Where I Might Have To Turn In My Balls - Part 2

Last summer we had to have our house tented for termites. During the process the fumigators had to tear down a piece of our fencing so they could get the tent on the garage. Since then there's been an opening on the side of the garage that allows a space going up to the front gate on the side of the garage. Last week M went out and bought some lumber so that I could finally close that up now that we have another dog and she likes to go chasing after our cats along that opening since that's where the cats travel through. Should be pretty easy right, it's only like a 3 foot gap. Wrong.

I tore off the old wood that was still attached to the garage so that I could start with fresh lumber that wasn't all rotted out. Easy enough, cut a 2X4 to length, level it, nail to garage. From there, I was going to put three cross members to the other side of the chanlink/wood fence that borders the neighbor's yard and then put up planking to cover the gap. At this point my neighbor here's me hammering and asks if I need some help. Sure I say, it'd be great if she could hold up the cross members so I could get those level while nailing them in.

She comes over and I proceed start putting up the cross members. After I get them up, she checks up the setup and the strength of the cross members (since they are only going to be attached at one point), looks at me and says, "Yeah, this isn't going to work. Let me tell you what we need to do." At this point she goes into great detail on we need to attach another 2X4 to her cross beams for her wood fence then secure the cross members to that with hardware. All the while I'm standing there just nodding, looking like a home improvement dumbass.

I have to say, if she hadn't offered to come over and help me out, I probably would have ended up with a rickety, Mickey Mouse fence section. Since it of course, with her input, came out golden and sturdy as hell. Though I did have to run back to Home Depot again since the planking M got from there was riddled with termites. I mean, WTF is up with that?! Just what someone wants, wood you're attaching to a structure that is termite infested. Nice quality control.

Oh, I almost forgot the part where I had to enlist the help of her partner to get one of the planks cut on an angle so that it would line up nicely at the end. Lesbians to the rescue! Again

Where I Might Have To Turn In My Balls

Here's the thing, I'm one of those guys that's not super handy. I mean, I can do basic stuff like mow the lawn, do routine maintenance around the house, etc. But I'm not one of those guys could rewire his house or build an add on to our house. Lately we've been having a lot of trouble with our back door locks and I figured WTF, I'll go buy a new lock set and try putting it in myself.

This weekend I attempted said install. Shockingly, I had actually purchased locks that looked they would be the same size as the old piece of shit ones I was trying to replace. So far so good.

The top deadbolt went in no problem. Believe me, no one is more surprised about this than me. Then came the actual door knob {tee-hee...knob} replacement. I got the old knob out no problem. Here's where it got sideways.

For the life of me, I could not get the two pieces of new door knob to match up for the life of me. I sat there struggling for probably 20-30 minutes trying to get it to go together, the last 10 minutes of that cursing up a blue streak. At that point my neighbor came over to visit the mutts since she heard them out running around. She asked me what I was doing and after explaining to her what kind of a hassle I was running into, she offered to take a look.

She spent about 45 seconds looking at it, she stopped, stood up and laughed. She points at the bolt part that gets screwed into the door, that the inside/outside knobs connect to and says, "You might want to try putting that in, you know, the way it's supposed to go."

Fuck! At least I can take comfort in the fact that my neighbor's a lesbian and she's supposed to know this stuff better than I am anyway...right?

So, That Was Not Easy

Hope that everyone had a great 4th (timely right?)! You're wondering what I did? OK, let me tell ya:

Friday the 3rd, myself and 3 friends decided to ride to the beach and back from our neighborhood. We figured it would be a cool way to spend one of our holiday days in addition to being the first test to see how we'd handle the distance that we'd face on one day of the charity ride. Cause you see, to the beach and back is about 100 miles round trip.

Actually, it went really well*. Going the 50 miles down was a breeze. We stopped, had a nice breakfast and then started making our way back. The first 30 miles back were also a breeze since it's all relatively flat. The last 25 miles were NOT a breeze. Before you start making the steady climb back into our town, there is one gargantuan, steep hill about a mile or so long that must be conquered. I swear, I thought I might have a gdamn stroke. But, I made it to the top without ever stopping or getting off the bike. Yay me!

From there, it was just the slowly building elevation all the way til we got back home. That and the motherf*@king traffic control. I swear we must have hit 95% of the lights on the way back. And I can tell you there's nothing quite as fun as having to stop at every light in 95 degree weather, sitting there baking waiting until you have to get yourself started again. It's not a lot of fun. Managed to make it the 105 miles at about 14.5 mph, so a pretty big accomplishment.

So the training continues and we're going to start ramping it up by doing 20 or so miles every morning and hopefully get a couple 30-40 mile rides in at night on top of that. At this point, about 5 weeks to go!

Oh, and if you're interested in donating to a good cause and helping a brother out, go here.

*If you don't count the fact that my junk was completely numb by the time I got back home. Gotta get that fixed before I end up a Viagra popper.

Shameless Self-Promotion

Hey everyone,

I know it's been a month since I posted and I know this is the kind of thing that any person that has ever been subjected to every Girl Scout, ridiculous trinket, candle sale, etc. that has been peddled to them at work or home hates, but I'm trying to raise some money. And believe me, it makes me uncomfortable just asking this.

I have a good friend that has a son that suffers from hemophilia B. For those who aren't familiar with what this is, it's a serious disease that prevents blood clotting. As you might imagine, this poses great challenges to those affected.

My friend Greg recently clued me into a charity bike ride that is going to benefit people like his son that suffer from this disease. It's a road race that will cover almost 700 miles in 7 days. To help the various foundations that will benefit from this ride, they are asking each participant to raise $3K. I know in these economic times, altruism is a tough to do. But if you've ever thrown a couple dollars to your local Girl Scout troop, homeless shelter or cause of choice, I ask you to do the same now, for someone you (nominally) know as well.

If you are interested, please visit here. It's a great cause and I really appreciate anyone who decides to help.

We'll be back to our regularly scheduled dick jokes soon.

My Animal Naming Genius

A couple posts ago, I described a situation about one of the cats we'd adopted disappearing. Thankfully, Balls has returned. But I mentioned in the post who I'd sometime describe how he got his name. And since Country got such a good laugh out of the name, I thought maybe you guys might enjoy the full story.

You see, when these four cats started roaming around, 2 pairs looked very similar. One pair was the same color of grey, very alike in build. The other pair also resembled each other in size and had the same type of coloring, the white and dark patches that you might see on a Holstein cow.

M had trouble telling them apart, and just took to calling them the "Grey cats" and the "Patch cats." The grey cats were both female (mother and daughter likely) and the patch cats were a male and female (brother and sister). You could tell the grey cats apart, even though they were alike in their build, one was significantly larger. So this helped me differentiate them. The patch cats it was more difficult, since they were so much alike. So I did what I thought would be perfectly normal, I just looked for the teabag.

For the life of her, M couldn't figure out how I was so unerringly able to identify which was the boy and which wasn't. Though there were other traits that allowed me to tell the difference depending on how they were standing, this was the sure-fire clincher.

One day, finally exasperated on how easily I was able to tell them apart, asks, "How in the hell are you doing that?! You always know which one is the boy cat!"

Since the cat was presently in my lap, I decided to demonstrate my amazing feat of acuity. Grabbing and lifting his tail with one hand, and pointing to his furry nether regions with the other I said, "Why honey, it's simple. Just look for the balls."

And thus, a cat's name is born. Even though he doesn't have em anymore.

These Are The People In Your Neighborhood...

As I've mentioned plenty of times, I take the mutt out to dog parks quite often to run him ragged so he basically collapses when we get home. The city just reopened the dog park that's nearest to us, so I decided to check it out the other day. It was an interesting experience.

When we first get there, I'm letting Dak just cruise around and check out the park and the other dogs. Suddenly, from across the park, this...well, fat person comes wobbling over. I say person, because even at this point I can't figure out if they were male or female they were so androgynous. On top of this, the person seemed to be vaguely (or maybe not so vaguely) retarded. The overly loud and slurred voice, the unbridled happiness, etc. Yes, all your stereotypical window-licker mentally retarded behavior in one package. That's not what was so notable. It was the fact this person had the worst.teeth.ever. The kind of bad dental work (and the accompanying breath to go with it) that literally makes you cringe. I couldn't help myself. It was kind of uplifting to see someone so excited and happy by just being around some dogs though.

After a while, I'm sitting down on one of the benches, and a lady follows over her dogs that Dak has been playing with. She grabs a seat and the usual dog park chat starts. "Hey pretty dog(s)." "How old is he?" Etc. We're talking about Dak, and how he looks like a lab, but is small for his age. Now keep in mind, I'm not a leading expert when it comes to dog breeds, but this was one of the stupider questions I've ever heard re: dogs. "Is he a Mini-Lab or something?"

Cut to me almost blowing the water I'd been drinking out of my nose. "Ummm...no. He's a mutt, probably mixed with a Spaniel or something." I guess my tone in the response was rather sarcastic since she walked away .185 seconds later with a quick, "OK, bye."

So while I've met and judged people as "Those retards at the dog park," I'm probably "That asshole at the dog park." Strangely, I'm OK with that.

Busted

I chewed tobacco for...oh I don't know, like 16 years before I quit about 6 or 7 years ago. As you can imagine, after being addicted to nicotine for that long, it took a little while to finally get off the schnide. I was pretty damn proud of doing so, and so was M.

Stupidly, I feel off the wagon a little while ago. I was feeling stressed out because of work and school...blah blah blah. The usual excuses that people use when the go back to doing something bad for them that they shouldn't. What happened was I ran into a guy in one of my classes that was dipping and just decided what the hell, I can just take a dip...no big deal. Wrong! Next thing you know I'm buying my own cans and dipping @ school and home @ night when I'm reading before bed. That is until M busted me this week.

Now it's not as if I didn't already feel bad enough about caving in to a bad habit again, but the disappointment that was on her face when she caught me was just crushing. There's nothing quite like coming to the realization that you've hurt and disappointed someone that you love very much. It's just horrible.

Of course, that didn't stop me from making a stupid comment while we were talking about it. She says, "I can't understand why you just didn't tell me about this or why you lied!"

"Well duh I didn't tell you, I knew you'd be pissed! And technically, I didn't lie...cause you never knew about it and there were no questions asked."

Your honor, I rest my case. I really know how to help myself out eh? The lesson, as always, is that I'm an idiot.

But, I'm on day 2 of being dip-free. Again.

OK...So I'm Trying

I know all of you have been waiting in breathless anticipation since Monday when I said I would post something {rolls eyes}. Here's the lowdown on way I've been away from my legions of fans for so long:

• School: This last semester kicked my ass. Between speech, marine biology and poli-sci, I was knee deep in bullshit all the time. It was gdamn ridiculous to be honest...I actually had to work for grades this time around. What a crock of shit. On a brighter note, I need to check with a counselor and see if I can transfer to big boy school.
• Work: The past two months have been filled with either: A) moving shit all over our office because we're giving up space or B) helping work on implementing major changes on how we do business. I tell you what, the fucking nerve of people expecting you to work for your paycheck is just downright fascist.
• Birthday: *Sigh* Another year older. I'm telling you, when the barber spins you around in the chair and you exclaim to yourself, "Hey! Where the fuck did all my hair go?!?" It's not a welcome revelation.
• Puppy: About a month and a half ago, we rescued a pup from the pound. I know I included a couple pics before, but I'm telling you, he's the cutest mofo to walk the Earth. I'm glad that I never decided to have kids, cause this fur-hurricane is just demanding as hell (and props to TK for giving me advice along the way). It's been a constant barrage of attention giving, razor sharp supervision, and copious amounts of turd pickup. But he's shaping up quite well and made vast improvement since we brought him home. We're considering sending him off to the puppy training gulag, but gdamn, those guys charge a fortune. Anyway, here's the promised pic. And Manny, you can eat me...my puppy FTW.

Anywho, I'll give some more details on the more amusing facets of my past semester as well as other comical shit that's happened lately very soon.

Where Elton John Tells Me, "Wow Are You Gay!"

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