Welcome 2012

Merry Xmas 2011

Patio Workout

My shitty public gym was closed for no apparent reason Sunday, so I took the opportunity to utilize my patio weight-equipment for only the second or third time. Since the temperature was above freezing here in Central Tennessee, it was a surprisingly good workout.

The only problem was I woke a few deadly spiders that had apparently been sleeping in the equipment- a baby Black Widow, which I noticed lowering itself by a thread off the bar next to my head during the bench-press routine, and a tiny Brown Recluse-which I found crawling up the leg of my sweat pants, both of which will wreck your day. Luckily I was not bitten. They must have anti-freeze for blood!

I gently placed the Black Widow in the bushes outside my compound, but I fear the Brown Recluse even more, so I disposed of it the best way I know of for deadly insects, folded into a section of packing tape. This way, there is no way they can come back to get you, unlike when you flush them down the toilet or squeezed and tossed into the trash can.

Rotary Curl Bar-Awesome Biceps Workout

Brown Recluse-Entombed in Packing Tape

Squat Bar-with Manta Ray Attachment

Career Changer

It looks like my latest attempt to change careers has stalled, at least temporarily while I go back to my old business to replenish my bank account before I starve to death. I had been doing radon mitigation for the last three years, but I think I picked the wrong area for my little venture, as the work has been few and far between in Central Tennessee.

The profession I have been trying to escape-chiropractic personal injury in Florida, has been dependable job security at least, even if I do dislike it. Hopefully I can stomach it for a year and try again in 2013 to change careers. I think it's going to be depressing though, to be back down there.

I will keep you posted.

Personal-Injury Chiropractic

Electronic Junk

Be careful which electronic gadgets you invest in these days.

I have noticed some recent failures of some normally dependable types of electronic gadgets of mine. I bought  these at Best Buy and I'm thinking it might now be a good idea to start buying the gadget-failure insurance they always offer at checkout. This is not your Grandfather's Walkman or transistor radio that still works fine to this day. I guess the standards have dropped to shit-level quality and everything is eventually a throwaway in short order.

$42.00 + tax, and it craps out after 6 months. Of course the receipt was nowhere to be found.

My Sansa Clip 4 gb .mp3 player, ($49.99) conked out after less than a year.  I dug my 3 year-old 2 gb Sansa out of a drawer. It still works fine, but this one is junk.

 Geek Squad USB stick ($12.99) stopped working in under a year. Luckily I had backed it up to a external hard-drive

2005 80 gb Western Digital Hard Drive ($100), loaded with data, not recognized by Windows 7 machines

Buyer beware...........

Suburban Waste

Growing up in the suburbs it seems like many of us didn't gain any marketable skills, unlike our country and city counterparts. City kids tend to become street smart, and are good at networking, negotiating and people skills. Country kids become good with their hands, and can rebuild engines, shoot and skin-out game and live off the land. Suburban kids got good it seems, at going to parties and recreational drug use, at least in my experience, hanging out at the mall and shopping, and surfing the internet, all of which translated eventually into long-term unemployment, well into adulthood unfortunately.

The only thing I learned growing up in the suburbs was that my Dad made money and my Mom spent money. If I made the mistake of asking any questions, my Dad would just just give me a solid backhand and my Mom would take me to the mall, just to get me out of the house, so Dad wouldn't kill both of us. So the mall became a haven of sorts, an escape.


I found myself living in Tennessee for some reason, in 2008. I had started a business outside Nashville, despite knowing nobody and having no local connections. It's not the first time I have just shown up somewhere. I did the same thing in 'Vegas about ten years earlier, and it turned out to be one of the most amazing years of my life, although I starved. I thought it would be interesting, to be near "Music City" this time. Plus it seemed business-friendly. I've had no roots since my parents had moved out of my only real home town of Valley Forge, PA when I was away at college in the 1980's. As a result I have yet to find a place to live I'm comfortable with, and I never did "settle down."

Well I couldn't seem to get my little business going enough to pay my little mortgage, so I had to move back to Florida after a year, where there was way more work for me. Then, I had two housing payments every month,for a while, until I could sell the one. Every time I have followed other people's business advice instead of my own infallible gut instincts, from college in the 80's to this real estate fiasco, it has set me back years, if not decades, financially. It's time to stop listening to the advice of idiots.

-Just in time for the decline-

While I was in Tennessee, where I fit like a square peg in a round hole, I met this old man who lives down the road a ways, out in the country. He'd been kind of lost because his wife made him get rid of all his farm animals after he injured his knees, or maybe it's just degeneration from old age-I'm not quite sure.

He was lamenting his "good ole days" in his "junk shop", where he could do welding, drilling, wood working, cutting steel, bodywork on trucks, and just about anything else it takes to live the country life:

True 'Bama Fans

Log-Rolling Tool

Drill Press for drilling through steel plate

Cross-Cut saw for wood work

Heavy-duty vise

Space heater, for winter projects

Heavy-duty jack

Walter shows how to shape steel implements

Anvil for shaping horse shoes

Circular saw for wood

Old truck springs

Walter and Daughter

Anyway, it is amazing, how handy this guy was, and I felt like suburban life had let me down.

In Your Face-Book

It seems like Facebook is one giant pissing-contest and that about sums it up.

When Facebook first came out I joined immediately, always being an early adopter as far as new technology is concerned, as long as it doesn't involve any major expenditures. I thought that it might be good for my little internet business ventures that usually needed all the help they could get to generate any money or, at least, profits. Before too long, I picked up the majority of my class it seems from my high school days onto my "friends" list.

It's pretty amazing that I was found, because I usually go out of my way to stay out of touch with childhood friends, due to a very disappointing career, or lack thereof. I think I maybe signed up one "friend" from my high school town, and they must have had everybody from that time period on their list and it just got me connected. Now my high school crowd is the last group I ever expected to hear from again, that's for sure. I mean the majority of these people had had normal lives, stayed in their hometown, married and had kids, had decent jobs and careers-the whole nine yards.

Myself on the other hand, have lived a strange life, with no permanent address, poor career choices and decisions, resulting in my missing out on a lot of the good things that small town life has to offer. So my Facebooking with my entire high school is a constant reminder of this, which is no fun at all.

I was lucky to graduate from high school-barely, spending the majority of my energies in wrestling and being worn out all the time from excessive weight-loss and brutal after-school practices five months of the school year. All I managed to do was stunt my physical growth and kill my GPA.

What a stupid waste of time it was, seriously. I still have Mr. Beckman to thank, the accounting teacher who gave me the gift of a passing grade, for my graduating from high school. I know I could ace that course now, but that was then. I was awkward and shy the majority of my school years anyway. I actually hated school and was hugely relieved to be done with it.

I eventually lost touch with everybody from the class of '78 for 3 decades or so, after my parents sealed my fate by moving far away from my old neighborhood while I was away at college. We didn't have the technology of the internet to make arrangements to stay in touch at that particular period in time, so if you didn't live near everyone, you were pretty much permanently out of the picture.

Hooking back up with everybody from high school 3 decades later, even if only virtually, was the last thing I ever expected to happen. I think it would have been a really good thing if I had more to show for my time away, but it's kind of embarrassing the way it stands.

So here I am back in with all my high school people and it's getting weird now, after the initial novelty has worn off, because they all have kids and they're always putting pictures up of Suzie at the prom or whatever, but when I post pictures of my brother's kids or anything fun or interesting, they're kind of ignoring it. I don't know if they're jealous or what....it's apparently a huge pissing contest.

Anyways I was thinking of signing up for another Facebook page, under a different name, and try to start over with people from my more recent life history, while still keeping the other one active, just to not offend all my old friends by disappearing into the web-osphere. I'm currently trying to plan it properly and come up with a name.....

Sleigh Ride