half a cat

Wow, my first 4th of July back in Montana. I had forgotten exactly how much of a celebration this was here. Err, perhaps celebration is the wrong word, implying some sort of massive patriotic feeling. How about really good excuse to break the bank buying fireworks ? Dear Lord, do MTans love to blow stuff up. It makes noise and throws sparks? Even better!

It was a terrific weekend, with only a slight charring to prove that I helped fund the Chinese GDP. I was able to hang out with almost all (sorry Mom, you went to ND!) of the people I wanted to, which is a major feat for me. I know it was a good weekend as I’m looking forward to working as a break from the fun

Now without further delay, another installment of the ‘numbers game’:

• Amount of fireworks purchased in Cody: $100.07 USD personally; $500 USD+ for the group.
• Number of full face helmets to be purchased after riding 50 miles in rain using borrowed helmet: 1
  • It is sad it took this for me to realize how great they were. Honestly Nic!
  • I like this one. Rain gear might not be a bad investment either…
• Bugs plastered on face from ride to Cody: 10 billion. Mmm, tasty!
  • For the uninformed, bug splatter feels much like a greasy booger.
• McDonalds ‘Cause that’s how I roll’ references by the FurryOne: 100s
• Number of girls with broken arm: 1
  • Yeah, ok, whatever. Save the drama for your mama.
• Little bratty kids at the pond that SHBABJ: 6
• Parents of said kids that needed to be beaten about the head and neck: 3
• Chevy pickups ‘mud-a-fied’: 1
• Other Chevy pickups needed to be yanked out of mud: 1
  • Cuz: Kudos on creative use of bandana
• Friends of mine who needed to wash their trucks due to taunting of my less-than-spectacular rooster tail skills and subsequent redemption of myself: 1
• Hours of fireworks show: 1.5
  • Hours for end of night bottle rocket war: 1
  • Number of idiots who decided that Roman Candles make appropriate weapons: 1
  • Ordinance spent by me: 5 gross bottle rockets, 10pk 4oz rockets, 20 banger rockets
  • Square inches of rocket-launch blackened skin: 30
  • Square inches of blistered skin from holding on to a 12pk of bottle rockets lit with the torch a bit too long: 1
• Bottles of booze consumed: HA! Like we can count that high!
• Rating of the firework show in Castle Rock part: 8.5
  • Special thanks to the sisters & their boyfriends for fun banter!
• Hours spent actually thinking: 5, maybe 6.
• Old friends seen at the grocery store: 2. Wow, how things have changed.
• Number of girls whose relative youth does not translate into relative attractivness: 3
  • Yes John, the hot people do get everything. Thankfully they let us hang around.
• Well behaved kids that are bucking the genetics of her parents: 1
  • environment and discipline go a LONG way. Sis - you and Bek rock!
• Star Wars 3 rating: 8 compared to first 2 prequels, CG gets a 10; plot 7; acting 4.
• Miles run: 1.5, and an ugly 1.5 at that.
  • You know it is going to be rough when you get a sideache 5 blocks out and can smell the fireworks and bourbon 10 blocks out.
• Extra hours of sleep needed Tuesday morning: 3.

Hey look, Nic has managed to not write anything here in a few weeks again. I guess I am not that active writing here when there is so much to do elsewhere… So, what have I been up to? Lots I tell you, lots! So, in usual form, watch out for flying bullets.

• Work.
  • Wow, what a month. I am continuing to enjoy working for ORNL. As I am attempting to work right now, I’m going to try and not blather on for eternity. If I talk about it, I’ll be forced to not do anything today…again.
• Working out
  • It turns out that Svelte Nic is being a bit more reluctant than I anticipated. Getting old sucks. I’ve since switched gyms to Evolution. I’ve switched mainly because I sometimes need folks to drag me to the gym and the availability of work-out buddies changes during the summer.
  • Evolution kicks ass. Period. Also, drinking protien shakes is lots less painful than it used to be. They even taste good, not like the shredded cardboard of yesteryear.
• Softball
  • Since the move back to Montana, I’ve gotten to do 10K things I’ve been missing for the last 6 years. We are playing city league co-ed ‘D’ league. So far we are doing pretty well. I’m having a ton of fun!
• Girls
  • Ahh, the dilema. How much do I tell, given that some of them might just stumble across this site? I think it more fun to keep y’all guessing…
  • The Lions made an early run and attempted to suck the life out of me with a nubile young decoy, but I managed to fend of the attack through the use of my you-must-be-able-to-at-least-appear-interesting-for-the-first-date defense. The Christians seem to be coming back, with an exquisitely crafted import with a seemingly Siren ability to lure me into beaching my raft. It is quite surprising to see this new level of tatics being used in Billings, it was refreshing to meet similarily equipped warrior as myself. I might just have to revise my reporting to a more positive light, war leaves something to be desired for reporting, but hey, I’m having fun with it, so just go along for now.
  • Alive after 5 proved to be a target rich enviroment. It was fun to see people I’ve not heard from in years, as well as those people I got introduced to.

I think that covers most of the interesting bits, well ok, I’m sure I am forgetting lots of stuff, but I’m lazy and need to work.

Here are the pictures from the Memorial Day ride to the Natural Bridge.

It was a fantastic day, the weather was the best of the whole weekend. Mary & Landon rode up on their bike (the green one), I rode mine, and Matt & Mandy followed in their truck with their dogs. The drive from Billings to Big Timber was uneventful, but got in some cool 90mph single lane side-by-side riding with Landon. It was neat to hear the bikes right next to each other - there is almost no exhaust note and all you can hear is the raw motor sounds. Grunt. We also stretched out the bikes legs a bit and zoomed up near the 100mph barrier for a while. Lunch was in Big Timber at this pizza place, can’t place the name at the moment. It was really good and a nice mid-ride break. We gassed up and then headed south of Big Timber up the 2 lane road to the Natural Bridge. We putzed around there for a while, and I took a bunch of photos. The ride back started off painful - rain drops sprinkling down at 80mph make me want a full face helmet for the next road trip. We managed to outrun the rain, and near Columbus we actually overran Landon’s dad and brother. We played a nice game of ‘how fast can we go?’, with us hammering down the highway well into the triple digits. It was also the first time I have had the throttle pegged in 5th gear. Nothing like 30 miles in a little over 15 minutes Landon’s dad put all us HD guys to shame with the BMW bike — he blew by me doing 110 like I was standing still. Humbling.

I’ve gotten lazy or boring lately — I’m afraid to admit the latter, so the former sounds better. It has been a classic case of work,work,work,work, sleep,work. Nothing terribly exciting, just lots of the same. Life should spice up again soon, as I’m heading to Boston Wednesday

• worked on the truck down at The Shop
• rebuilt the distributor — it was in sooo much need of this. All the weights had their round holes ovaled out and it looked like someone took a big electrical shat right in there too

• timing, the hard way. Since there were no existing timing marks on the front cover, we got to “”engineer”" a positive stop from an old spark plug and a bolt. For those of you who don’t know, what needed to be done was place a degree wheel on the balancer and rotate the engine around with a wrench until the #1 piston hits the stop. You then reverse the engine until it hits the stop on the other side of the stroke. Take the two numbers and TDC (top dead center) is right between the two marks. Thank god Koelzter knows what he is doing.

• Farts really do rise. Yes, I have proof. Here is how you can recreate this bit of “man-fun”:

  • one person eat something really narsty (evil-doer)
  • other person comes over later, completely unawares. (victim)
  • evil-doer is underneath truck placing timing marks on balancer
  • victim is working in the engine compartment, blissfully unaware they are about to experience chemical weapons of a variety never before seen in the public sector
  • evil-doer (apparently) sharts, keeping the news to themselves
  • victim does the usual sniff…sniiiiff sniiiifffffff. “Oh jesus dude, did you shit your self (again)?”
  • evil-doer wipes the tears from their eyes as they are laughing so hard. Laugh it up funny boy.
  • Wash-rinse-repeat as necessary

• The retiming and distributor rebuild did help matters out quite significantly, but did not clear up the vacuum advance issue. The next idea is to rebuild the carbeurator on the beast, seeing where that leaves us. I am pretty sure that if it does not solve the problems, I am going to give up and just drive it — it runs great without it, just sucks a bit o’ gas

Another weekend has come and gone, leaving a good sized wake of empty beer bottles, truck parts, dinner bills, and burned rubber. I really had a pretty great weekend — probably one of the most fufilling since I have moved back. Here are the shorts:

Friday. It was another day of 60F weather here, and I was not going to miss out on it. I would like to think I kicked butt at work the rest of the week and cranked out a lot of testing, so took a long and late lunch to polish up the Harley. There were a few spots on the paint that had been rubbed when I moved all my stuff in Kris’ horse trailer from CT. I used the Harley Scratch & Swirl and rubbed all the spots out in a few hours. A nice coat of glaze and a polish later, and the bike is back to its usual sparkling self. I worked for a bit, and at 5 gave Landon a call to see if he wanted to ride — he did =D. We cleared out the cobwebs for the bikes and cruised around Billings. A few beers at BullWhackers dried up that pesky road thirst, and then we proceeded to really crack open the bikes on top of Zimmerman trail. As it turns out, my bike has NO problems keeping up with Landon, so my previous misgivings about the lack of power are still founded, but I’m not experiencing anything out of the normal. Such good news!

I headed home after the ride and was just going to hit Golden Phoenix or something like that for take-out, but got inspired and hit up Walkers Grill for dinner. I was completely surprised at the place — it made me feel at ‘home’ again in a restaraunt. It was like I had stepped into a nice place in Philly and was getting dinner there. I had a few Maker’s & Cokes, the Satay and Lamb Curry, and finished off the lovely evening with a glass of Sandemans Founder. Yes folks, there was Port on the menu! Fantastic!

I rounded out the evening by chilling at The Shop (I’ve decided to add capitals, it does get mentioned enough) for a few, but Koelzter was busy doing the heads on a Ford, so I chilled at K&C’s for a bit. I managed to not get too shitty for once and head home at a semi-reasonable hour.

Now this is what I call a weekend! So, where to start…. I think it started Friday, ahh yes, Friday. Kris gave me a call and convinced me to head to Planet Lockwood with him. You know, that man gets me into more fun or trouble — I guess that is what best friends are for ? For those of you who don’t know, Planet Lockwood is one of those fine establishments that allows men with money to see girls with no clothes. sniff Ahh, the smell of captialism….and cheap perfume. I think it is official now, the cost of living in Montana is much lower. I have been to a few of these ‘Gentlemens Clubs’ (what a misnomer that is) in Philly and Jersey, and I have to say that the girls work harder here for a dollar than I’ve ever seen. Kris tossed a few dollars on the bar in front of me, and the girls would of course come over and use creative methods to scoop up the dollars, sometimes after strategically placing those bills on your person. I’m not one who goes to get all worked up in a lather by the girls — I enjoy more the whole scene, sometimes it is just down right hillarious. The trick is to remember — they don’t really like you, and in NO circumstances (well, at least not for less than a grand) are they going home with you….not that you’d really like to do that.

We continued to the “Anything for a dollar” theme from last night , and headed to BullWhackers to hook up with the rest of the crew and do some liver damage. Lucky me, they had Fat Tire on special for a dollar. As usual, I proceeded to drink lots — it is a fun thing to do you know! The best part was that Kris picked me up, so I had none of the usual driving worries to slow my consumption. We had the requrisite blast, spiced up by seeing the fruits of Mary’s visit to the piercing shop, very nice. Thanks to Chad for the lift home.

Saturday night was a bit calmer, and unfortunately was not a continuation of the dollar drink specials. I hit King’s Korner for a few games of pool with K &C, Troy, Sam and Bill. It was then onto the Red Door. It is amazing how good some of those karaoke singers are. Kris, Christy & I took off around midnight and crashed at my place — their house is a bit stanky after refinishing their tub. The fireplace got used again, and Tivo was her usual great self.

All in all, a nice lecherous weekend. Tuesday I will have to return to the guise of a nice dependable software engineer. I have to mention, it has been sometime since I’ve had this many friends to go out and party with. It is soooo nice.

So! It was finally time to have a house warming party at my new place. Pictures, sadly but a few, are up.

First up on the parade of details - Food:

• Roasted Garlic
• Southwestern Rubbed London Broil
• BBQ Pulled Pork
• Spinich Dip (Melanie)
• 7 layer Taco Dip (Mom)
• Assorted Chips, bread and soda

Honorable Mention to Melanie, Koeltzer, Mandy, Kris & Christy for helping out with rubble duty and cleaning.

As it turned out, there were oh, I suppose 30 people here over the coarse of the night. I have to say it was a freaking blast. I got to see almost everyone in Billings I know at one place. It was very nice to have a place large enough and setup to have that many people — not once did it feel overcrowded. I look forward to doing this again this summer, perhaps for some wicked BBQing. Hrm - the driveway is definately large enough for an inflatable pool.

Everyone seemed to have a good time, especially once we busted out Brooke’s gift of Beer Checkers:

Now for the usual bullet list of fun:

• Amount, in square inches, of counter space left open after beer cases were set down: 0
• Number of Full Moon cell phone picutres taken on Melanie’s phone against her wishes: 2
• People who fired up my Harley just for fun: 6
• Approximate start and ending times: 6.30pm and 5.30am
• Overnight guests: 3
• Number of welcome (and planned) overnight guests: 2
• Bags of beer cans, bottles and cardboard cases tossed out: at least 8, you freaking booze hounds
• Amount of food left at 9pm: 75%
• Amount of food left at 2am: 5% . Drunk people get the munchies too.
• Gifts recieved: 4 - Beer Checkers, Candles, Oriental Dragon statuette, Lambic Beer
• Tours of the house give: too god damn many, that is for sure. Next time it is “Hi, glad to see you; Can I take your coat? Make yourselft at home - hey leave the pants on, for godssake”

Friday night was on of the 4 ArtWalks in Billings. I heard about it from Kit, and convinced Matt,Mandy, Kris and Christy to go, albeit Kris grudgingly at first. We managed to hit almost all the galleries, and it was surprisingly fun. I was not that crazy about most of the art, but there were a few pieces that caught my eye. At the Depot Gallery I even found 2 canvas transfers of CM Russel Paintings — one of them is soooo mine next month. It was quite fun to look at the art and talk to the friends — each of them has very different tastes. Some of the pottery was quite fun too — especially since it was Matt and his home studio where I started throwing almost 10 years ago.

After we got done, we headed to the BrewPub for drinks and grub. It was a good time, I even attempted to go and hit on random girls. Apparently I need to work on my game, but it was pretty fun to exercise those muscles again. We drank ourselves pretty silly, then headed to the WildWest for more fun. All I have to say is that shooting Sambuca and Wild Turkey together is a shitty idea. Chasing them with beer is only slightly less retarded.

So, I must have jinxed myself - my sister, Melanie, and I went out and terrassed the town Friday night. We hit the Billings Hotel comedy night with her friend P.J and P.J’s sister Ole. I love it when parents name their kids after cheap beer. Just says ‘Redneck’ to me.

The lead act was a total douche bag. Here is a hint: If you are white, Mormon and from Boise - DON’T DO STANDUP. Seriously, I’ve met dead people that had better acts. The main act however, was a total 180. This lady had her excrement in a proverbial mound. I don’t think I have laughed that hard in ages. After the comedy was over, we continued to the Wild West to continue the hillarity, otherwise known as Nic dancing. Yes folks, he dances, but only after some serious drinking. Now, I’m not sure if it was the booze or the fact that I am participating in the Great Women in Montana Snipe Hunt, but P.J seemed to be quite cute and could dance. Too bad she has a boyfriend — although, for those of you who know me from Penn — that’s never really stopped me. (Editor’s Note: it was only twice, and both times I was attacked like a 3 legged cat at a dog show).

Well, come Saturday, Karma must have caught up with me, because I’ve caught a nasty cold. It is Tuesday now and I am still reeling from it. It better be gone by Saturday, cause come NyQuil or not, I am drinking my butt off Saturday night. Why you ask? I’ve finally decided that a housewarming party in the new place is in order. This should be good….

Kris and Christy over for dinner, quite the good eats. Southwestern rub slow cooked on a 2lb london broil, and various fixings. There is something fantastic about having friends over for dinner and drinks and hanging around afterward to chit chat. Taven was quite fun, he was half tired and half trying to impress me at my place, so he ran around and terrassed the place a bit. Found the Muzik Mafia show on CMT. Those folks look like a good party.