Way stretching across the sky. Used to be the only time I got to see that was when we were up at Wilderness for our one week a year trip. I miss not having been up there the last 3 summers, but it is nice having the same view a bit closer to home and more accessible.

Saturday morning I got up around 8ish and took a couple dogs out for a stroll around the grounds. Had a quick breakfast of cereal and juice when we got back and then jumped right into it with the weed whacker and went fern hunting. Once that battle was taken care of the next thing on the list, the project for the weekend actually, was to finish taking care of the brush pile from last year. I broke out the chain saw, put the newly sharpened blade on it and got to cutting fireplace length logs. With Chris helping me we got the bulk of it done Saturday and Sunday, after they’d headed for home, I finished up. Got all the wood stacked, the brush in a pile, ready for future fire starting and raked up the debris that was left into a compost pile.

We worked on the brush pile until about 3:00 and then decided it was time to take a little ride into town to get the hardware I needed to finish up the Cooking cabinet. Along with a stop at Home Depot we also hit the Dairy barn in Scottville before heading back to camp. Before I had completed attaching the doors and the latches to the cabinet Wanda had supper ready. Steaks grilled over the fire and corn on the cob. A good meal. After the feast I finished up the cabinet and pretty much called it a day as far as working goes. Me and the wife went up to the lodge and got an ice cream cone for desert and then went back to camp and played some of the goofy dice game she taught me. It wasn’t quite as clear and cool as the night before but the stars were still out in force and I spent awhile with my neck twisted back, looking up at the billions of little twinkling lights.

Sunday morning I woke up and was pissed. I must’ve been tired from Saturday’s efforts cuz when I came to and looked at the clock it was after 10! Damnit…I’d missed by early morning dog walk and breakfast was late also. I got busy and fried up some sausage and made pancakes for myself and the dogs. By the time I had things cleaned up and put away from breakfast it was about time for Wanda and Chris to head out for town. I saw them off and then went back to the brush pile and finished that up like I said earlier. By the time I was done with that project and had put everything away, packed up and locked up it was about 5:00. Days go by so fast there it’s just not fair. I was not ready to go home yet, but I got Bailey and Merc in the truck, locked the gate and headed for town. Once we got home I did the usual Sunday night stuff and then it was time for bed.

It looks to be like it’s gonna be 3, maybe 4 weeks before we get up to camp again. I’ve got a big car show weekend coming up this weekend (Wayland and Grand Haven) and the next weekend is Coast Guard Festival. I’d thought about skipping the festivities in town and going up to camp for the weekend but Wanda is leaving for a week that Sunday morning early for band camp to be a Chaperon so it doesn’t make much sense to go up for one day. The next weekend is the Coopersville Cruise and Car show, Friday and Saturday. She’ll be coming home that Saturday and then the next weekend after that will already be August 18th / 19th. I guess it’s true about time waiting for no man, it’d be nice if it’d just slow down a bit though……

Time for sleep.

a Frustrating Week

2007-07-15T23:25:00.000-04:00

This past week has been a less than ideal one for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the ole “Too much month and not enough money”. It’s been a tight squeeze to get things kept up since the layoff last February. Even though I wasn’t off long it was long enough to put us behind the 8 ball and with the new job being a salary position there isn’t any overtime these days to help us catch up like there was at Nowak last year.

The capper this week was when I found out that the wife’s bank, which I’m using now to pay bills thru her account, screwed up the electronic transfers they were suppose to make with my deposits and stuff that I thought was paid a month turns out never got paid, the money never got sent out. So I got a nasty phone call or two and now I’ve got late charges to deal with on top of the usual crap. I’m beginning to become a bit irritated with these folks attitudes that I’m doing business with….Since February I’ve asked for some help from a couple places and have pretty much been told to go screw myself, sink or swim. So much for customer service I guess. The whole late charge thing cracks me up cuz hey, if I’m late with a payment, especially given our past excellent credit rating, then there’s a problem. The banks answer to that is to slap you with late charges, which is tantamount to throwing a drowning man a brick.

I guess it’s just the way it is these days but it still cranks me. Several years when these loans were initiated gas wasn’t 3+ bucks a gallon, nor was my monthly gas bill what it is nowadays…….approximately 70 bucks more a month than it was this time last year. Add in increases in car insurance, the rest of the utilities and damn near everything else and we no longer have the cushion that we planned on. All these pirates raising the cost of breathing every time you turn around is making it difficult. I guess the answer is to not buy anything unless it can be done with cash in hand, but that’s not very realistic given the way things are set up to function these days.

Awww well, that’s enough whining for now. Another 30 years or so and it probably won’t matter anyhow. It’s not like anybody can do anything about it or even cares…….we’ve all got problems and I dare say there’s a lot of folks out there a whole lot worse off than we are. Our situation is temporary and it will get better. Of course, life itself is temporary too so I’m hoping the situation here get’s better before life proves how temporary it is…….

This past weekend was spent at home for the most part. I had planned on doing the Zeeland car show Saturday, but when I got up at 7:00am it was raining so that pretty much put the kibosh to the car show. By early afternoon though it had cleared up. The second part of the plan for the day was to head to Berlin for the first (and probably only) time this year to shoot some pics, but then Chris decided he wanted to go along so the camera stayed home and we sat in the stands instead of hanging out in the pits as planned. I didn’t want to say no to him if he wanted to come with me. I’m well aware at this point in life how fast kids grow up and leave home so a chance to hang out with my last kid was more important than the pics…..I can get them some other time. It was a fun evening. We ate stale popcorn, drank over-priced pop and watched the racing. I miss going as often as I used to go, but there just ain’t time or money to be everywhere I want to be…… it was after midnight by the time we got back home. I stayed up for awhile before calling it a day.

Sunday was kinda the culmination of the whole week’s worth of frustration. I slept in too long, sat around until noon in a pissy mood and then decided to go out in the garage and work on the cooking cabinet for the campsite. By the time Wanda took off and I was as far as I could go with the project it was 3:30. I wandered around the house for awhile, ate an early supper and then decided to take Mercury and Bailey for a walk from downtown out to the end of the pier and back. I parked the truck at the “Y” and we strolled out to the pier. It was a nice sunny, fairly warm evening and there were people everywhere. The boys got quite a bit of attention from people who wanted to pet ‘em or ask questions about Mercury’s coloring. They were both very well mannered and made me proud when I saw other people and their dogs pulling on their leashes, barking and being generally unruly. I’m always glad to see those people who can’t discipline their animals don’t have children. By the time we got back home from the walk it was a bit after 8:00. The walk had cleared my head a little bit and so I decided to take the hot rod around town one time too before giving it up for the day. Merc went with me for the cruise and hung his head out the window, ears flapping in the breeze the whole way thru town.

After getting back I sat out on the swing for awhile and talked to Jennette on the phone. Friday had been Jason’s 1st birthday. Jennette’s is the 24th and Ryan’s is in September. Not to mention the #3 munchkin that’s due any day now. Don’t even get me started about grandkids and how far away they are……that’s just something else I can’t do anything about. Such is life.

A side note before I say goodnight…..

I just found out that George McCorkle, guitar player for the Marshall Tucker Band, succumbed to cancer a couple weeks ago. The MTB was one of my all time favorite bands. I’ve seen them at least a dozen times and have spent countless hours with their music in my ears. It’s not like he was a relative but it’s still a sad thing to know he’s gone before his time. He was 60, not all that far away from where I stand today. I spent awhile reading the guest book entries from people all over the planet and signed in myself. I’d guess he finally found that rainbow he always sang about searchin’ for……..

Night.

TC

The Working Vacation

2007-07-11T23:22:00.000-04:00

Well as I figured it’d be, it was a very quick week that just passed by. I did my two days at work, although neither one of them was a full day….got sent home early both days so they could turn off the lights and shut off the air compressor. I was out of there Tuesday afternoon by 2:15 and went straight home to load up the truck with tools and dogs and headed out of town about 3:30pm.

Wanda beat me to camp and had things opened up by the time I got there about 5:00pm. We set about getting things organized and then had to make a run to Bonsers for groceries so we could fill up the fridge with needed items. By the time we got back it was getting quite cloudy and thunder was rumbling off in the distance so we got busy making supper before the skies opened up. It wasn’t long after we finished eating that it started to sprinkle and from then on thru most of the night it rained, thundered and lightening. At times it was a torrential downpour but we all stayed safe and dry under the canopy until it was time for bed.

We woke up the next morning to gray skies but by noon the sky was blue and it stayed that way pretty much for the rest of our time at camp. The 4 days we were there went by quickly and the standard routine was wake up, take the dogs for a walk around the area, make breakfast and then spend from late morning until supper time working around the campsite on various projects along with throwing the ball or Frisbee for the furkids whenever one of them dropped their toy of choice at my feet. The biggest project we completed over the 4 days was to clean up the huge brush pile we had and mow and rake down the whole hillside on the east side and claim it as part of the “yard”. I also got the stone and mortar fire ring done and it looks pretty good. Once the mortar has cured a bit I’m going to brush off the loose and excess stuff from the rock faces so the rocks are more prominent, but it looks impressive in the middle of the clearing.

I believe it was Thursday morning I got up early (6am) and went for an extended hike. It was quite foggy and made the hike thru the woods even quieter than usual. We hiked around the lake and thru the hillside campground before coming back to our place for breakfast.

Friday zoomed by just like the previous two days and before we knew it, it was Saturday morning. We hung out at camp until about noon and then resigned ourselves to packing things up, turning things off and locking stuff up so we could head for Grand Haven. We got back to town about 3 or so and the rest of the day was spent pretty close to home.

Sunday was bike trip day to Big Rapids for the Eckels / Fortin family reunion. Myself and Chris were heading out of town just about 10:am and made it to the folks house just a bit before noon. We followed the folks over to Aunt Lucy’s house and in the space of the next two hours we chatted with relatives and ate a bunch of good food. After the long drive to get there I wasn’t in a big hurry to leave but I was in the minority. Seems like most folks that came, ate and ran…by 2:30 most everyone was already gone. I always thought that a reunion was more about getting caught up on other folks lives than eating but maybe I was wrong, again. Anyhow, we hung around for a while longer with the few folks that were left. I talked with Cousin John, whose wife recently divorced him. He came with a new girlfriend and one of her kids. I talked a bit too with Uncle Sonny about motorcycles and the economy. Uncle Sonny’s kid, Mark was there with his daughter, who’d just graduated from high school. I hadn’t seen him in a long time. I did Mark’s wedding photography, but I couldn’t even tell you what year it was although I do remember a lot of details about the event itself. About 3:00 or a bit after me and Chris decided to say our goodbyes too and then made a stop at the folk’s house for a half hour before making the run for home.

On the way home we felt for awhile like we were in one of those Psycho driver movies. We’d made a stop at the gas station on the east side of the Muskegon River and as we made our way out onto the road again there was a semi coming down the road. I had plenty of room to pull so I didn’t give it a second thought until we got about to the river and I looked in my mirrors, which were full of semi grill. The SOB was right on our butt. I pulled ahead a bit going up the other side but a mile down the road he was right on our backside again. The speed limit there is 55 and I was doing 60 / 65 so I figured I was going fast enough and he could just cool it. It’s not like it’s a highway, it’s a two lane blacktop country road. So we kept on at a constant speed and when we got to the straight stretch that leads into White Cloud this moron in the semi makes an attempt to pass us! All of a sudden I realized he was in the other lane trying to go around us as we went up a grade. I maintained my speed and he had to drop back in line. That was amazing enough but a couple miles down the road when he made a second attempt he came a bit too close to the bike. Chris hollered at me and so I picked up the pace and he had to fall in line again. As we came into White Cloud I was mentally preparing to deal with this asshole when we reached the stoplight, but he hung back until the light turned green and then we had to go south and he headed north. I don’t know what the hell his problem was, but he was in too damn big a hurry for the road he was driving on. After that experience the rest of the ride home was safe and sane. We’d met our idiot for the day and made it home clear without any more excitement. The rest of Sunday was spent doing the typical stuff, laundry and dishes and before I knew it, it was time to wake up from my chair downstairs and go to bed. A full work week dead ahead and the mini-vacation break already a memory.

TC

Somebody Make It Stop!...

2007-07-01T23:50:00.000-04:00

Time that is…..it’s July 1st today. June is over and done with already and I’ve hardly begun to get the stuff done that I want to get done this summer. Of course money, not time is the biggest factor in things not getting done right now, but the days clicking off in rapid fire succession ain’t helping any either.

There’s not going to be any 4th of July bike trip this year like last year. I haven’t been able to sell the van so it continues to sit in the side yard with a “for sale” in the window and I don’t get to do a much needed road trip.

Things aren’t a complete wash though, it’s 4th of July week and I’ve got a 2 day work week coming up. I’m taking the 5th and 6th off as vacation days and we’re all going up to the compound Tuesday after work and staying until Saturday. Gotta come back Saturday evening cuz Sunday is the family reunion in Big Rapids and that’s a mini bike trip not to be missed.

So, this past weekend was a stay at home and try to save money kinda weekend and frankly I kinda pissed away the last couple days of June. Saturday I hung around the house all day. Did a little yard work including putting up a piece of fence across the backyard to try and keep the transients from using our backyard as a shortcut. We’ll see how long it last before some SOB tramples it down. I considered running a couple wires out to the metal fence to help make my point but I figured there’s probably some stupid city law against electric fences and besides my electric bill is high enough already. Along with the fence I did some tree trimming and general pick-up and then spent the rest of the day in the garage continuing to pick up and clean up. I gave up on that about 6 and made myself some supper and then after supper I got the hot rod out and rode around town for a little bit. That was pretty much it for Saturday.

Sunday I slept in cuz I stayed up late. By the time I’d finished with breakfast most of the morning was gone. I decided I’d take a cruise down town and stroll through the art show. Back when we used to do the shows it was in Central park but because the city got to be dickheads about renting out the park the group in charge of the show moved it to the street. Personally I never liked the street shows, much prefer having grass under my feet.

Anyhow, I stroll thru and checked out the photographers and some other interesting stuff. Digital cameras have made such a difference in photography over the last 10 years that the way stuff is presented nowadays makes what I was doing in the ‘80’s look pretty amateurish. A part of me would love to get out there and do it again but the rest of me slaps that part around until it comes to its senses. I don’t even have a camera I can change lenses on anymore so I’m regulated to pretty much snapshot stuff. I haven’t lugged a tripod around in years.

After strolling thru the art show I came back home and sat around for awhile. Decided it was as good a night as any to cruise down to Holland in the hot rod and check out the new cruise-in spot at D&W so that’s what I did. Headed out the door right about with Bailey in the co-pilot seat and took the highway down. When I got there the place was crowded with cars and folks looking at cars. I parked on the edge of the lot close to some grass and pulled out my chair and camera. Me and Bailey did some strolling around to check out who was there and ran into some folks that we hadn’t seen in awhile. Also ran into a guy I used to work with back in the Polynorm days and found out he’s doing good now working for the City of Zeeland. About 8 I put my chair back in the trunk, lifted Bailey into his seat and headed back for home via Lakeshore Drive.

That’s it for this past week. In 48 hours I’ll be up at camp on my little “mini-vacation”. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and the time won’t go by too quickly.

Later.

TC

Another Glorious Weekend @ The Compound

2007-06-27T20:38:00.000-04:00

We’ve been blessed again this past week with more beautiful weather, sunny and warm. Thank God for June...if only it were twice as long and twice as frequent.

Last Tuesday evening we decided to go up to Mr. Quicks for cruise night. We hadn’t been up there since the first night, the first week of May and here it is already, the last half of June. We took Belle and Mercury with us this trip and upon arriving we parked in the back, on the grass and set up camp. The first thing we did was head over to Quicks for a couple of root beer floats. Then we strolled around the grounds, checking out the cars in attendance. There was a guy there with an old 1930’s Hupmobile he’d just began restoring that reminded me of Bonnie and Clyde. All that it needed was a couple Tommy guns in the back seat and some bullet holes in the sheet metal. We hung around until they pulled the numbers for the 50/50 drawing and the door prizes and then loaded up the chairs and the dogs and headed back for home.

NEWSFLASH........

I got an email from the wife early Friday morning telling me that Quicks had caught fire and burned down late Thursday night. Here are a couple pics to check out. The owner says he’s gonna rebuild and cruise nights will go on. I wanted to go up last night and check it out but it didn’t happen.

The weekend was spent up at the compound again. Wanda worked a half day and took off with Chris late morning. I got up there my usual time, about 7:00pm. We had hamburgers for supper and took it easy. I didn’t start up a lawnmower or grab a rake all evening. We made a trip up to the lodge about 8ish for an ice cream cone but the place was locked up tight and abandoned. So we came back to camp, got a fire going and stayed pretty close to that until I gave it up and went to bed about 1:00am

Saturday morning I slept in until Mercury woke me up. He wasn’t happy about missing his morning walk. I made breakfast after sitting around a bit and then after eating I fired up the lawnmower and did the path to the road and the front yard. That took awhile and it was a warm one so in between chores it was break time in the shade.

Around noontime we decided to head into town for a stop at Home Depot for Quikcrete (mortar) and Bonsers for some groceries. We made a stop at the Desert Barn in Scottville too for some of their good ice cream and then headed back to camp. The rest of the afternoon was spent cruising around in the truck, rock hunting and mixing mortar and stacking rocks around the fire pit. By the end of the weekend it was about half done and hopefully will be finished our next trip up. After dinner, which consisted of pork chops and corn on the cob, we just hung out and took it easy.

Sunday morning I managed to get up early so me, Mercury and Bailey headed out for a early morning walk. We had a pack of turkeys pop out of the woods in front of us that caused some commotion for a few minutes but other than that it was a nice, quiet stroll thru the woods and around the lake. By the time we got back to camp Wanda was up so I set about making breakfast. After the meal I went about working on the back half of the clearing, trying to get it cleaned up and smoothed out so hopefully some grass will grow there again eventually. Wanda and Chris took off a little after 1:00pm and left me and Mercury by ourselves. We hung out, doing some small chores, (well, I did the chores, he slept under the trailer all afternoon) until about 5:30pm and then shut down, locked up and headed for home. It’d been a beautiful weekend, weatherwise and the first one where I hadn’t worked myself to death. We got home about 7:00pm, made something to eat, took a shower, sat down at the computer and that was about it until bedtime.

TC

The Summer Solstice

2007-06-21T12:59:00.000-04:00

Well in little more than an hour it will officially be Summertime! The longest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere. Summer arrives here today at 2:06pm EDT. What that means to a person who lives with S.A.D. (seasonal affective disorder) is that it's all downhill after today. The days get shorter and the nights longer. It really doesn't start to be an issue though until after the Autumal equinox. That's when the effects of less light start to really be noticeable. At any rate, it's summer, it's warm and sunny today and the living for the most part is easy........enjoy it while it's here and don't bitch about the occasional hot day because before you know it we'll be up to our kneecaps in that cold white shit again..........get away from the air conditioner and go outside.....it's a beautiful day to take a walk on the pier, or just about anywhere else.

For more info click on the title link.

Car Show Weekend

2007-06-19T12:37:00.000-04:00

Another summer weekend is history and it's not even officially summer yet!

I started off the weekend by getting out of work a half hour early so I could hopefully beat some of the 5 O'clock traffic home and back over the bridge and get to the Spring Lake Heritage Festival car show not too long after 5. I pulled in the parking lot at St. Mary's about 5:20 and planted myself in an open area towards the back of the lot. There was quite a turnout already there when I arrived and quite a few more showed up after my arrival. I went about setting up the showboard and scrapbook, put out a chair to sit in and then grabbed the camera and took a hike around the lot to see what I could see.

When I had made the rounds once I decided it was time for a bite to eat so I headed over to the boy scouts tent where they were selling mostly burned, fairly cold hamburgers (Yum!) with a handful of chips and a pop for 3 bucks. After I was done feasting I took another stroll around. Not long after that Wanda and Chris showed up for a visit with Belle in tow. Bonnie and Brian stopped by at the same time so we shot the breeze for a bit. About 8 or so the wife and kid headed for home. About 9 they started with the trophy presentation. Last year they'd had a 55/56/57 chevy class which I got a 2nd place trophy in, but this year that class was absent and in it's place a huge class...streetrods from 1900 to present. I had no dillusions about a trophy repeat this year. After the trophys were all handed out everyone headed for the cars and home. I took a small detour by the beach first and then came home.

Saturday was a "work" day. Slept in until I woke up and then after a quick breakfast got busy putting the bathroom cabinet and trim back together. Had to make a Home Depot run for a couple items and ended up rehanging the bathroom door too so that it worked right. It was 2 in the afternoon by the time I got all that done and was satisfied with the results. The rest of the day I just kinda wandered around the place, taking care of little things. Wanda took off with Ri to go to Bingo and Chris took off so it was just me and the furkids for the rest of the day. I spent some time waxing the hot rod for Sundays' show and played with the dogs, took a nap and before I knew it the day was over.

Sunday we (Me and Chris) got up at 6, got loaded up and by 6:20 we were on the road to Charlton park for the annual Fathers day car show. We didn't get there as early this year as last year so our spot by the river had already been taken by the time we arrived. So we kept on moving and ended up parking out on the edge of the main field behind the houses. I got registered, got the display stuff set out and then we grabbed the camera and took off to tour the grounds. It was a warm, (high 80's), and sunny day so most of the day was spent Hiking from shady area to shady area. We toured the swap meet grounds, but with no money for goodies it was kinda a waste of time.

One of the high points of the day was having the NSRA folks who sponsor the show come by and do their 23 point safety inspection on the car. It used to be they wouldn't touch a car newer than '49 and I still can't show my car in their big shows cuz it's too "new" but they've loosened up some of their rules and so after passing the inspection with flying colors I got a little NSRA sticker on my windshield.

The awards started promptly at 3 and not surprisingly we didn't win anything but the cars that did win were certainly worthy of their awards. I managed to shoot a couple of 'em during the course of the day without knowing they'd been picked for honors so I put their pics in here.

After the awards were done we headed right now, didn't hang around this year and were home just before 6:00. The rest of the day was spent doing my usual sunday night chores and before I knew it, it was past time for bed.

I've had the van up for sale the last couple weeks, parked out in front with a sign in it and ran an ad in the Tribune this past week to hopefully garner some interest but didn't get a single call. Guess it's time to spend the big bucks and put an ad out there in the trader publications. If I don't sell that thing there'll be no bike trip this year not to mention no catching up on bills. With the economy like it is in this state these days every 3rd house on the way to Charlton park seemed to have a wheeled vehicle for sale out in their front yard. It's definitely a buyers market right now. Keeping my fingers crossed for now though..I just need one buyer.

A Beautiful Summer Weekend At The Compound

2007-06-13T12:38:00.000-04:00

True to my promise of last week, I refused to stay home and fight with the plumbing this past weekend. I got out of work right at 5:00 and headed from home. Darn near didn't make it either.....coming thru Grand Haven, traffic was backed up like usual on a Friday. I was on the bike and hanging back a bit from the car in front of me, like I always do, when all of a sudden, BOOM! the car directly in front of me ran right into the back of the car in front of her. I'm not sure what the heck she was looking at but it obviously wasn't ahead....she hit the guy so hard the airbags deployed and the back window shattered. I had to get on the binders and squealed the tires a bit but other than that I was ok. My worry in those situations is always that the guy behind me ain't paying attention either and runs into me while I'm trying to avoid the moron ahead.....I pulled up along side her and asked if she was ok...she was upset and probably dazed a bit so I decided it was time to go. What a way for her weekend to start!

After that little bit of excitement I got home, loaded up the truck, grabbed the dogs and headed north. I pulled in the compound about 2 minutes after 7 and immediately got busy while Wanda made dinner. My first project was to figure out why the water wasn't working....arrrggg more plumbing problems! I took off the cap on the pump, tripped the switch and it took right off. Sounds like the switch is having issues so I called the folks responsible yesterday and they said they'd go fix or replace it. I'd opt for replace myself...fixing never seems to work quite right.

With the water on I got out the weed wacker and attacked them damn ferns until supper was ready After supper a trip up to the lodge for ice cream pretty much put the capper on the day. Once we got back to the campsite it was time for a fire and some relaxin'. I made it up till about 1am, mainly cuz I was busy looking up at a sky full of stars on a perfectly cool, clear night. Now that we have the campsite I really need to pick up a decent sized telescope.

Saturday morning I was the first one up and I piddled around the lot while the others slept. I noticed that a big limb on one of our big trees had broken off, most likely from Thursday night's high winds. So after breakfast, me and chris got the chainsaw out, got it ready and spent the next couple hours carefully cutting the branches supporting the limb, until we got it to fall to the ground. Then, it was simply a matter of cutting up the big limb into manageable pieces for the firepit.

By the time we got done with that project we were ready for a break and we all decided we'd take a little trip over to John's Produce, the place where I got the outhouse, and do a little shopping for stuff for the compound. It took awhile to get there going cross-country and we spent awhile looking at stuff so by the time we got back to camp it was midafternoon. I'd bought some washers to put in the hose that was leaking but when I went to remove it the fitting from the fixture stuck in the hose and then I had 100ft of hose and no way to attach it to one of the other outlets. (Didn't I say I wasn't going to do any plumbing this weekend??) So.....between that and needing a couple things for supper me and Chris jumped in the truck and headed for Home Depot and Meijers. By the time we got back to camp from that excusion it was 5 and we'd pretty much killed the whole afternoon running around the countryside. Needless to say not much got done at camp.

While Wanda made supper I repaired the hose and got the water situation back under control and then played some frizbee with Chris while the dogs ran back and forth between us, trying to get the disc. After a good meal I took the wife up to the lodge for ice cream and a little ride around Whiskey Creek and then it was back to camp for the evening. Another beautiful night with a sky just chock full of stars.

Sunday morning I was awakened at 6:30am by the grey ghost (Mercury) who had business to attend to so I got up, let him out and got dressed. I grabbed the leashes and me, Merc and Bailery took a longish stroll around the park while we waited for sleepy heads to wake up. By the time we got back Wanda was up so I set about making breakfast. After the usual fare of eggs, (over easy this time), Bacon and pancakes I started in on the project for the morning, new, better steps for the deck. We'd snagged some more wood from Dake more suitable for the steps so I got started by assembling the tools for the project. It took a couple hours but by late morning we had solid steps to traverse the deck with. The pics here show the old steps.....look next entry for a pic with the new ones.....

After the step project was completed I spent awhile, until it was time for the wife and Chris to head for home (1:30), with the weed wacker, putting the fear of God in ferns in Mason county. Once they were gone I decided to do something I haven't really done yet this year, kick back and relax in my little spot in the woods. I fired up the Ipod, sat down in a chair and promptly dozed off for a couple hours. Mercury and Bailey followed suit.

After the nap it was time for one more project before heading for home. I got out the big can of Thompson's Water Seal and proceeded to splash it all over the deck. It took the whole can to do the job and by the time I was done I was ready to shut down, lock up and head back to civilization. We got back to the house about 7 and spent the rest of the evening doing the usual laundry and dishes deal until the wife got home.

..and that's pretty much it for a really nice weekend. I have to remind myself that it's already damn near the middle of June and it's gonna go by quick. Seems like just last weekend I was waiting for things to turn green and now they are!

more later.

The Joys of Home Ownership and Lying Weathermen

2007-06-05T12:20:00.000-04:00

WARNING TO MY OLDEST DAUGHTER AND RECENT FIRST TIME HOME BUYER.......you probably shouldn't read this one........but then again, maybe you should. Learn from my mistakes and that way you can make your own.

Well, here it was, coming up on the first weekend in June and as frequently is the case, the weatherman was predicting lousy weather for the upcoming weekend. That fact, coupled with the fact that I'd spent the last 4 weekends, at least in some part, up at the compound, made me decide to stay around the house and get some things tackled that have been needing tackling for awhile now. Specifically, the bathtub fixtures and pipes going from the tub to the great outdoors. We not only had a leak on the hot water side of the fixtures, but also a very slow drain at the tub which resulted in a need to turn off the hot water when not using it for showers, dishes or laundry. Decidedly a pain in the ole butt to go downstairs to turn on and off the hot water, but the real capper was the slow drain on top of the leak.....if you turned on the hot water to take a shower by the end of the bathing process you'd have water lapping at your upper ankle region. Not a big problem for the men in the family, but women tend to see things differently, so with that for incentive and son-in-law Adam for major help, we started the project early Saturday morning.

The first thing to do was get the cupboard, shelves, whatever, that were in the way when it came to removing the bathtub fixtures, out of the way. That took me a good hour or two to remove all the trim, supports and the 600 nails that whoever built the damn thing felt it needed to keep it from falling into the basement. By the time I had the unit out of the way Adam (and Ri and new puppy) had arrived so I turned the wrench over to him and he started in removing the old fixtures. After several hours he had everything but the shower portion installed. At that point I decided it was time to remove the pipes downstairs and find out what was clogging up the drain. We removed the pipes from directly by the tub and found the normal amount of corrosion you'd find after 50+ years in any pipe, but nothing that would clog up water. So, while Adam went back upstairs to continue on with the fixtures I decided to go the next step and remove the 400lb steel pipe that ran from the tub area to the main. At this point a project which was going quite well went quite bad thanks to yours truly......

Not considering my own strength (yeah right) and the age of the main casting, I started to twist on the pipe to break it loose. It was only a minute into the operation when there was a crack noise. Without looking I was pretty sure I'd just made more trouble for myself than I wanted to deal with.......what had happened was that the main casting where the pipe fed in cracked and broke into 2 pieces. So, my joy in having the pipe removed AND finding the item in the pipe that had caused the water backup was tempered by a couple of pieces of cast iron in my hand.

So, We headed off for the hardware store to see what they had in the way of adhesives for cast iron. Not a big choice to pick from, but there was one that seemed to fill the bill, supposedly it had glued a cracked engine block back together and the motor ran, so we paid the man and headed back for home. At that point it was time for Adam to head for work so the project was stalled at that point until Sunday morning when he would return. The good news at this point though was there was no longer any leak to contend with so it was possible to turn the hot water on and LEAVE it on. A luxury at that point. So, with everyone leaving me, I spent my first SUNNY Saturday evening in June at home running the dishwasher and washing machine all evening, getting rid of the piles stationed at both appliances.

Sunday the Fetts and their new chocolate Lab puppy arrived and Adam got right with the program, finishing up the installation of the tub fixtures. Once that was completed we headed back downstairs to tackle my little ooops. We mixed up the glue conglomeration and spread it liberally all over the casting and the pieces. It took awhile to get everything in there like we wanted but eventually it was all one piece and the only thing left to do was to wait the prescribed 48 hours for this stuff to dry and adhere itself to the cast iron. By then it was time for everyone to leave me again so I again spent my SUNNY Sunday evening doing more laundry and general clean-up.

At this point we've got the 48 hours in pretty much for the glue to cure and now it's just a matter of hooking things back up and replacing the 400lb steel pipe with a piece of PVC. With any luck at all we should be able to get things back together without breaking the casting again and be able to take a shower without feeling like we're standing in a wading pool. Cross your fingers......

At this point it also goes without saying, but I will anyhow.....I'm going up to the compound this coming weekend NO MATTER what the damn weatherman says.....if it rains I'll catch up on my sleep, or put on a rain poncho and hike thru the woods, but I ain't working on the house again for awhile. I've done enough damage for the time being. I'd much rather fire up the chain saw and cut some wood or do some ground maintenance at the compound than wrestle with plumbing ANY day of the week.

My definition of RICH = having enough cash laying around to be able to afford to pay someone to do whatever needs to be done...that you don't want to do.

Memorial Day Weekend

2007-05-29T23:25:00.000-04:00

This time last year me and Chris were on our way back home from our trip out to Front Royal Virginia. I would've loved to have done a similar adventure with a different destination this year, but with money being scarce and the price of gas being damn near off the richter scale ($3.60) these days, we only got as far away as our campsite at Whiskey Creek for the long weekend.

The weekend started a bit earlier when my boss told me I could take off about 2:00pm. So I was home and loading up the truck when Wanda got home. We were finished packing and heading out the driveway right about 4:00pm. We got there a bit after 5 and by 5:30 I was busy mowing the "front yard" while Wanda made supper. After eating I went back to mowing until the light started to give up on me and then it was time to start a fire and kick back for the rest of the day. I managed to stay up almost till midnight.

Saturday morning, after taking the dogs for a walk and eating breakfast when we got back, the first project for the weekend was to get the "deck" fully stabilized and installed. That ended up taking longer than I anticipated and it was after 3:00pm by the time I had the supports buried and leveled and the deck sections back in place and bolted down. I also cut up some of the extra boards to finish off the front of the deck and give it an enclosed look. I even cobbled together a interim step until I can get some more lumber. I must say it turned out nicer than I figured it would and it'll be even nicer when we have a rainy day (or night) and we're up out of the dirt and mud.

After the deck project was finished it was time to take a little trip into Custer to hit the grocery store for dinner fixin's. We were having Tacos for supper so we grabbed some lettuce, tomatoes and some other stuff that just looked good and headed back for camp to make the meal. By the time we finished the meal it'd started to spit rain and continued on for several hours. Nothing too bad....just enough to be annoying. By Campfire time it'd stopped so it really didn't effect the ambiance of the evening. I managed to stay awake almost till midnight before I gave it up and headed for my side of the mattress pad.

Sunday morning started out cloudy but by the time I got back from my walk with the dogs the wind had picked up and blew most of the clouds away. I made breakfast for everyone again and the decided that with the major project behind me, the deck, I would to tackle the next thing on my list, the back half of our little opening in the woods. I raked, pulled up ferns (damn ferns....) and mowed the grass. By the time that Wanda, Chris and two of the 4 dogs headed for home at 1:30 I had it looking much better. I continued on after they left for awhile and then decided to take a break and hike up to the clubhouse to watch and see how their auction to raise funds would go. There wasn't a whole lot of anything to bid on, except for a nice lawnmower I couldn't afford to bid so after about a half hour of watching the procedings I headed back for camp and decided to make an early supper. On the menu, leftovers from saturday night. I made myself a big ole taco salad, warmed up some cheese in a jar and feasted with my 2 four legged buddies.

After dinner I hooked the dogs up to their leashes and we took an extended walk, further than we normally go, around the outside perimeter of Whiskey Creek which led us eventually back to the lodge where I placed an order for a chocolate shake before heading back for the campsite. Neither Mercury or Bailey were too happy with me for not sharing my ice cream but I just didn't have a spoon handy, sorry guys. Once we got back to camp that was about it for the evening. I got a fire going and kicked back to rest up from 2+ days of campsite maintenance.

Monday morning found me up about quarter to 7 so I grabbed the leashes and we all went for a walk around the grounds. An hour or so later I was cooking breakfast for us.....sausage and pancakes all around. After the meal was completed I grabbed the rake and continued on working on the backside of the lot. I also spent a while cleaning and reorganizing the shed so that everything was in it's place. It was just about 1:30 when I decided I'd had enough of the work thing for one weekend and that I was just plain wore out so I locked up everything, shut off the water, fired up the truck and headed out of the compound for home. I was back on pavement before I realized that I never shot any pics before I left of the improvements made over the weekend. Guess you'll have to wait a week or two to see how the finished deck looks.

We got home about 3:30, took a shower and a nap and felt much better. And that's about all I have to say about Memorial Day weekend 2007. Time to call it a day now. night.

Car Shows and Campfires

2007-05-23T23:47:00.000-04:00

Well, it's that time of year again and the weekends are gonna be flying by for the next several months. This past one was no exception to the rule either. I spent most of Friday evening spiffing up the hot rod for the first car show of the season The west Michigan Burn Survivors Car show at 5/3 Ballpark in Grand Rapids. htt p://www.burnsurvivorcarshow.com/

The weather was a bit on the iffy side when we got up (early) Saturday morning, but after waiting all winter to get back out there again I decided staying home was not an acceptable choice and headed off to G.R. I pulled in and registered as car #76. By the end of the day there were a tad bit over 500 registered cars for the event. It wasn't long after I got parked and got things situated that the sun broke thru the clouds and it got downright nice outside. I did what I usually do at car shows, got the camera out of the bag and proceeded to wander the parking lot, shooting pics as I strolled around.

I ran into Ron and spent a little time talking with him about what's been going on since I saw him last, last fall at Jeannies. Turns out he'd been thru a couple jobs, a couple moves and was now back in Holland again, trying to work things out with the x-wife. So, just more proof, not that I needed it, that the road is bumpy for alot of folks. He's trying to get the Sunday evening Steak and Shake cruise-ins going again, now that there is no more Jeannies, and I'll probaby take a cruise down there some Sunday evening and pay a visit.

The time just pretty much zoomed by and before I knew it, it was time for awards. I packed the display stuff up at that point and then went over to see who won what...When the last name was announced I was just getting ready to put the key in the ignition and fire the beast up. We were back home a bit before 4:00 and immediately set about throwing stuff in the pickup for a trip up to the campsite for the remainder of the weekend.

Chris decided to go along so Mercury was the only dog that got to go along this trip. We arrived at the campsite about 6:30 and I set about making dinner. It had been getting cloudy during the drive up and once we arrived it started to get quite dark in the northern sky and started to spit some rain as we ate supper. It never really rained all that much though and wasn’t really an issue. I took Merc out for a walk after eating and by the time we got back it was pretty much dark. The rest of the evening was spent pretty much in chairs around the campfire. We both nodded off to sleep at some point and I woke up just before midnight and decided it was time for bed. I woke up Chris who was sprawled out in the love seat chair and we headed for the camper.

Sunday morning I was up at 6:30, too early for teenagers to be up yet so me and Merc went out for a morning walk. It was cool and cloudy but at least not wet. During our hike we scared up several deer. Other than that didn't see much in the way of life. When we got back to the camper I decided it was time for breakfast so I mixed up some pancake batter, cooked up some sasages and made some scrambled eggs for the kid.

After eating it was time to work so we cranked up the chain saw and disposed of the stack of logs we had piled up over the last couple weeks. That took us a cou;le hours just to do that.....We also finished burying the wire for the landing strip lights. The big project for the weekend though was the Skids that we brought up with us that were going to become the new deck off the camper. We unloaded them and put them in place temporarily until next weekend when I get them leveled, bolted together and cleaned up. Gonna water seal 'em too like I did with the outhouse. The big joke is now that these skids came to Dake from Italy so we're calling the deck our genuine Imported Italian wood deck! :-) Goes good with the Flushing Amish Outhouse. Lord knows what's next.

By the time it got to be 4:00pm we decided we were tired, hungry and done for the day so we packed up, locked up and headed for home.

This weekend coming up already is Memorial day so we have an extra day to burn. The plan is to go up Friday night and come back home Monday afternoon. We'll see how the weather acts but that's the plan at the moment. Time to call it a day right now, I'm beat.

One Week In May Makes a Big Difference

2007-05-15T12:16:00.002-04:00

Man, when we were up camping the previous weekend there was a hint of green in the trees but this past weekend when I went up Saturday for the day it was a different world. The leaves were mostly out, the grass I'd mowed last weekend was already up a couple inches and the ferns were popping out of the ground, almost overnight it seemed. A little bit of warm weather goes a long way this time of year. We'd kinda planned on going up for the weekend again but as the week wore on plans changed and I ended up going up for the day Saturday just to keep on with the work detail.

I spent most of Thursday and Friday evening switching the tires from the van to the pickup and vice versa. The van ain't being driven much these days with the motor issue so I decided to take the almost new tires on the van and put 'em where they'd do the most good. Not only does the extra tread make the truck drive better, the shiny chrome wheels make it look pretty spiffy too! :-) While I was going thru the tire switching process I was contemplating what if's with the van and decided over the weekend to put a for sale sign on the ole girl and see if I can get what I figure I should get out of her. I still need to wash the outside and vacuum the inside, clean the windows and get her looking as good as I can then we'll see if there's any interest.

Anyhow, Saturday I got up fairly early and was up at the campsite by 10:30am. I spent the entire day going from one project to another and got quite a bit of stuff done. Put in the lights on the other side of the driveway and started burying the wire....didn't get that part done all the way though......I drilled holes in my posts and put in the eyebolts that will eventually hold the chain or cable or whatever I get to string across the driveway entrance when we're not there. I took another load of firewood up with me and got all that stacked up nice and neat. I spent several hours with the chainsaw running trying to diminish the size of the brush pile. I got rid of about a 1/3 of it, there's more wood in there than it looks like from a distance.

By the time I needed a break from the chainsaw It was almost 5:00pm so I took a hike up to the lodge on the offchance there might be somebody there in the kitchen. When I got there I found I'd stumbled into the middle of a birthday party for laverne, one of the ladies that helps run the lodge, so even though there was no one cooking hamburgers I ended up eating very well....sloppy joes, meatballs, potato salad and even a piece of chocolate birthday cake.

After the inpromtu feast I headed back to camp to get a little more work in while there was still light to see by. At one point during the evening there was about 8 / 10 deer across the road, grazing on the fresh, green spring grass out in the meadow. It was almost 9:30 before I'd gotten everything put away and locked up and fired up the truck for the ride home. Got back to town right about 11:00 and then after a half hour power nap in my chair downstairs I woke up and ended up downloading music until almost 4 in the morning.

Sunday morning came too early cuz of the late night so it was almost 10:00am before I had the bike fired up for the Mother's Day trip up to Big Rapids. I went by myself and tried to use the ear buds hooked to the Ipod for some music on the way, but it didn't work real well between the lack of volume on the Ipod and the wind noise coming in the helmet. The weather was a tad on the brisk side so by the time I got to the folks house I was chilled. It took a half hour and a cup of hot cocoa to stop my hands from shaking. We spent the afternoon talking and spent alittle time on the computer and had a good meal to celebrate the day. Before I knew it, it was 5:00pm and time to make the return trip. I was hoping for warmer weather on the way back but it didn't happen and in fact the nearer I got to the lake the chillier it got. I made a stop on the way back at John's Produce, the place where I bought the outhouse from, and did some shopping and surveying for a future trip. I bought a genuine, authentic, metal ammo box in lovely army green that I plan to use in the campsite outhouse as a place to store Toilet paper where the damn mice can't get to it. Let's see 'em try to chew their way thru an metal ammo box! By the time I got home I was chilled again so I made some supper and then took a hot shower. And that's about it for this past week. Got plans to go to camp for the weekend again this coming weekend but it's up in the air until we see what the weather's gonna be, but I'll probably go up one day at least just to continue with the maintainence program. We'll see how it goes.