Winter

SHIT! IT’S COLD!

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!

What did I do with such unfettered access to massive quantities of stank and hormonal imbalance? Err, not that much really. Too hot. See previous statement on anatomical weather patterns.

Portana and I ran around Saturday – shopping here and there with a final stop at the Brew Shop for me to drop the semi-annual mint for brewing widgets and thingys. For those that brew – Stainless steel ball valves and a counterflow wort plate chiller are SO the best money. We also got sprung for a Gewurztraminer wine kit. It is dead simple to do with the existing beer equipment and is promising all sorts of tasty goodness. I’m looking forward to many o summer nights spent passed out amidst a few wine bottles on the deck. The sun shall wake me!

Saturday evening did see the lawn mowed – well at least most of it, apparently 90 minutes is just 15 feet shy of done I’d have continued but the dogs were getting pretty pissed from all the close calls during twilight. Not to mention that the mosquitos tend to focus on the fleshy white part of ones buttocks. Note to the public – don’t mow nude. Between the sunburn and the mosquitos — you are gonna be lumpy and red. Dead Sexy.

I did manage to get a nasty headache that took me out for most of Saturday – I think it is from not getting caffeine. Stupid free coffee at work and my lack of will power.

Sunday was the day of days. I woke up earliesh, cranked up the coffee pot (see I do learn) and headed to the garage to get beer-a-brewin’ and stuff arranged and cleaned up. It was hot enough that I put up the canopy out front of the garage for the full RedNeck look. It is the details folks. De-tails. Did I mention that I was walking around shirtless in baggy shorts and messy hair? Truck and Harley in the driveway? Details.

Heh — De-tails makes me think of all sorts of funny things about animals loosing their tails in horrible accidents. Hrm, bed time looming…anywhoo… Once that was all setup and going – I tackled the mess in the corner. Lots of moving things around and it appears to be slightly more accessible and organized. I’m hoping I did a few flourecent bulb replacements (do NOT drop on the floor…) and hung up the tennis ball for Portana’s windshield marker. I’ve heard if your are handy around the house, drives them nuts. Juxtapose that with being handy at the bar and all you get is slapped. Women — just don’t make sense.

Anyways…I’m starting to ramble and it could get messy. Power through this! I finally finished up brewing and got the beer into the fridge a meer 15 minutes after knockout. That’s right folks – 5 gallons of 200F sugar water & hops to 62F in < 10 minutes. These are some heady times in which we live. Man, not ending sentences in prepositions is a real biotch. Sigh. Ok, headed off to Auds for some grilled Elk and veggies on the grill. Homemande smoothies (mit boozen) were quite the treat to finish off a decent weekend, albeit alone

I’d best be off to bed, I’ve got dragons to slay at work tomorrow and another day of trying to keep the giblets out of the blender.

Update Is it wrong that I called the french press the coffee pot ? Did I hurt it’s feelings?

The ride this morning was a bit chilly — I decided to forego the helmet option, I figured it was warm enough I really didn’t need face protection. Dumb idea 40F at 60 mph is a bit cold. It wasn’t so bad after ~5 min, I either got used to it or my face whent numb. The speed limit between Auds & work is 50 mph, and in MN that means 55mph minimum. I was more than happy to oblige! I’m looking forward to chowing my lunch at my desk and getting out for a nice noon-time ride today, might as well get it while I can.

The day starts well….

The pinball warehouse was just the coolest — seriously. They probably had ~25 refurbished machines on the floor and you could play most of them for free. There was an Indiana Jones game that totally tripped my wicket but at 3100 bucks, I’m going to have to save for a bit. They also had an older Star Wars machine that was still living up in storage that was only ~1900. Portana drooled, I could see it. I’m thinking once I pay off the credit cards and get my eyes laaaazered…yeah, pinball machine. Or Tivo Series 3 — it is a race to see if the v3 comes out in time… Oh sweet sweet dual HDTV tuners and cable card…ahhhh!

The furniture store was fun — an astonishing collection of stuff. Portana and I managed to find a end table and coffee table set that will go well with our newly purchased sofa & loveseat — but not before a Battle Royale was had. We agreed on the wood, but it has beveled glass inserts which I am less than fond of — we agreed we could get marble or granite tiles cut and use those instead. We really only wanted the one end table, but as it was in the “outlet” wing of the store, it came in a 2 table & coffee table set. Frass. Portana is dead set (and for good reasons) against having a coffee table in front of the T.V, so her & Aud had to beat me about the head and neck to convince me that it will make a good T.V stand. I compromised…we shall see Aud managed to make a pretty good haul — lamp tables, curio and appolstered chair (wing back? too many seen to remember) to match her new sofa.

We had left at around 10 am that morning, returning around 8 pm or so — tired, very tired. It was a good tired though — a great day of getting things done, but boy was sleep welcome

I awoke Sunday with the grand intentions of being a bum. There was NAPCAR and College Hoops to watch, other T.V to surf in the meantime and I made some mean coffee to start things off. I was doing well with my “Day o Laziness” until around 11am where apparently the Wild Hair started sprouting…it was 40F+, why not wash up the Harley and get out for a ride. There is never a good answer to that…other than yes A quick trip to the storage unit for leathers and helmet later, I was off to the self-service car wash to give the bike a good warshin’. It was pretty filthy — 1000 miles of bugs and road grime, not to mention moving dirt. Thankfully some “pre-soak” and a nice pressure washer later – no bugs! I tooled around (including a nice rear tire roasting coming out of the carwash — god bless a little water and cleared the cobwebs out of the motor. Boooooy is having real air again nice, Hello Msrs Horsepower and Torque, oh look there is your tag-a-long Mr Adrenaline. I boogied home to give Portana a call so we could get out together and enjoy some V-Twin Therapy. We checked out the local HD dealership for a bit, then motored over to Champs for a NAPCAR & Basketball grubbin. Not sure if it was being tired or what, but that ride home was a bit chilly. We both passed out pretty quickly on the sofas watching the race…damn you Rubberhead.

That about does it for the weekend — there was a small battle with Auds furniture (moving it out to the garage to make way for the new stuff), but other than that — crashed I’m reqlly looking forward to this Saturday – we should have the movers, the cable t.v feller, and the new sofa & loveseat all in one day. Wow, what a whirlwind weekend this will be Oh yeah, supposed to be in the 50s this weekend…soooo going out riding again.

Anyhoo — Mipples: Please take a note out of our weather forcast. 50s or 60s for daytime highs. Nothing less, nothing more until April. I will serenade you with my sultry Big Twin rumble to your hearts content. Seriously. I promise. Sadly, looking at the weather forecast for MN reads like a whos-who of bad winter driving. Ice, ice pellets, snow then rain, rain then snow, etc. Thank god I spent this weekend redoing the front end (bearings, races, seals & hubs) on the Brown Beast – having 4×4 again will be nice. Now if someone could only tell me where to find a copious amount of sticky-icky mud near the TC that I can play in and not get arrested for…. This is your chance people — the comment link works!

Well — I’d best get folding and editing the wardrobe here unless I want to sleep on the floor. Yawn

Poor Portana’s crawl space was flooded from a burst cold water pipe when we returned. We knew the pipes had frozen the morning we left, but we couldn’t really do anything about it as she was babysitting her rockstar boyfriend in his morning of Retchery and we had to get packed and to the airport. We did have some family members check in on it, but the main shutoff was frozen and couldn’t be closed. We figured that two days of good luck might hold through, but alas it twas not to be. Walking into her house and turning on the kitchen faucet rewarded us with hot & cold water — the hot just a trickle, but at least running. The bathroom…well the hot water trickeled as well, but the cold water just made an ominous gurgling sound. A quick check with my Super Sniffer 2000(tm) confirmed that we were standing over a yet to be determined quanity of stagnant water.

Popping open the crawl space access (external to the house) showed us that we were mere feet away from having a very nice house-boat. There was 2 to 2.5 feet of water just sitting there, all icy and cold looking. My external thermometer was not looking forward to a Polar Bear experience. After finding out there are NO 24hr plumbers in Billings that have pumping equipment (seriously, what kind of fuck ass town is this sometimes!), we rang up one of my friends who had an irrigation pump. We tried to get some water pumping out, but at 2am we were just making a big icy mess of her yard. A call later to the public utilities company here got the water shutoff. We called it a night — there was no immediate danger to stay up and play Ahab. Oh — forgot to mention: The main water shutoff for the house is on the other side of the crawl space, on the other side of the swirling mess.

Revisting the pond this morning found the water level down about 2 feet. I fired up the pump again to move a bit more mud around, but at the end of the morning I left about 6″ of water standing. Thankfully the crawlspace is all dirt, so we are going for the “what goes up must come down” method of home repair. I’ll check in tomorrow to see if it is dry enough to slop around and examine the damage — so far it looks like one minor break in the bathroom cold water feed. A soldering job and we should be back in business. All-in-all, it turned out to be not quite as catastrophic as we had anticipated…so far!

But I digress… TGIF! So — it has snowed every day this week. Snow makes me a happy man. I’ve got a fireplace, a dog, a canoodling gf and ample quanities of food & booze. It is gonna be a good night I’m looking forward to a nice slow-brained evening, possibly getting hammered flat. I could do it, I swear. This weekend is looking up – I’m on the hunt in the house here for my Christmas Tree decorations…I’m really hoping I got those in the move. If I find those, gotta get a tree — something about that smell. You people with your fake trees and fake holidays — BAH!

The “group of us” is heading up to RockDodge town for a night of drinking in a small town. Why? Someone needed to burn a gift certificate to a hotel up there…and the rest of us are going too. Not staying in the same room though, I don’t like anyone that much There has been promise of snowshoeing on Sat, and I’m sure I will freeze, fall over, get snow in very unfortunate places and have a generally fantastic time.

Well — here is to you and your weekend, now get the fug out of my way, I’ve got time to waste!

Sat Morning I was the official pit & road crew for my 1/2 marathon friend. It turns out there is a 6am and it is pretty early, but sadly the sun has risen at that point. Dropped off for the start (in Laurel), headed home, ate breakfast, filled gas, got a cup of coffee, drove back, and they are still running. A whole new respect for those that abuse their bodies in such a fashion. For crying out loud, my truck takes more than 1 gallon of gas (yes, such a gas-guzzler) to go that far! Sometimes people just need a friend, and it is nice to be that friend

The rest of Sat was spent dozing and avoiding the heat until the next softball game at 3.30pm. It was freaking hot, but not as bad as the previous evening. I played the whole game, and had one of the best games of the year — all over the outfield helping back up tough plays, lots of good compliments. I still need to work on the hitting a bit, but I’m making good progress there. Not too shabby for not having played in years. We still lost 10-15, bumping us out of the tournament, but it was a great game nonetheless. Off to home to scarf down a pizza and nurse my wounds. I slid into homeplate to score a run, forgetting that sand works much like a cheese grater. It suuuure is ugly, that is for sure. Out to the pond during a big rain storm for the night. Played cards in the gazebo with the crew until midnight or so, I was pooped. Bogart is hillarious — running around in the rain and pond, then comes in right under the table where we are all sitting and shakes off. Hosed everyone — good doggy!

Sunday was another day of playing mechanic. The truck no longer leaks ATF out of the transfer case and has a bright shiny new A/C compressor installed. I just need to get a few new parts and adjust the power steering belt tension — then we have A/C in the truck! wOOt!!! All that is left is to do the rear brakes and get new tires. Sooo gonna be glad to have that done! It was pretty fun hanging out at the shop all day. Matt, Mandy, Landon and Mary were there for food runs & comic relief. Bogart got to run around with 3 other dogs for the day and wear himself out. Speaking of which — funniest Landon quote of the day: “Ha! On Wednesday Bogart will live up to his full name — he will be Humpfrey (hump-free)”. Yes, goes to the doc Wed for the snippy-snip. I am still chuckling about that joke…poor dog! Stopped by Mom’s for a beer on the porch and a chit-chat before I came home to NAPCAR and bed. Such a tiring day.

A fun weekend, sadly not enough Harley rides, but I am looking forward to a couple of planned weekend road trips to make sure I get enough miles on the girl. Hrm, need to go down this week and get those new plates too. Wee, now off for another rat race week!

• Why does it always have to be the best weather of the week on Friday ?
• Working 4 days a week would be so nice. I could start drinking in earnest Thursday.
• Does the word ‘Fri’ indicate something? It sounds a lot like ‘fried’, as in ‘dude, I am totally fried’.
  • For those German speaking folks, also quite similar to German ‘Fri’, meaning ‘free’(as in beer, not speech).
• 2 hour lunches are contagious. You take one (or three) of them in one week, and then having just an hour for lunch on Friday seems like a crime against humanity. Besides, doesn’t everyone need to watch MythBusters to clear the lunch nap fuzzies ?
• Shit. I have to go to the gym tonight. Yes, it is going to hurt, but it does a body good. F@#k you, milk people and your marketing drones.
• To drink or not to drink? If I decide to go all out on playing ‘Hide the Bourbon’ with the liver, I will be hung as all heck tomorrow morning and won’t get anything done before noon. If I don’t drink, what the heck am I going to do, clean the house!?
  • To those of you thinking ‘Why don’t you just drink in moderation, say just have a few?’, I would like to respond to with this link
• Always nice when the co-workers break out the Pimpbot 5000 links.
• Girls are fun.
  • Guys – if you have a good girl, keep her, at least until she goes insane. Then run like hell. Hold on, hold on — I am saying nothing bad about women in general, just if they do go insane, you don’t want to be in range of the event horizon. Most likely there is something retarded that you could say, and given our lack of ability to say the proper thing at the right time, we will say anything that comes to mind, and viola you are running for your life.
    • Editors Note This is not reflecting any recent personal data (quite the opposite really!) I’m just attempting to be funny.
  • Girls – don’t judge us by the masses. Most guys are lacking critical brain function and don’t appreciate you. However, the rest of us (yes I include myself. bite me!) are relative gems and deserve an ever so slight break once in a while. We are, after all, the weaker sex
    • Yes, Tom Cruise is cute, but see what kind of bat-shit-crazy he has gone over Katie Holmes ? God, I must be a sap, but I wonder what Nicole Kidman thinks of all this?
• The votes are in. Christians 10, Lions 1;

I think I’ve gone off the nutty end of things for long enough! Happy Friday!

And for those of you e-voyeurs curious what this weekend, in all it’s probably unbloggable glory looks like:

• Telling the alarm clock to go have sex with itself. Unless you are getting up to run.
• Mowing the lawn. Not necessarily all that fun, but if your yard consisted of a 15′ square brick patio, you’d be excited too. Besides, I get to play the ever so fun game of ‘how-many-dog-turds-can-the-lawnmower-pick-up-with-the-bagger-so-I-don’t-have-to-by-hand’.
• A surprise BBQ for someone…happy b-day!
• Mud bogs perhaps ? Quite tempting, “I’m just not sure if I will have time”.
• Harley. Oh, how I will miss you! So let’s celebrate by abusing you and the laws of physics.

Saturday: It was 63F, so I got the Harley out of the garage and leathered up. As the grandparents had come in from North Dakota with Walt & Sarah, I rode up to Red Lodge. The ride was fantatic, right up there with heading to the beach last Sept. I could have set the throttle lock at 80 and never slowed down. It was pretty fun pulling out to pass people starting at 70 and by the time I got back in the right lane doing 100+. Wee! It did get a bit chilly the closer I got. Gee, who would have thought a 2500 foot elevation change would make such a difference. It was the first time I got to ride into the mountains, and I am so looking forward to doing more of that this summer. I had a nice chat with the fam and headed back after a bit, before it got too cold.

Sunday: Ahhh, bliss. I slept in, lounged around until noon until I got a surprise visit from Mom. We cleaned the kitchen, cooked up steaks and salad, and watched NACAR-slash-took naps. I ended up working that night, to get a few things cleaned up before Monday rolled around.

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.

Ok, first off — I’m cured! Well, almost 100%. I feel tons better thanks to the giant f#$cking Q. I managed to put in a good days work, the first all week. Hopefully I can bust ass tomorrow and really get caught up. Sigh nothing like a week down the toilet.

It was another day of 60F here in Montana, so I took the Harley down to the local Harley shop. I’ve noticed, and so has Kris, that the bike is a bit sluggish, at least compared to what I was used to in CT and Philly. They checked it all out, and said nothing was the matter, that it runs like all the other FatBoys that they sell. Bah I say, Bah! So, now I am contemplating the Power Commander as a way to regain some of the lost tuning. The HD shop guys all say they are worthless, all the posts I can find online sing nothing but praises. I suppose I will just end up coughing up the $300 USD and giving it a whirl. If nothing else, I will have another toy to tinker with — nothing beats hooking a laptop up to the Harley to fiddle with fuel and timing curves. Dyno you say? But of course, a trip to the dyno would be grand!

My Mom has a very cute way of well…getting us kids to come and hang out. We were chatting on the phone, and she said “Come get me, we’ll go to DQ”. “But of course”, I say Turns out DQ was closed, but I managed to get some Taco Bell for the taco hole. Mom got some carmel apple random tex mex word here.

All in all, not a bad day.

On the bright side, I finally got to give my Mom a ride on the bike. We rode down to my place, grabbed some chips & Corona and watched the Eagles kick the snot out of the Falcons. Tivo gets an honorable mention for allowing us to watch the game in under 2 hours.