JW & I hit up the Herkimer for some vittles and a little pre-gaming of adult beverages. The food was quite good, but an appetizer would have helped to fill us up – portion sizes are not obscene and thankfully normal. Who knew! They’ve also got a great selection of German style in-house brewed beers. I can’t remember ever seeing local Kolsch or Alt Bier on tap anywhere. Very nice. The night starts getting interesting when the dude next to JW just waves hello and starts talking to us – not rude or anything, but the guy was a little off. Thankfully JW was in a mood to chat with the guy, or I’d have just been an arse and ignored him. Sometimes you just want to enjoy your beer without the extra mental anguish of having a conversation. (Women take note….) Hrm – perhaps there is some subtle body language or mental telepathy that allows men to sit around drinking and watching a baseball game to communicate without actually speaking. Perhaps we are somehow gifted after all.

From there we headed to the planned destination(s) for the night – Whiskey Junction & The Cabooze. I’ve always wanted to head down there – it is supposedly one of the better biker bars in the area. It is, but oh so much more! The bars are on opposite ends of the block with nice large harley parking lot and open-outdoor-air-but-tented-roof bar, grill and tons of picnic tables. The outdoor area joins up with a bar called The Joint and The Cabooze. It was really cool just hanging out at a picnic table – drinking, telling lies and the mutual pauses in the conversation to appreciate the sound of Harleys rolling in and out. One nice thing about riding a Harley, I can get to the bar and park directly in front.

The Whiskey was fairly dead – they had a pretty good blues band playing and several pool tables. I’ve lost that lovin’ feeling when it comes to shooting pool, hopefully more trips to bars will cure that. It will be rough, but I think in the end it will pay off.

The Cabooze… well that is where things get interesting. JW & I headed over there once Jason and his buddy arrived – thankfully sparing us from playing another unfortunate game of pool only to find those guys at the pool tables in the Cabooze… I’ve never really seen a trendy kinda hippy bar next to a biker bar. One would think you’d get some broken and battered hippies out of that – but all was well. Maybe it was too cold (50F) for hippy pounding ? Cabooze is a pretty cool place – hugely cavernous inside with a triple tiered bar-slash-table setup so that drinking and watching the bands can be done from the safety of a bar stool. In the back by the pool tables there is a room with a locked door and marked “Private Party”. I’m sure it was private but there was less traffic to the bathrooms. It might have something to do with the pungent aroma of that certain something – good lord it was ridiculous. Perhaps that explained our desire to get cheese burgers, tater-tots (tots !!!) and tubed meat in a bun at 1am.

And really, no night is complete without watching someone boot. They have nice large garbage cans near the bathrooms. These are the industrial strength grey ones with handles – you know, to give you something to really hang onto while barfing up $40 of booze. The bouncers were pretty cool about it – just wanted to make sure the dudes buddies got him home, I think they even called a cab for them, the poor bugger Hippies are nice.

Well, one nice cool-ish ride home and I collapsed into bed, doggies grateful to be inside. I slept like the dead until ~10 am and now my underwear clad self is contemplating leaving the sanctuary of the sofa and my blankie for food and maybe even a shower. One must prepare for a full day of football and Nascar T.V watching properly.

• The Summer 2006 Huber Wedding

• New Garage & Brewing

• D.C 2006 Trip

Hrm — perhaps a few quickies as well

• Turkey Day was a 3h drive “Up Nort” to one of Moms sisters’ places — very nice spread and a great meal. Marinated wild turkey…mmm! That is a long drive for a meal though…
• Long weekend – so nice. I’m refusing to even turn the work laptop on. This is driving me a bit nutty, but I’m dealing with the withdrawl symptoms nicely.
• In Vino Veritas: Gotta get the Cab/Merlot bottled this weekend — by next Oct with 10 months in the bottle, it should be damn good.
• Lots of good news on the Cray front. This is a huge validating win for us and really should help move Cray back to the front of the pack, if not breaking away from the peloton someday entirely, for real HPC offerings. Wankers with your “clusters” need not apply. By-the-way, anything below a 30TFLOP system now immediately registers as “small” with me — I know, a bit snobbish — deal with it.
• The year of road trips starts in under 30 days. Oy. We are driving back to MT with the dogs for Christmas — I’m praying for a smooth trip both ways. If all goes well with the dogs, we’ll be repeating this trip 4 times next year — 3 weddings and then Christmas. If all does not go well, we’ll be repeating the trip with the addition of drugs for the dogs. Modern pharmacology is not without its benefits.
• Boston – I’ll be there Saturday May 26th through early morning Tuesday June 2 for the Liza’s wedding – I’d love to catch up with a certain Herr Schwan & McDonald provided they can be troubled to drink beer.
• The Violator: Just go watch. This, Ladies & Gentlemen, is my future brother-in-law. I couldn’t be happier.

Anyhooo…. Most of the weekend has been spent watching World Cup games. I’m not planning on watching all of them – Tivo only has instructions to record the England, U.S, and Spain games. I may have to alter that if any of them go tits-up before the elimination round. I have had two consecutive mornings of coffee, sofa, blanket and el World Cupo. Currently Mexico is trying to convince Iran to bring their “war faces” next time. I’m hoping to see one of my 3 teams make it far enough to get me interested in the final games. I do find myself really wishing I had HD TV at this point – but only with a HD Tivo. Soon, but must pay off other bills and purchase a house.

Speaking of said house…it is looking like time to re-evaluate the finances and determine exactly how much of my income I really want to spend on a house payment. From the initial look at the current rates of exspenditure, I won’t be able to afford a house that I really like. Boogers. I’d really really like to get a nicer house because I don’t fancy myself moving in the next 10 years again unless something really strange happens. Yes, I like my new job that much

Speaking of said job (and here starteth the rantingseth) – I’m starting to get a bit miffed at the old job, where I started to think that I wasn’t bright enough or skilled enough to do actual Lustre hacking — network, kernel, disk layer, super-complex distributed networking programming. Yes, I’m not going to design the next great filesystem, but I really am starting to think that I can make a pretty good swipe at debugging and understanding the code base. Time will tell It just pisses me off that someone or worse yet — myself — convinced me that there were limits to my skills in this area without actually exploring them.

Ok – the old elbow is starting to kill me here from some retarded furniture re-arranging last night. Just a final note to those Right Coasters – I’ll be in Philly Jun 30th, July 3rd-4th and in D.C July 1st-3rd. Be there or get sprung.

Cheers!

Friday night was very relaxing and needed. The Portana picked me up after we both finished up work earliesh — like 4.30 pm or so. We headed down the Copper Colander to drool over the real kitchen gadets and appliances. The store is pretty solid, but it was missing my favorite brands for knives and cookware. I’m a big fan (for no reason really) of the Henkel 4 Star and for really good reasons the Calphalon One cookware. I’ve got a few of both and have been extremely happy with them. After CC, a nice dinner at the 11 cafe, then headed out to the new Furniture Row to gawk at stuff. Nothing much of interest, save for a $174 bean bag (it was not $174 nice, more like $75), and a really nice $300 leather coffee table that might have to come home with me some day. I think I found my next mattress set too, but that is a year or 3 off. A stop to the Petsmart and Costco for Dog, Cat, and Bird food, toys, bedding, etc. Sigh, little buggers are expensive. Cute, yes but expensive.

Saturday night… gift exchange with my usual group of friends. There was a ton of Elk related foods (Kris got one too!) and the usual liberal quantities of booze. I made some Tandoori drumsticks for the crowd, seemed to go over pretty well. A good time had by all, and some quite interesting gifts. One was a dildo-catcus, died green and needles for spines. I am still shaking my head over that one. We all drank enough, some cough cough more than others. Thankfully I had a lovely person to give me a ride home. At least I think that is how I got home.

Sunday morning sucked. I was quite well hung, and not in the Enzite way. Recovery was a bit slow in coming, but a nice long day of sofa denting was a proper reward for doing battle against the evils of alcohol over-production. Watched a ton of football — some good, some bad. It was a nice relaxing day and I’m glad to get back to work for once

BTW — did I put out some sort of sign? Today is the second time in as many weeks that I’ve gotten an email asking me if I’m interested in a new job. I’m not looking, really, but the offers are flattering and it does give me some options should I choose to move along there. Intersting days…

• Lou! Awesome visit. It was fantastic to reconnect with college memories and stories again. It turns out we had a ton of fun in college…I thought so! Playing golf was fun and I don’t mind losing by 40 strokes when I play the best game of my life. Yes I can count those on my toes, but I only lost 5 balls this time! New record — it sure beats having to buy and entire box to go out. BTW – did you yack up the pizza too? I soiled some poor peoples’ gutter while out walking the dog. It turns out that barfing up pizza looks the same now as it did in college — remember that one? Thankfully this time the cheese did not hang on the chainlink fence… Note to the masses: never, ever, ever beer bong a Yuengling after you just bong’d (new verb?) half of a box of wine. Note to self: you really are an idiot.

• Portana! Great ride to the Bozo, despite the coldest temps of the summer. It is amazing what leather will do as a functional piece, not to mention that whole wearing-leather-feeling-sexy-thing. It was the first trip I’ve actually felt like a Harley “road-dog” — you know the folks all leatherd up with copious amounts of baggage tied down with bungee cords. I’m soo looking forward to many more of those trips, especially to Sturgis, Jellystone, or some romantic get away. Your friends were a kick, but I think we agree on how life and its paths are funny like that. Too bad the Jellystone trip had to be junked, but 9h to Denver is looking to be a LONG day. As always, you steal my heart without meaning to!

• Liza! Nice job in Turkey — you have no idea how proud some of us are of you. It seems like only yesterday we were drinking at the ‘Dog every Thurs or traveling to Ohio to watch you kick heads. Congrats! I’m going to post a few photos, just cause you are that cool!

  • 

• Pooperbook: finally into the shop. Yay! It turns out the harddrive was standing on the edge and needed to be replaced. Booo! Hopefully (and I say this with finger, toes and testicles crossed) it is the fix that was needed, cause that whole crashy-crash thing is getting to be boolsheet.

• On vacation. In the last 2 weeks, I’ve taken a total of 5 days of vacation, and not a moment too soon. I was becoming extremely burnt out on work and the hectic pace of life that is here in MT was not helping me to recoup. I’ve managed to do absolutely dick last week as far as cleaning or anything of merit is concerned, but boy did I have fun being a sofa cushion. Today I’m on a super cleaning streak (well once I stop writing to you bastages): the office, file papers, bird cage (they are getting given away, I forget to feed them), floors and laundry. I also need to get bottles for beer and a few other errands. I’m actually looking forward to having a clean office, even if it means finally unpacking several boxes. Tomorrow will see the lawn mowed, edged, and weed & fed. It is bad when you have more cottonwood trees next to the house than grass — enjoy the rain today my friends, for tomorrow you will DIE.

• Harley, etc. Ok, so $119 USD for an oil change is freaking ridiculous. Granted I only have to do that every 5K miles, but at the current rate that is one or more per year. I should mention that there are 3 oils that need to be swapped — engine, tranny and primary, so not all that bad considering they are all synthetic too. I still need to get the rest of the 5K mile service done too. I saw a Screaming Eagle Fatboy at the Belgrade shop on the Bozo trip — it had the new 200mm rear tire and a bunch of other goodies. Yes, I am trading in my bike when the 200mm becomes standard equipment on the regular Fatboys. This will probably happen the same year that my 3 (or is it 4…time to dig through the paperwork) extended warranty expires, so good time to move up. It will probably cost me 3-4K out of pocket to do the trade, given the need to get the Stage 1 and pipes for the new bike and get a few paint booboos repaired on the old bike, but well worth it I think. Yes folks, I have a girl that loves to take the Harley on long road trips and then go out for a romantic night. I win!!!!! Sorry ladies, I’m taken now (you had your chance) and this one can sooo kick your butt. Probably mine too. On the road trip note — I think a windshield is in the near future. I can do the 2h or so to Bozo at 85mph no problem, but if there is any bit of wind it really takes the stuff right out of you. For those of you thinking I’m a pussy — bite me. I was of the same opinion (windshields are a tombstone for your sex life) until we hit wind coming back from Bozo. Reality has a way of smacking you right in the head & neck. Look at all the road warriors out there (not those fake assed ‘trailer-it-to-Sturgis’ dentist types). You will find windshields and some funky getups. Message being: be yourself and get a windscreen, they help. On a related note — the Chatterbox folks have given me some hints on getting the unit to function better with no wind noise. We shall see.

• Family. Mom — can’t wait to make pickles tonight. Nothing like homemade pickles! Melanie — good luck in the UK! Remember to use the pub cash! Jeff – take care of her and make sure she is done freaking by the time you leave. Also – get ready for hunting season, it should be a good time. Gack, I have to get tires for the truck before that and to replace the existing ones it is a re-cock-ulous $152 USD a piece. That is 30% of the purchase price of the damn thing — but if I am going to bitch about that I should mention the gas prices. Ouch, in the butt and stuff with sandpaper condom. It hurts. Allison – congrats on the new job, amazing what you get yourself into. Good luck with your new place in Bozo and school this year, I will be up to visit! We should go skiing too…and get a fake (oh quiet Mom…) so we can get out and tear it up a bit too!

• Work. It is official — I’m a travelling whore. The whore part was existing, they just put me on planes now. I’m riding the bike down to Denver, well really Boulder is what I’m hearing on the grapevine, Monday. 552 Miles, 8h15m at posted speeds. With stops, I bet it takes me 10h to get there, but boy am I going to enjoy that. Who knows what I will be working on starting Sept 1st, but it really doesn’t matter. I think I was fretting about the ORNL thing, but really it isn’t that bad and I could use the 2 extra months to kinda dig my mgmt reputation out of the gutter. It is mostly my fault, that whole consistent communication thing, but hey! I am learning. From talking to my boss , a very refreshing take on things was made and I feel better already. Thanks dude! I’m kinda hoping that I get to fly to ORNL at least once more — I need the miles for a free ticket to England to visit the sister.

• Money. I think bills are actually gaseous objects. It seems no matter how much you make, the bills seem to fill up all existing paycheck space. Thankfully I am getting near paying off one bill and with a little help from work in the salary department, I should be able to start squishing credit cards. Wee! The goal is to get everything but the Harley and student loans paid off in the next few months. Then to start saving for a house purchase. I need the tax break and the equity if not the fun of owning one’s own place. I really want to buy this house, but I’m not going to pay more per month than I am for renting it…so I might be looking at downsizing. I didn’t really want to do that, moving sucks and all, but the more I think about having less monthly expenditures, the more happy I am. Of course the new place will have to have a great fireplace, hardwood floors, central air, dishwasher, garage, etc. I’d really like to have a gas stove again too — cooking on it is so much better.

• Blog links: Ok, time to add a few more of my regular haunts. Portana was added a while back, now we are adding nitefire, hempler, the hillarious P (xmasbaby), jeff, and davem. Greetings from your referrer logs!

Well folks, I’d best get at the cleaning here, or I will sit on my arse all day and get nothing done. Laters!

• Weekend was one of the best ever, nothing like spending a whole day with someone. I spent 75% of Sunday on or near the bike in pursuit of fun for Portana’s bday (birthday, not fancy french bum washer…). Great day of riding, hit small rain sprinkles during 90F heat, boy does that help, especially since I have the new fangled helmet. Lunch at the Grizzly Bar, talk about great food. I love a Prime Rib “sandwich” that is a steak with a dinner roll. Mmm, yeah, that piece of bread is soooo not getting used, and we are just going to call it a steak! Alaskin King Crab for appetizer, just about the best seafood I’ve had in ages. I think I may have hooked someone on Maker’s as she orderd one on the rocks while we waited out the rain deluge. There is something about a sexy woman drinking brown liquor on the rocks that makes her seem very mysterious This single day probably made my week, if not month.
• Lou in town! More stories later, but great to have a friend from college here in MT. It was fascinating to hear about the whole crew, oddly making me a bit sad that I’ve not kept in better contact, but then again I’ve always been horrible at keeping in touch with people. I think something about “living in the now” pokes in there…
• Chatterbox HJC 60. Total piece of crap. I thought it would be nifty to have an intercom for the road trips on the bike — chit chat and tunes the whole way. Yeah, first off, not that much talking you really want to do, just lose yourself in the ride. Second, wind noise. It kills. This thing is getting returned ASAP, and purchasing a direct splitter for the iPod and an extra set of ear buds. Net savings: $200+ USD. And to the person who suggested I get a windshield to help cut down on wind noise: yeaaah right.
• Work…you @#$@#$ers. On top of the week-a-month travel fun, aka HELL, to ORNL, I’m going to be spending almost 2 entire weeks outside of Denver for work meetings at the end of the month. That boosts this month’s travel+out of town work days to 18. This had better be the last month at ORNL, getting really sick of 25-50% travel, so not what I signed on for. To boot, other than doing my job and helping my company out immensely, no real benefit to me. Bitter? Nooo, not me. Selfish? Completely, but then again I’m just asking to have a semi-normal life. Oh yeah, and I am pretty sure there is at least 1 more trip to ORNL that will have to happen right after this Denver excursion, so looking at 3 weeks straight out of town. Booo! I guess this is the price to pay for working from home. I am very excited about the supposed pending return to recoding lots of internal tools. Coop: Remember the Shaver’s joke about rewriting ltest in python — looks like it is going to happen
• Northwest & 6.35am flights out of TYS. Bullshit! If you are going to cancel the flight because YOU HAVE NO FUCKING FLIGHT CREW, please do not mark the flight as leaving late due to “required crew rest” and then cancel it 30mins before takeoff. If I had known it was going to be canceled, I could have slept in past 4am and perhaps gotten a few hours of sleep. You do get bonus points for having reclining leather chairs in the terminal, made it quite easy for me to sleep the 5 hours until the second flight took off. This is the second day in a row, the last being end of June trip to ORNL, that it has taken me ALL DAY to get back to Billings on second rate flights after you botched this one up. Second, get the @#$@#$ing airport security guys to let us in the line so we can get our flights rescheduled. Note to self, never ever ever ever again schedule early flight, take the 8.40am one and be glad that it takes off on something approaching a routing basis. Yeah. Nothing like scheduling the early red-eye flight to get home just to spend 14h+ in the airports. My butt hurts.

So — just a bit of background. The Great American Hillclimbs take place in the South Hills of Billings, MT. The race is to see who can drive to the top of the ‘Bentonite Nightmare’, aka a 400 foot hill that is just about straight up, call it 70 degrees or so. Most folks do not make it all the way up, they end up not having enough traction, motor, or momentum to get all the way up. Oh yeah, this takes serious skill and a goodly amount of balls (lack of brains works in a pinch). It is impressive, and not just from a RedNeck point of view, these are for the most part heavily customized or purpose built machines. We are talking extended swingarms, paddle tires, different suspension, not to mention that they motors are from all walks of life – dirt bikes, street bikes, snowmobiles, well you get the picture. And these folks are willing to break them — tumble back down the hill break them. It was said that it was $100 a bounce, I’m guessing it starts higher than that. Some of the riders had wonderful dismounts, the bikes flipping several times in the air and then careening down the hill until a “catcher” grabbed it and roped it off. All in all, a wonderful event if it were just for the motorhead part of it…but well, let’say it is only a good reason to party like rock stars.

Here are a few links to slightly more event related photos and videos:

• Transworld Motocross
• Gagzette

Party, why yes we did! I took a fair number of pics you can find here. I’m going to pull the rest under the “more” tag to protect the innocent. WARNING Explict RedNeck behavior revealed and explained, not to mention photos of men in women’s underwear. You’ve been warned!

So we started off a couple of weeks before the event planning things out. It takes place in a field at the end of July in Montana. It will be hot and dry, so get shade. Landon found a smoking deal on pop-up canopies at Gart, so he and I picked a 10′x10′ each. Shade – check. We spent a night dinking around with how to set these things up on the pickups so that we could be elevated enough to see over all the other folks.

Oh yeah, did I mention that you are in this field with 10,000 other people? The parking lot is lined out with painted lines into rows so things are slightly organized. So we arrived at 6.30am to start setting up, mainly to get the choice spots near the front and along the isle. With it being so hot, we wanted to make sure we got a good view of the copious traffic that was sure to be there. God bless women who should and then do wear bikini tops! Oh yeah, back to setting up. I went all altruistic and sprung for the fixings for steak & eggs. Landon was kind enough to cook them up so us lazy folks could get setup and eat. We also rented a Port-a-shitter so that we could avoid the masses and their disgusting habits. Oh yeah, you know you’ve gone high-dollar when you can afford a personal toilet!

Once we were good and full, the drinking and racing started. Oh yeah, and more drinking, then we drank some, and a bit more, then got drunk and continued to drink and enjoy being drunk.

Now that we’ve consumed a good amount of booze (some of us nearly a litre of Maker’s, oof), we make way to the pond to do some skinny dipping, cool off, and drink some more. Who says that copious amounts of booze and heat do not mix? Oh yeah, this was only day 1 of 2. Suffice to say that it was a blast and thankfully I left before the strip poker game really got ugly. Oy, what is it about these people wanting to get naked?

Day 2: Otherwise known as the big party day. This is when they run the big bikes — aka the “pro” riders. The entire parking lot was packed, I’ve never seen that many people in one spot in Billings. I was pretty well queasy from the day before, as were a few others so the day was a light one for drinking so more racing was watched. We re-arranged the trucks a bit so the two canopies could cover all 4 truck beds — good idea Matt. Towards the end of the day, brains started getting cooked and between the sheriff deputies running around on their 4 wheelers to break up fights, we tried to get girls to flash us, something every group of guys within shouting (and believe me they did) distance did. Yeah, such a proud moment there BTW – some people just need to grow up — a little in-group drama signaled the end of happy-fun time and off home it twas for A/C and water. Lots of water.

Well, it looks like I survived the biggest party in Billings this year, so I can cross that one off the list. It was truly a blast, thankfully I had some exquisite company to keep me sane — you really do rock! I’m just trying to imagine how we will top this next year….

• Black Eyed Peas – sexy – sultry -georgeous lead singer. Mmmm, tasty — her, Gwen Steffani and a ..well let’s call it a good time had by all. Oh yeah, their music is pretty darn good too, been jamming all morning. How is it that I am actually listening to main stream pop culture music? Am I losing my discretion ?
• Great American Hillclimb. Good times, I will have to explain the fun after this weekend, as I’m just not going to do the stories of yesteryear any justice. So far it has been a bit of cat herding to get all the friends on the same page, but I think we’ve got the plans lined out. Rough plan is to get there at 6.30am to setup the double truck & canopy venue, bust out the steak & eggs on the grill, start drinking (DUH!) and get things situated before they start launching. Loooots of drinking. Lots.
• England – only two weeks until the sister and the niece fly out — I’m so happy for you!
• Back, back, back at the ORNL. I’ll be in TN again Aug 1-6, good times. Things.move.fast. This is supposedly the second-to-last trip I will make there under the current contract, but I can’t see how the contract would end now — to many things to be done. The good news is that after 4 more trips, I will qualify for Elite status on NWA — free first class upgrades and 150% miles. Oh yeah.
• Coding is fun – I’ve gotten to do some again this week at work, turns out I’m still good at it. Thankfully I’m not a completely useless “suit” yet.
• New motorcycle helmet. Modular, super comfortable and full face protection. I can’t wait to ride on the highway with this thing, I won’t have a super sore neck or bugs implanted in my face after riding at 100mph! I know, what a wuss, but have you ever hit a dragonfly at 100? How about a cicada? Didn’t think so! Them buggers hurt.

Well I’m getting bored now, so I’m going back to work so I can get to the gym and head out for a lovely dinner date, nothing like starting off the weekend the RightWay(tm).

As Kris & Christy have been watching Bogart for me while I go cavorting off to TN every month, I was asked to help move hay this year for their horses. They have a bunch (15?) of horses on their place and need to feed them. Apparently this means hay. Mary and Landon were also there for the fun, even though Christy so crawfished on a bet for the ride to Cody…bummer. How much hay did we get to move? Well, 40 tons or 1100 60lb square bales. Suck. For those of you who never have had the fun of moving square bales, it consists of throwing them down from the stack to the pickups & trailers, stacking them there, driving 15mph back to the place, throwing them off (most of the time up!) to the stack, and stacking them in the new stack. Uh-huh, each bale gets moved a minimum of 4 times. Oh, did I mention this was also the hottest day of the summer so far at 100F+? We were chugging water (“wood-er” for those Jersey folks), Propel and Gatorade. You know it is a hot arsed day when you chug gallons and gallons of fluids and never have to pee. We started moved bales around 9am and quit at 6.30pm or so — ok, so wussy-boy here quit around 5pm, but in my defense I had blisters on just about every finger. Yes Landon, our new friends will not have horses.

At this point we are tired, sunburnt and quite thirsty and hungry. K&C provided the booze and burgers, and off I went. I was lucky enough to have a person (you know who you are, and you soooooo rock!) who was willing to come pick me up and give me a ride home, so I decided to have a few drinks. End of the night, Landon and I killed most of a 1/2 gallon of Jack Daniels. Mmmm, tasty. Apparently (I use that word because I am working off of 3rd party reports and not my own memory) I left there at 9.30pm and was showered and passed out by 10pm or so. I’ve not gotten that rat-arsed in way too long, and boy did it feel good! Thankfully the buckets of fluids we consumed during the day prevented any serious hangover. Weee!

Sunday, sunday sunday I managed to sleep in a bit, but then was off to the races again. The sister gave me a ride up to K&C’s to grab my truck and Bogart, had some coffee and toast there and off to The Shop I was. Mr. Truck needed some serious part store lovins, so I hooked him up. New front brakes, tie-rod ends, front steering control arm and a quart of oil topped him up. I’ve still got to do the transfer case seals and the rear brakes, not to mention return the new air cleaner for one that actually fits, but I’m gonna tackle that some night this week. Hrm, I think I need new rubbers for the sway bars and a grease gun too. So yeah…my shop skillz are seriously amusing. I managed to gouge, pinch, slam or otherwise mangle a few more fingers — thankfully different ones from the hay-moving incidents. It seemed that Kris was quite enjoying my pain There was also a slight incident with lug nuts and proper torque that I seemed to experience on the drive home. Whoops, only gonna do that once!

That evening was the afore-mentioned BBQ & Beer brewing festival at my place. Portana — it was just a pilsner, an ale is a different beast. I shall show you the way, oh young apprentice. It was a pretty good show all the way around, just nice to sit back have some charred meat, cold beer and tell hillarious stories and jokes for a few hours with good friends at the end of a looooong weekend. There was also one hell of a thunderstorm that came through — we were all out under the carport sitting around for it, and some of the lightning and thunder made us all jump and squeal. A few were so close there was no time between the lightning and thunder, wow. Bogart slept through the whole thing, must be rough being a dog!

So at this point (and typing all this for you), 9 out of 10 fingers are bruised, cut, swollen, sore and otherwise f’in painful. Thank goodness the remote thumb is still in commission and Tivo has a few NAPCAR races for me to watch. I’m tired, happy, and can’t wait for next weekend!

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.

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.

• Melanie’s college graduation party
• Cades Cove
• Few random photos in the friends section.

I have also taken the time to finally reorder a few albums to reflect current situations…

So Easter. The long and the short:

• All of us (the kids, silly) piled up to Mom’s house for ‘brunch’. The girls both had the boyfriends there, so it was not the usual single male event. Both Jeff and John (Jon?) are great guys — they’d have to be to date my sisters. Since they are such nice guys, I suppose I will have to feel bad if I need to kill them at somepoint. =D
  • Mom’s brunch is not the light-on-the-stomach meal you might think it should be. Noooo sir! We had french toast, egg bake, carmel rolls, some sort of friend meat, lets call it bacon. Oh yes, and mimosas
  • I also brought Bogart up to Mom’s. I think we’ve finally found someone to equal Rebekkah’s energy. They were both quite pooped after playing all day.
• We wrapped up the day with dinner here at my place. I made the usual (and Melanie’s favorite!) ham and scalloped potatoes. yummy!

The best part was probably getting to hang out with Liza for a couple of nights. We had drinks & food and tried to do a ton of catching up. We both were a little punch drunk from work, but it was great nonetheless. I am looking forward to trying to stay in better touch with her…if only I did not say that everytime.

Ok — off to doze for a bit before my flight boards…

At any rate, for those of you playing the at-home game: this is february � logo game

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.

Melanie called me while I was at the grocery store, and it turns out it was Travis Gs barfday. The plan was to hit the Wild West (oh how I hate that place, let me count the metric assloads of cigarette smoke in the air…) for a couple of drinks and make an early night of it. Riiiiight. They were having a $1 USD special on Crown Royal drinks. Let the party begin! I had a few (ok, a few doubles, but who is counting) and had quite a good time.

It has been sooo long since I’ve gotten toasty on a Thursday night. I can’t help but remember the years of ol’ White Dog. Wow did we kill a lot of pitchers there, enough that someone named her cat after the beer we always drank. And no it was not “Bud”, we drank real beer. Following that link might shed some light on the naming of my group of friends too.

So — Friday night was Matt’s birthday and Mandy threw him a surprise party down at the shop. Kris, Christy, Sam and I hit the Circle for some good spongein’ and then the liquor store next door for the nights refreshment. I was feeling frisky, so I splurged for a bottle of Maker’s Mark. I think the last time I had this was drinking at the Union League on someone elses tab. The party was pretty fun and I ended up drinking half the bottle. Yeah, whoops. One of these days I am going to realize that drinking continuously for 6 hours does make one VERY drunk.

On the pet front, I have settled on getting a Border Collie. I am going to be scouring the area for a good breeder and go from there. Now I have to start figuring out how to train it. Weee!

Not much else going on — just pooped. I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!

Oh wait! There is more! Ha!

So — In case you did not know, I am playing on a volleyball team at the local YMCA (Rec B league). I was pretty rusty to start, but thanks to Kris, Jenny, and Troy, I’ve managed to get back into the swing of things. I even managed to get up and finally hit a good spike or two the last game. Of course I am still blocking a few, but we video taped the last game, so I should be able to refine my TigerStyle.

As random chance would have it, one of the girls on the opposing team was someone I knew in high school. Stephanie Heleckson? Hellgeson? At any rate, it was fun to catch up with her. So starts the efforts of finding cool girls here to be friends with — lord knows my friends are not helping in that category. After the game we (the team, silly) headed to Tiny’s for a few beers. I ended up chillin’ with Kara after Sam, Christy, and Kris took off and chugging a few more Schoonies. It was quite nice getting to chat with her — turns out she is pretty damn cool. Good times, good times.

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”

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.

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….