"the cranky old bastard"

Seeing as how I've not posted here in ages - I wanted to reassure folks that I am not dead.

Ciao and shit...

Lewis

for those of you who just LOOOOVE cute things... I give you THIS

Ohhhh, there's more....check out that guy's channel on You Tube.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Seems we took back our country tonight.  For too long we've allowed it be run into the ground in too many ways by an idiot and the band of idiots surrounding him.  Yes, my parent's are annoyed , neigh...pissed...(Carson City NV), but they can finally identify with what I've  had to live with for the past two terms.  I have bright hopes for the future of this place we call home and it just goes to show that we have unimaginable power when we move to be heard.  When we choose to speak up.  When we choose to vote.

I've kept my "I Voted" sticker as a momento of this great day - it's on my Capo.

My hopes for the next four years is to see American "come back".  I have visions of seeing all our soldiers come home and populate military bases here on our own soil - stimulating our economy.  I have hopes that people who day trade will place some faith in the market and leave their stocks alone long enough for them to mature.  Buying and selling is good, but it's NOT VEGAS.

In short.....I believe we have another Kennedy  style of president and I look forward to it.

I should get an award or something for what I've been through and how I've handled it thus far. Yes I'm talking about my uncanny ability to land interview after interview and not get hired because of this god damn competitive market.

Thanks, Google, for hiring brainiacs and inadvertently spreading the word to each and every one of my prospective employees to do the same.

Sure, I don't have a degree, but god damn it, I'm smart and have the skills. Someone just effing hire my ass before I turn f---ing fifty already, I have plans for F--k sake.

Faaaaak! Give me a break already!!!!

This Happened.

So much for Benicia being that Idyllic little town - after talking to a few business owners, it turns out that this shopping center has been targeted before.

Oh, and the getaway car....sitting right behind my car in the parking lot.  If I hadn't decided to provide info for a music shop customer on a microphone, I'd have been in the path of the fleeing gun men. 

Whew.

Happy Birthday and stuff tocharlottesmtms

Steven Page, vocalist and guitarist with the Barenaked Ladies was arrested for cocaine possession.

This hits me in an interesting way as I got to meet the man and chat guitar tech with him last month.  He actually recognized ME when I got to the autograph table, primarily because he was instrumental in advising me when I was considering the purchase of  my Guild electric guitar.
With this connection, this sort of hits me, as I said, interestingly.  One might think - "wow, a rock star with drug....and the sun rose today, what else is new?"  Me, I think like this....he has hit a rough patch in his life with the divorce and such.  Live-devastating events such as this cause people to make decisions they normally wouldn't make.  Some may say, "he was 38, he should have known better" - ME?  I say "I'm 42 and I'm still making some decisions that I often regret" -

But this is how we learn, no?

As a fan, as a BNL Family Member -  I choose to feel for the guy and when I run into him on the cruise next February I plan to simply offer him my support in any way i can manage.......starting with sending him cookies and some form of hug from Lyssandre and myself.

there...it's off my chest.

...By blessed, one might think, charmed, lucky, fortunate, or downright in the right place at the right time.

That's me.....with diagnosis, that is.

First, it was the asthma paired with allergies hayfever, and that pesky deviated septum, all of which knocked me out of a life time of being in a uniform for the USAF.
 
Later, the psoriasis - had to wear up to 22 band-aids one time.

Then, in recent years, a bout with high blood pressure during the dot bombs...then again, who didn't have that.

Cap it all off with ESRD (End Stage Renal Failure) - this diagnosis came just one week before the company I worked for folded...then again who's company didn't fold during the dot bombs.

Last year, about the same time that I had the good old "pit stop" that us 40 year old men get to endure, it was revealed that I had Crohn's Disease - (who ever got to name that actually used their own name?  eww...)

And yesterday - Diabetes.

Everyone aboard the affliction train! WHOOOO HOOOO!!!!!

Exchange rate - One Euro gets you a Dollar and fifty six cents...

Hmmmmm.........

Here I am in Benicia, CA - where they roll the sidewalks up at 7:00 and people walk their dogs all over the place.  The wife and I decided to have a nice bike ride today, but upon exiting the house, we noted the quality of the air from the fires that I didn't know about (we avoid the news, most days...kinda for the same reason that Roxanne doesn't read the paper.....)

...so, it was back home and indoors for a good 4 hour nap for me!

After The Venture Brothers, we went down town and walked to the pier.  This place is calm.  It has a wonderful calming affect.  And the people!  We ran into a few folks walking their dogs and they all didn't mind letting Lyssander get down on their level for a good face washing.   In fact we had a nice chat with one of them about the town and how they'll look for excuses for social gatherings.  They also mentioned that the town put a moratorium on how many Starbucks can be here!  As a result, there are only 5, (rather than 20), three of which are within a mile of each other and of those three, two are 70 yards apart - one in a Safeway and one in it's bloody parking lot! 

That said, we're looking forward to the parade and street dance on the third!  Such a great community is this  place. 

We made the right move.

</b></a>direluciors is closing in on being one year closer to death. 


Happy Birthday, dude!

Right now I'm just waking up here on my fourth day in Benicia and I'm thankful
that it was me and not my cat who did it this time.  I notoriously wake up early
and this time, at least it's four in the morning and not two forty five.  It
took longer than expected to get internet and phone ready but now that I have it,
I'm finding myself still using Earthlink because when Comcast did the install,
they didn't bother to let me know how to access things like web hosting pages,
or for that matter, how to set up my new email, LOL!

I'm not complaining, though, my connection speed is "ludicrous" speed
with upload speeds in the 2 - 3 Mbps range.  yeah....ludicrous.  Downloads at 16+....DAYmn....

Benicia is great.  To give you an example, we had a knock on our door on Sunday.....correction,
the doorbell rang.....(this is a foreign thing to someone who's been an apartment
dweller for so long)......and it's three girls informing us that they are going
around the neighborhood walking dogs and could they walk ours!  LOL!  Now we HAVE
to get a dog!  perhaps two....a greyhound and a whippet - 'name them "fast
food" and "small fry"....suggestions?

I am also enjoying the peculiarities of being the master of a new domain....that
domain being the garage.  I am beginning to understand the psychology behind nagging
wives who get on their husbands for cleaning such a place as it's just asking
to have "stuff" tossed into it as the answer to "honey, clean up 
that mess in the den".  (Cut to a flying cardboard box landing unceremoniously
onto a stack of other boxes in the garage)  "all cleaned up dear!" 

.........Ahh bliss.

Cooked the first dinner....a you-bake pizza....last night.  'Bought it at Raleys
down the hill and devoured it on the couch.  Yep, we're home now.

While running errands yesterday afternoon (after the following people left); Comcast
guy, the AT&T guy and the Plumber guy (a very cool dude who's coming back
for BBQ while his fixes a ceiling), our decision to move into Benicia rather than
Vallejo way reinforced by taking a back route to the local Smart and Final store.
Lemme tell you, nothing exposes the bare armpit of a town like driving through it's
"historic district". No trees, power lines all over the place and a very
industrial feel over all.  No wonder they're bankrupt.  Funny thing about that,
the state issued 80K to the cities of Vallejo and Benicia for promotional development.
Benicia launched a program called "Benicia In Bloom" and has taken positive
steps towards enriching it's community.  

City leaders in Vallejo can't seem to locate those funds......innnnnnteresting.

The word I think I'd use to describe this pace is "Ideallic".  The
attitude and the atmosphere just brings me back to my own childhood in the early
seventies.  There is an aire of trust here as well, the water tastes like it did
when I was a kid living in Milpitas back when Highway 327 made a dead end into a
fruit stand.  People are nice and they take the time to smile at you when you walk
down the street.  At a four way stop, people "wave you through" and the
more I liev here, the more I know that I'm back home.

Now that we have a huge back yard, I could grab some gardening plastic, lay it out
on the back yard and just slip and slide!  I haven't slip or slid since I was
a kid! (man, I may be in for a rude awakening as I'm not made of cartridge anymore....hmmm
perhaps we get a couple floating pool toys to slide upon as well.....

Okay, my coffee maker is beckoning me...

Noelle and I took yet another trip to Benicia this weekend to look at places to live - Ordinarily we'd be looking at properties for sale, but our rationale is that if we are living in Benicia, California for a year first, not only can we decide if the town lives up to what we've experienced there thus far - in a word, "Idyllic". (Click the "minus" symbol in Google maps to see were it is in relation to San Francisco, BTW) We had a list of addresses and a pocket full of hopes when we showed up at the first address, which was a duplex. For a long time I had a mindset against Duplexes because of that adjoining wall, but even before the owner arrived, I studied this place and it didn't look to have more than 10 feet of wall connecting the two units, and even then it was "hallway" touching "Kitchen" and the living spaces were upstairs where no wall touches anything.

( Read on, but this is pretty long! )

Ever find yourself in a store tearing your hair out because the only size you seem to fit into comes in ugly clothes or worse than that, there is something there that is very attractive, but it's made for people who could just as well be residents of Munchkin Land?

Read on...

Vanity Sizing

I ganked this of the net and thought I'd share it with ya.

Lyssandre and I have made the FIRM decision never to birth our own children because of a vast number of medical issues that I wouldn’t DARE pass on to anyone.  That and there are plenty of children out there who could stand being taken in and loved just as much.

 

So with this philosophy, our pets ARE our kids.

 

Our Pasha, our daughter, is mortally sick and we have to put her down today.

...EDIT...11:52 AM

Rest in Peace my sweet little angel....

Pasha "Paws" Nowosad -1990 - 2007

This past week - typically a joyous holiday, has been a week of heartache and denial for us here in Mountain View, California...

Pasha, who is our 17 year old cat, companion, (and since we never plan to have children), our "daughter" was admitted to the pet hospital two for two days before Christmas.



Prognosis = Kidney failure - Creatinine was at 12 and the B.U.N. was off the chart at over 200. For those of you who know anything about kidney disease, these numbers are not good in a cat.




Having been a kidney transplant recipient for over 5 years, I'd give anything to get Pasha back to good health, but she also has a heart murmur so even if we were able to do a transplant for her, (and yes, veterinary technology has advanced to that stage now), there is no guarantee that she'd survive the anesthetics.




Perhaps I'm venting, perhaps this is nervous energy, but I've spent all morning digging up images of her for my website and I just need someone to talk with on this. I've never been so attached to a cat before....




I'm gonna miss my sweet little girl.....

A  gift to you all from a friend of mine in Scotland and I.  
He provided all the art and I did some tweaking to fill it out. 

Please enjoy Barenaked Ladies holiday song "Footprints" from their album;
Barenaked For The Holidays

Yesterday I got the opportunity to fire an M-1 Garand WWII rifle!  In the middle of the desert with no range master, the rapid fire thing is completely acceptable and let me tell you - that weapon can spit out 8 rounds pretty quick before the clip does that little "piinnnng!" thing.  I also got to fire a round out of a fifty caliber musket my dad made from a kit a while back.  We were loading the ball into the barrel when the ball got jammed about one foot down.  we took the weapon home and tried to extract the ball with no avail.  So we got a bit of wooden dowel and used it as a more sturdy ramrod, shoving it into the barrel, inverting the weapon and using the wait of the weapon to "assist" the ball into a more appropriate position in the barrel.

This worked and we drove back out into the desert to fire just one round off.  The general rule is this - drive until the road is gone and go another five minutes.  Well the exception to the rule is this - drive until you find a major appliance abandoned in the sun with no bullet holes in it yet.

That Kenmore washer never saw us coming.

the ball for a black powder weapon is about the size of your pinky-nail. 

The hole it left in that poor washing machine was big enough to put a polish sausage into.

Then there was the exit hole. 

Wow.

Let's just say that I hope I'm never reincarnated as a soldier during the civil war because a hole like that in my gut would just suck....actually it might well literally "suck"!

Sufficient to say, the experience left me invigorated and concerned that I may have lowered my standing with Kenmore in some white trashy, out-back way....:)


Oh and if you want to hear what I'm listening to right now it's actually not BNL for once!  Here, Click me for Matt Wertz - "Carolina"