April 29th 12:49PM
Weekend coming up
Another weekend is hurtling toward me, and I have only the vaguest ideas of what I want out of it. This condition usually guarantees that I won't get a damn thing done. I must spend some time assessing my needs. I must spend time alone with my thoughts. I must stop reading comic books during these times of introspective opportunity.
That's one good thing about the last 6 weeks - there was always something to do, and if it got done, I knew the time wasn't wasted. I had a sense of accomplishment, and exercise was a bonus. This weekend, there's nothing to be done that can't be done next weekend, and so I am free to procrastinate. I suck.
Swelled head
I got a couple of compliments on my blog writings this week, which made me feel surprisingly good. Usually, I get no feedback at all, so I was really pumped. Niiiice...
April 27th 7:49AM
Good talk
My wife and I had an honest and frank discussion last night. She has been wanting to procure a pony, "for Brian." I feel strongly that we have so many animals now that we struggle to care for them in the proper fashion. I also feel that since I am into every transaction we conduct for at least 50% of the commitment, everything she takes on, I take on, and I'm getting all burned out.
I carefully and rationally explained the reasons for my concerns and also conveyed several examples of how biting off more than we can chew has manifested itself in our lives.
Then I gave in. We receive a new pony this Saturday. I am a pushover.
April 26th 7:49AM
Busy, but not too busy
Work has been busy, but not hectic.
The last few days have been pregnant with bloggable events, but I noted too few of them. Among them:
- I weighed 224.5, after breakfast. Not bad, for me, for now.
- I saw my own naked ass in the mirror, and was ashamed. I have no butt.
- I sharpened some kitchen knives.
- I took it easy over the last few days, especially compared to previous weeks.
- I spent some time studying French, which I haven't done in months. It felt good.
April 24th 7:25AM
No Bizarre
I had hoped to catch the show in Modesto last night, but forces aligned to prevent it. Forces like: chores assigned to me by my wife, the exhaustion therefrom, lack of available time.
Some fan I am. Next time I'll go, for sure.
Earth Raper
With my steely-hard shaft, I stab at her
In, in, in, again and again
She resists my penetration
But she cannot resist forever
The Bitch
In other news, digging postholes in Calaveras County Claydirt is really difficult.
April 21st 12:49PM
e-Cards is up
I managed to fix my e-Cards shortly after the post below, but it took me this long to blog it. I'm busy.
Life is good here in the boonies of Valley Springs. I have stuff to do every single night of the week, and I still don't get it all done. I'm donating blood to the mosquitoes by the pint. It doesn't look like we're going to see John Bizarre on Saturday, but we still might.
April 19th 12:49PM
e-Cards is down
My e-Cards construct is down. The server administrator thought that the mailing method we used was too insecure, so he booty-humped it without saying anything. Thanks, G-Money.
It still creates the cards, it just doesn't e-mail them. So, a user could use them to output the link to the card, and e-mail it themselves. I hope to address it soon.
John Bizarre at the Fat Cat in Modesto
John Bizarre will appear at the Fat Cat in Modesto this month, on 4/22 & 4/23. Little Jimmy Turner - who I have met - will appear with him, the lucky fuckbag. I burn with envy. I hope to go. Unfortunately, I have now moved more than 50 miles away, instead of a convenient 15. Shitfuck.
April 18th 12:49PM
The weekend past
This past weekend was busy, fun, frustrating and too short.
- We hastily built a tortoise enclosure.
- We confirmed that our SBC phone connection only supports 24kb/second connections, and is very unreliable.
- We brought home a pile of things from our Manteca storage unit, which I tirelessly unloaded.
- I was out-chugged by a respected female Realtor. I will be avenged!
- We struggled mightily to find the landfill in our new county. We were ultimately successful.
- I typed a nifty blog entry about much of the above, and became too frustrated by our shit connection at the end of a very long day to upload it.
April 15th 12:49PM
The pain is gone
My wife advises me that the deal for selling our old place - and therefore the deal for buying the new place - have come together at long last.
Shaelon, our Realtor, has been tireless in the pursuit of our interests, and has maintained good communication throughout. I plan to highly recommend her to anyone who will listen. Through all of the difficulties, she has made us very glad she's on our side.
April 14th 7:49AM
Busy, but not bad
Last night was as busy as the rest, but was mellower anyway. I made dinner, and bathed my son for the first time. Hey, don't look at me like that, I've changed a shitload of diapers in my time, I've just let my wife do the scrubbin', up til now. The boy didn't drown, but I took on quite a bit of moisture myself. I didn't do too bad.
April 13th 7:49AM
It better get better
Ach, life after the move is supposed to get better - less stress, less confusion, less busy. So far, that hasn't happened, but I expect it will. It had better. I'm still trying to coordinate satellite TV, propane delivery, keeping certain animals fed and away from certain other animals.
I'm tellin' ya, the post-move Bickle household is not the picnic I had envisioned. I give it another week. If things are not cooling down at that point, I'll just toss myself off my deck, and try to land on my head.
The right move
I hear tell that my brother has gone ahead and sold his house, maybe even eking out a profit to walk away with. I think it's the best move for him; I hope it works out okay.
April 11th 7:49AM
Written yesterday:
It's 3:55pm, and I'm chilling on my deck, looking at my reflection in a bottle of Heineken. It's been one Hell of an extended weekend.
All my crap is moved, and although it was no picnic getting here, the worst is over. Our house is in a livable state, and my aches and pains are of a moderate variety.
Thursday got off to a slow start, with our conveyance vehicles arriving early afternoon. Kevin, Dorothy, James and Rebecca showed up the night before to help, and are appreciated. Ken and Judie also were a big help, not the least of which was the covered (but not watertight, we found out) trailers they brought.
We loaded up one trailer, and got stuff queued up for the other. Friday morning, the first Big Push. Two bloated, creaking loads of our shit trundled up the hillside, eventually arriving and were quickly disgorged. I had the unfortunate opportunity to show my temper with several of my helpful but careless in-laws, who occasionally dropped and physically disrespected with my belongings. Unfortunate, but true.
The second Big Push saw a gangly gaggle of most of my remaining possessions trundled up yet again, and its uncoordinated purging onto my new digs.
Saturday we took a slapdash-yet-sincere whack at cleaning up the former residence. We watered the yard, and locked up the doors. It's only a little odd, leaving behind the house in which I grew up and spent most of my life. I am much less melancholy and emotional about it than I thought I would be. I have a lot of good memories from that house, but plenty of bad ones, too. Fuck it.
My brother seems to be taking it harder than me, although he's been holding his cards close to his vest of late. He takes this stuff seriously in a way that I don't. I don't envy him the sense of loss he feels now, nor the one he's got coming. I suspect he will lose his own home soon; it's just a matter of how & when. He worries about losing his own house for reasons more than simple shelter and comfort, or at least he used to. It's a close tie to where we both grew up, because it's just across the street. Also, he's lost two support sources this week - me, now that I have moved 50 miles away, and my Uncle, who doesn't know how to help him anymore. Ech, it's bleak, when I think about it.
Anyhoo.
Saturday, we finished ditching the old place, and I don't know if or why I'd ever go back there.
Sunday was planned to be a relaxed and easy stab at getting the house into a holding pattern, allowing us to return to work. Only the afternoon lived up to that hype, but it hasn't been too bad. I began arranging my "office" and getting the computer up & running. My favorite part of the day was dragging a gallon of Round-Up into the back lot and conducting ruthless herbal genocide. Once I got a decent sprayer on the case, I was sprinting spritely from dandelion to thistle, gaily meting out death like a particularly perverse Horseman of the Apocalypse. I mimicked several aggressive motion picture characters while I grinningly snuffed out prickly lives, including:
The airborne gunner from Full Metal Jacket: "Get some! Get some!"
Travis Bickle, in Taxi Driver: "You tawking ta me? You tawkin' ta me?"
I tossed in a few of my own clever death cries:
"Suck it!"
"Eat foaming chemical death!"
I must have covered hundreds of square yards, splattering time-released sickness onto the unsuspecting broad leaves of unrepentant sticker-bushes and foreboding thistles, their wide offshoots leaning into the open hoping for moisture and sunlight, and receiving this day only withering pain and pestilence.
Oh, it must be illegal, the joy I took in inflicting mass herbicide these illicit plants. It was honestly the high point of my weekend. I squeezed the cheap plastic trigger of my spray bottle with the same sadistic glee that John Lee Malvo and Hitler must have felt.
Another work week approaches, and the big holdups I feared were handled to a satisfactory degree. The two days off we both took were necessary but well-used. The place looks like Hell, but is in fighting form, functioning and ready to face the week and all it contains. We pulled it off, and I am looking forward to making the most of this place.
The vegetation - mostly weeds in many places since the lot was fairly neglected for the months it was on the market - needs to be brought under control, and I scarcely have the knowledge for that gig. I hope to bolster my landscaping skills and knowledge.
The deck desperately needs sealing and protecting against the elements.
The walls need painting.
Oh, and the dialup Internet is pitifully slow, at 21K. Unfortunate, but I can live with it for now.
And that's the worst of it. It's all totally doable. This place is a frigging PEACH.
The view off the back deck is beautiful and inspiring, especially compared to the matrix of garage doors and anthem of mariachi and rap music that my recently former residence is becoming. This was the right move to make, and the right time to make it. It was all my wife's idea, and she was right on the money.
April 6th 7:49AM
We did our part
Yesterday was a grueling mess, but finally came out sort of all right. We were in fear of not being able to sign paperwork to buy one house and sell another in a timely fashion, but it came together that we were able to sit down at 7pm and crank out all the necessary documentation. Now the only thing to worry about is whether the buyers, who seem to have been a little sluggish in coming across with their end of the program, sign off on what needs signing off. On. Or something.
Right down to the wire, we wait to see if it's going to come together on schedule, or not. I hate suspense.
I can't explain it
I don't know if it's the stress of the move, or the natural weakening of my naturally pathetic discipline, or what, but my newfound austerity in my diet has crumbled of late. Last night, it was the remainder of a bag of stale Mother's Circus Animal cookies. For the past week, it has been one thing or another, I have not been as choosy in my digestibles as I had been before. It hasn't exactly been a Roman orgy of food, but I've been slippin', to be sure.
Not long ago, I logged a loss of about 10 pounds, down to 225.5, but with my watery resolve and poorer eating habits, I stepped on the scale this morning, unflinchingly prepared to take in the bad news that pounds were creeping back on. I bravely mounted the contraption that is barely broad enough to accommodate my feet, and read:
...223...
Hunh.
I stepped up again, just to be sure - make sure I wasn't leaning a couple pounds o' flab on the bathroom sink, or something. 223 again. That's ... less than before ...
All I can think of is that I lost some extra pounds in the past 10 days, and have since regained only a very few, arriving at a net loss overall.
Who cares? It's still a lot less than 235! Woohoo!
April 5th 4:36PM
Working on the Night Moves
I'm working a later shift tonight.
With less than a week to go, it's crunch time. We're finding it difficult to get all our ducks lined up in a row, and are working furiously to get everybody doing the things we need done. This is made more difficult in that we are both working full-time during the logistical juggling that must be done. "This needs to be done today, so something else can happen tomorrow." Bleah. We are fortunate in that we have some conscientious people working on our behalf.
Our Thursday/Friday target move date is in jeopardy, and my wife is starting to burn oil. As of now, things may take a big step forward tonight. We'll just have to see how it goes.
The new digs
Here's a small gallery of photos of the new place. Hopefully, this will be my habitat by this weekend.
April 4th 7:49AM
Changes abound
This week is really a time of change -
I am moving to a new home this week, when a few short months ago I had no inkling that I would ever leave the home I'm in.
My son was gnawing on me as he is known to do, and jabbed me with his first tooth (on the bottom, to the right I believe), the little nibbler!
My coworker Robin left last Friday, and will be moving on to bigger and better things. Also, the company I work for is hiring a few new people for services we've never offered before.
Lots going on.