Category: Life

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Kristen and Adrian

wedding-sign_lg.jpgKris, today is your day.

I know you have been stressing about this for quite a while. Planning a wedding is a huge undertaking and I know you have been working on it non-stop for a long time. Well, at this point, whats done is done. I really hope that you can relax today and just enjoy the ride. It’s a special day and you really should try to go with the flow. Just know, that if things aren’t “perfect” you’re going to be the only one who notices or even remembers. So, if you can be happy with it, then the rest is gravy.

Part of me still thinks of you as that goofy little hanger-on, playing “superman” or “batmobile” in the living room. Or wrestling those times when you would cry just loud enough for mom and dad to hear. The Strawberry Shortcake look-a-like who would drink syrup out of the bottle and rip the pages out of the photo albums.

kris and adrian 028 Today, you hitch your wagon to the big A. Honestly, I don’t think you could have found a better guy than him. Adrian, I don’t know you too well, but I can say this… You’re about a thousand times better than some of the other schmucks Kris has dated (no offense, K!). I’m really really glad you’re in the family.

I’m certainly not one to dispense marriage advice other than to say this. Work at it. Don’t assume it will be all easy like dating was. You might think it won’t be much different, but trust me, it is. Funny what a little piece of paper can do.

I can’t wait to see you tonight. It will most definitely be seeing you in a way I never have before. You will shed your single identity and become K-Mo. I couldn’t be happier.

Love you, K-Mo!

Now lets get some booze into mom before she crumbles…

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Boating Adventure

On Memorial Day weekend, we got invited to go boating with some of Jess’ friends for the day. So, we packed up the coolers and headed up to Lucky Peak Reservoir (not far from Boise) for a day of fun on the water.

Here are the pics.

Actually, we had a great time. The water was a little cold still, and the sun kept hiding behind the clouds, so not everyone wanted a shot at skiing or wake surfing. Maybe next time.

Thanks again to Jeremy and Janelle for the invite!

 

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My Dogs Is Barkin

My dogs have been barking lately. My feet have seemed to be getting sore and tired quickly. This has been going on for the past few years and has been getting worse. I first noticed such things when playing a round of golf or while walking for hours on end along the Las Vegas Strip.

Finally, I decided to see the podiatrist.

After a quick x-ray, the doc came into the room. He poked and proded at my tootsies then tooka peek at the x-ray. It didn’t take him long to tell me what was going on.

Continue reading “My Dogs Is Barkin”

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To Salt Lake… Again

This past weekend, I found myself again in Salt Lake City. Ya know, for a place I really don’t like that much, I certainly seem to go back often. I was there last September. Again in January. This makes 3 times in 9 months. Luckily, I never seem to spend an inordinate amount of time there. This particular time, Jess’s friend Christy was graduating from med school at the University of Utah. She wanted to go down there to support her friend, so we did.

We hit the road after a half day on Friday. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the drive to SLC from Boise is one of the easiest 5 hour drives there is. You can set the cruise control at 83 and just roll. You have to make like one turn to get there. Of course, this is a relative measure as Boise is the most remote metropolitan area in the entire country. We are farther from the next closest big city than any other place in the lower 48. There’s a bit of trivia for ya there.

We got there about 7pm and checked into the hotel. Jess got a killer deal at Hotel Monaco which was right downtown. It was a beautiful place. It’s one of those boutique hotels. They even give you a goldfish to adopt for your stay (we named ours Chester). More on that in a bit. After freshening up, we wanted to head out and explore the area.

Wow, what a massive disappointment. SLC’s downtown is DEAD. The business that were still in business closed at 7pm. The damn pizza place nearby closed at 8pm. This was FRIDAY NIGHT for pete’s sake! There was nobody on the streets at all, except panhandlers asking for change. It was all very exciting. Giving up on finding any retail joints open, we decided to just try to find a restaurant open. Our options were crappy chain joints like Olive Garden and the like. We kept wandering and eventually found Squatters Brew Pub. Thank god! A place we can relate to. This is the place that produces the Polygamy Porter (bet ya can’t have just one!). Finally, we found some people out on a Friday night. We just kept wondering if there is ANY nightlife in SLC. I think we decided that there just isn’t. So, we had some good food, horrible service, and a few beers. It was really the best we could hope for.

The next morning was the ceremony. We left early in order to find a Starbucks, which turned into another huge chore. In Boise, there is a Starbucks (or other coffee joint) every other block. We drove around for 20 minutes before finding a place to get a lousy cup of coffee. Ugh. But, we did, and found our way to the campus for the commencement.

The ceremony was just like every other graduation I’ve been to or involved with… Pretty boring. The bulk, of course, is reading of names you don’t know while small pockets of support in the crowd whoop and holler for that person. The problem with this one was, being a med school graduation, everyone gets “hooded” which takes extra time. *yawn* There were a few doctor fathers who came in to “hood” their sons, but it made me crazy since only one of these fathers even shook hands with their son after their little deal. It made me crazy! You know, you’ve been pushing that kid since he was 8 years old that he was gonna be a doctor, and you can’t even break off a handshake when he graduates med school!?

The only interesting part was the speech by the class president or whatever, who was detailing out all that had gone on in their 4 years together. There were like 84 members of the actual med school class, and one thing he mentioned that like 35 babies had been born to them (or partners) during those 4 years. Wow. We really ARE in Utah, aren’t we?

After the ceremony ended, we were on our own for a few hours until the party started. Jess spotted a Whole Foods near the Starbucks, and she was dying to stop there and look around, so we did. Found some interesting sauces and whatnot. Interesting place. Then we went next door to one of those Baja Fresh type Mexican food joints for quesadillas. Amazingly enough, we were able to get a beer with lunch. And didn’t even have to fill out an application!

Then, it was back to the hotel to relax (Jess napped) for about an hour before it was party time. Our room wasn’t made up, but that wasn’t the strange thing. We checked on Chester… wait a second… that’s not Chester! Chester was one of those googly eyed goldfish… now, we have one of those regular old boring goldfish! Strange things were afoot, but we were at a loss to come up with why. Jess is convinced Chester died, and they swapped him out. I’m not so sure. So, we tried to accept Chester 2, but it just wasn’t the same.

We found the house (Christy’s sister’s place) up in the hills easily enough. (I’m not going to bitch and moan about the street naming convention in SLC again.) This was a pretty solid shindig. Lots of beers. A bunch of people there. Luckily, I had met a few of these people a month earlier in Boise, so I wasn’t totally uncomfortable.

Then came the main course. This was the most amazing thing I have ever seen. It was flown in from Louisiana by the friend of Christy’s older brother. Simply unbelievable. It was a chicken, inside a duck, inside a turkey (yes, I know that’s a Turducken of John Madden fame), but there was an extra twist… that whole shebang was stuffed into a whole pig! This thing was absolutely glorious. They had it on the smoker grill for something like 16 hours. Everything was completely boned, (except for the pig’s head which they removed prior to serving as to not skeeve everyone out) so you could slice it like a a gigantic loaf of meat bread. Oh yeah, between the pig and the turkey, there was sausage stuffed on one end, and shrimp on the other. If there is a meat dish in heaven, that has got to be the one. I have pictures, but not on me. I’ll get them on here soon.

Update: Here are the pics!

010 012

So, we spent the night drinking and eating. Basically, 2 of my favorite things. I smartly slowed down and started drinking water, knowing that I had to drive home the next day.

We woke the next morning and got all packed up and headed to find breakfast. Jess knew of this place outside of town called Ruth’s Diner. One of those old school joints that are very popular. Thus, we had to wait about 40 minutes to get in. But the food was terrific. They have this beautiful outdoor patio covered by trees. Of course, those trees are covered by thousands of little green caterpillars that were continually dropping onto you. I spent the whole meal convinced that one of those damn things was going to drop into my drink or my biscuits and gravy. I couldn’t relax. But it never happened.

After, we hit the road and again had no issues on the drive home. That was my weekend. I was forced to deal with Salt Lake City again, but, I was introduced to the pig-turducken. I think that’s a fair trade off.

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Where the hell have I been?

Actually, nowhere. I suppose I could say I’ve been lazy, but that wouldn’t be accurate. More like I just haven’t felt the strong urge to update this damn thing. But, since I had better update you folks, here goes.

The biggest news is that the new computer is built and up and running. I suppose that is where I’ve been spending the lions share of my spare time. It took me most of the day (Tuesday the 1st) to build the thing, install windows, and get back all of my software. I enjoy that sort of thing, but it is still a pain in the ass sometimes. I guess I’m more of a computer “user” type than one who love tinkering with the guts. I like things to work, and get frustrated when they don’t.

Anyway, I installed the new Windows Vista Home Ultimate, and so far I like it. The only software I haven’t been able to get working on it is my VPN software to log into work from home. Bit of a bummer, but I can try to find a compatible client here at work. Hardware wise, this thing is a monster. I put a lot of horses in there, and you can really tell. It screams. It might be sad that I get so excited about such things, but what can ya do?? I may detail out my build more in the future. Keep your eyes peeled.

The weather is finally getting nice. I’ve been itching to get out on the golf course. I guess I had better get my clubs out of storage and hit the driving range. I played a total of 13 holes last season, so I’m sure I’m rusty as hell. George did say he got his clubs extended and is getting some lessons… we’ll see if I can get him out on the links. Been a long time… I miss it.

I have actually had work to do at work lately. Go figure! It’s nice to not have to kill time, and actually be productive.

MeHad an eye doc appointment last week, and everything is golden. Still only need glasses for computer type work, and even then, that is more just for comfort sake. I’m not one of those who sit and stare at the screen for hours. I’m way to easily distracted for that sort of thing, so I spend a lot of time exercising my eyes by looking around and focusing on far and near stuff. As a plus, Mom seems to think I look smarter in glasses… not sure if that means I look dumber without glasses.

Had a dentist appointment too. That was interesting. No cavities, but I’m gonna need a crown. I never knew what the purpose of those was, but according to the dentist, we all have cracks in our teeth. The only way to determine whether those cracks are becoming a problem is symptoms. And, my bottom right molar (number 31 I believe) is quite sensitive to pressure. Hurts, frankly. So, the clamp a metal head on the tooth to keep that bad boy from flexing. Hopefully, I don’t get taken to the cleaners on that one. Ugh. Win some, lose some.

One thing I just have to bitch about real quick. There is a radio ad here for Lee Reed Jewelers. Anyone from Boise knows these horrible things with Larry Reed basically chastising guys for not not loving their wives enough to get them bigger diamonds. That pisses me off enough as it is. But, one thing I heard on the latest commercial almost made me drive off the road when I heard it. He says something to the effect that diamonds are “one of the rarest gems on earth” (he was comparing this to moms). WTF!? Are you kidding!? Diamonds are made of carbon. Coal. They seriously litter the earth. Millions of them. I mean, they use them in industrial equipment for pete’s sake! It makes me sad that people actually believe this.

Allow me to burst a bubble for those who think that a diamond is inherently valuable… Guess what. Its not. “But they’re expensive” you might retort. Well, you’re correct. But the reason they are is simple. It is called a world wide monopoly by the DeBeers company and a terrific marketing campaign beginning in the early 20th century. Enlisting advertising, Hollywood and various other means, they successfully connected the universal feeling of “love” to the one product they control. Thus, if you don’t buy diamonds, you don’t truly love someone. Grrrrr…. To maintain their position, they either shut down, or buy any competing diamond dealers. Thus, they can set prices as high as they like, and the saps who have been brainwashed into believing the HAVE to have a diamond keep on buying.

Can you tell this pisses me off? Perhaps it has something to do with my having purchased an overpriced engagement ring once and not really get the return on my investment I was looking for. But its not just me. Google “diamond monopoly” or you could read this: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/198202/diamond

Personally, I like gems that are actually rare. Rubies, sapphires, and especially emeralds. But I’m a man, so what do I know?

Ok, thats all for now. I do have a few ‘feature’ style posts coming. I have a few things I have been thinking about writing about and they should be along in a few days.

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Out of My Mind

Office SpaceI’m on the verge of losing it. I’m discombobulated. I’m disgruntled. I am frustrated and saddened.

Why?

You might think it could have something to do with the fact that the first time I ran through my taxes, I ended up OWING the government $950. (I’ve got someone looking at them for me). It could be the whole recent anniversary thing. It could be that the most annoying person in the world, Joakim Noah, won another national title and we had to endure seeing him nonstop on TV. Hell, it could even be that my sandwich at lunch today had muffaleta spread on it which makes me gag. (my burps taste like olives and it’s killing me)

But no. I could handle all those things if it wasn’t for this. I STILL HAVE NO DAMN PC. You have to realize… I use my PC for everything. Work. Entertainment. Information. Relaxation. EVERYTHING!

Here’s the story. If you’re not a ‘computer’ person, you might want to skip this one.

A couple weeks ago I started getting random reboot problems. The machine would shut down, just never when I was using it. I would come back to my machine and see a “Windows has recovered from a severe error” message. I did some investigating and could never find any definitive reason as to why this would happen. I tried various fixes, but things just kept getting worse.

Soon, it was crashing as I was using it. I didn’t want to wipe the hard drive and reinstall windows, but it was readily apparent that there was no other option. As you might imagine, that is quite an undertaking, mainly in finding all of my software to reinstall. A gigantic pain in the ass. Little did I know…

I backed everything up, and started the install process. I started to reformat my hard drive which normally takes a while. But this one was taking an inordinate amount of time. I ended up going to bed, while it still tried to format. When I got up in the morning, I saw a “windows was unable to format the drive” error. Frustrated, I went to work. When I got home again, I tried the whole routine again. After several attempts, I was able to get the drive formatted, or so I thought. When Windows tried to copy files to the hard drive to install, I kept getting driver errors (such and such file was unable to be copied errors). Finally, the thing just crapped out. Great.

I figured, it must be a hard drive thing. This was an old 80 gig drive and maybe it was just done for. So, I spring the 85 bucks for a new 160 gig hard drive (I had to buy retail in a store to get it quickly). Get home and start the whole process over again. Guess what… I started getting the EXACT SAME ERRORS. Ugh.

Now, out of ideas, I called my buddy Chris to come by. He’s a regular tech head and had a bunch of old spare computer parts.

We decided to swap out the motherboard since maybe that was causing the problems. To those that don’t know, everything plugs into the motherboard. So, you gotta completely disassemble the machine to do this. After swapping out my motherboard and reseating the processor and all that jazz, we tried to fire it up. Well, for some reason, this motherboard would refuse to power up with my video card connected. Nothing we could do could get it to work. Well, shit. It was nearing the end of the night and I was leaving for Oregon the next day, we decided to go get a beer instead.

Fast forward to next week. I had an old video card in my storage unit so I stopped to get it after work. Plugged that bad boy in, and lo and behold, we could power on! That is a good sign. After checking the bios and making sure we’re good to go, I attempted to boot to the cd/dvd drive, which you have to do to install windows.

Not so fast there, hot shot. For some reason, no matter what I try, I am unable to boot to the cd. The pc starts up fine, and goes through the regular things. It gives me the message “press any key to boot to the cd”. I can mash my palm into the keyboard, press every single key on there, and it NEVER boots to the cd. It just errors out saying that NTLDR is missing (which is what would start windows). I’ve tried 2 different windows CD’s. No dice.

So, Chris thinks that maybe its my processor that is fubar. Thus, I take the processor that he brought with the motherboard, and mount that one instead. Still no go.

Now, I have basically a totally different PC (different motherboard, processor and ram with a brand new hard drive) and still can’t get up and running. Do I want to physically hurt something? Yes. Do I want to chuck that thing out the window? Yes. Do I want to take that machine out to field somewhere and go medieval on it with a bat while “Damn it feels good to be a gansta” plays in the background a la Office Space? ABSOLUTELY.

I have no money for a new machine. At least, not the machine I want to build. This PC is about 6 years old, which in computer years is ancient. I was planning on trying to build a new PC this summer perhaps. However, with Uncle Sam (potentially) taking a gigantic chunk out of my ass, who knows when I might have the funds to put something together. In the mean time, I’M STILL WITHOUT A PC WITH NO END IN SIGHT.

At the current rate, I could be without a pc for MONTHS. Which, to a guy like me, is a fate worse than death. Well, if not death, at least grievous bodily harm.

So, when you log on today and check your email, get the weather forecast, check movie times, read the news, do your shopping, listen to your mp3s, look at your pictures, watch a dvd, and read this blog, remember me.

Poor, sad, uncle-sam-owing, muffaleta-tasting, PC-less me.

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This Day In History

Many things have happened over the years on April 3rd. You may remember this as the day the Pony Express was created. Or perhaps the day the US Coast Guard was created (then the Revenue Marine Service). Today is also the birthday of both Wayne Newton and Tony Orlando (how frightening is that?), as well as Marlon Brando, Eddie Murphy, and Alec Baldwin.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot… one year ago today was the day. I usually refer to it as ‘Black Monday‘.

Frankly, I had almost forgotten. About a month ago, I knew it was coming up and was kinda dreading it. But not that it’s here, it is almost a non event.

Granted, that day, and the following month was just about as bad as anything I’ve ever experienced. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. I think I’m still feeling the aftershocks from that evening. Of course, I can remember it like it was yesterday, and in many ways, it feels much closer than a year ago.

However, that being said, I’m not near as down today as I thought I would be. I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that I’m in a relationship with Jess and we’re doing good. I feel like myself around her. It’s kinda amazing that my goofiness has come back. I didn’t realize that was kinda whipped out of me near the end. But now, I’m back to making sarcastic remarks, making fun of myself, laughing, singing. I’m sure Jess could tell you just how dumb I can be.

So, I guess I felt like I should put something in this space about this day, since that day was the impetus for starting this whole thing. I do love having a blog. I love writing. I love having you folks out there, all 6 of you, read what I write.

And since I don’t have much more to say about that, I’ll just leave it now. I feel good. I still regret what happened and wish it hadn’t, but there ain’t a damn thing I can do about that now. Onward and upward.

And, just because, behold the Meatcake…

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Slow Updates

Hi Gang.

Just wanted to update you as to where I’ve been and why this hasn’t been updated in a while.

First, my PC has gone tits up. It is a long tragic story that I may have to recount here, if only for the therapeutic value. I think that has raised my blood pressure about 20 points.

Then, I just got back from the Oregon Coast. I think that lowered my blood pressure by 15 points… so I’m not doing too badly. I’ll tell you all about that. I took a bunch of pictures that I will get on here as soon as I get everything back up and running.

So, keep checking back. I’ll have more for you soon!