Springtime!

The realization that spring has sprung thrust itself upon me as soon as I left the house this morning for my walk and run. There was a pair of mockingbirds going at it in the middle of the street. I'm talking about the horizontal mambo, making whoopee, shaggin', bumpin' uglies, whatever you want to call it. I mean they were getting' busy!

So that, and the number of bugs hatching down by the creek, tells me that spring is officially here.

The Porch Visitor

As I was leaving my house to go do something today, I opened my front door to discover an 8 or 9-inch baby snake sitting right smack dab in the middle of the porch. Not sure what kind it was. I also have no idea how it got there - maybe one of the feral cats deposited him there?

I didn't think I would have time to grab my camera and get a photo before he got away, so I don't have one to post here.

I grabbed a couple of small sticks and managed to wrangle him across the street to the little garden area in the park.

If'n the little bastard knows what's good for him, he won't come back.

Cat Haters Can Go To Hell...

My friend Carina lives in Durham, NC, and sent me this photo today. She took it somewhere in Durham. I wonder what on earth ticked these people off so much!You may have to click on the photo (which enlarges it) in order to read everything.

Me, I love cats! I think they're great.

Is It Halloween Already?

Got this in an email today. It's a long time until Halloween, but this is funny as hell:

I Like This...

I think this is pretty neat. And funny! It's a website called "Garfield Minus Garfield" and is described as follows:

"Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb."

Very weird, even disturbing. I like that. Go read a few of them at:

Garfield Minus Garfield

Words Of Wisdom (You can't drink all day...)

OK, I'm a dumbass. I forgot to take my camera with me this weekend on the Bristol trip, so there won't be any pictures of the awesome fun we had.

My buddy Foy picked me up around 7:30am on Saturday morning, and we headed off to Biscuitville to load up on ham biscuits for the others and some egg & cheese biscuits for me. Next, to the airport where we picked up his buddies George and Don, straight off the plane from Baltimore.

Headed to Boone, to the Beal family mountain home, our base camp for the next couple of days. Before getting there, we dropped the other guys off at another friend's house, so they could borrow a vehicle, which they would need because Foy & I were gonna head on over to Bristol for the Nationwide Series race and the Saturday Night Special – more on that one in a minute.

We swung by the Beal homestead, opened the place up, Foy turned on the heat and the water. I claimed a downstairs bedroom, dropped my stuff, and 30 minutes later we were Bristol-bound. It's about a 70 or 80 mile drive to the track from the house, and we got there during the Nationwide (or as I still call it, the Busch) race. It was fun, but it wasn't the real reason we went to the track today.

That would be the Saturday Night Special, a special event that would feature such NASCAR legends as Junior Johnson, Cale Yarbrough and Harry Gant. David Pearson was supposed to run, but had his son drive the car instead. The race was a total hoot, as were the crazy, drunk women from Ohio sitting in front of us. They were squatters, meaning that they didn't actually have tickets for the seats they were in, but who cared? They were funny.

After the racin' was done, we drove back to the house, where the other fellows had prepared a mighty fine meal. We had a total of 7 guys for dinner and drinkin' and basketball watching. An early night was had by most, in preparation for the next day's main event, the Sprint Cup Series race.

Up early and six of us split for the track between 9:30 and 10:00. Bristol is one of the finest tracks on the NASCAR circuit and it always puts on a great show. Unfortunately, that little shithead Kyle Busch pretty much ran away with the race. Foy and I split at lap 480 (out of 500) because neither one of us can stand to watch that fucker win a race. We hiked back to the truck about a mile away, and hung out drinking a few beers while waiting for the others to return following the end of the race.

After that, back to the house for another fine dinner, with drinkin' and laughin' to go with it. Again, it wasn't a very late night.

I was up around 4 this morning, as we were trying to leave by 5:30am. Had to get George and Don back to the Raleigh airport by 9am to catch their 9:55 flights out.

I was the youngest guy present all weekend, and here's a couple of things I learned while hanging out with the mid-50's crowd.

Words of wisdom regarding the average male's mid-50's, typically the time of onset prostate issues:

1. "Never pass a urinal."
2. "Never trust a fart."
3. "Never waste a hard-on."

I thought that was the funniest stuff I'd ever heard. I probably won't think it's so damn funny a few years from now.

And I learned the following, which will also not be attributed to anyone by name, so as to protect the guilty:

1. "Women are not real people."
2. "If they didn't have vaginas, we'd hunt them with dogs."

The most valuable piece of wisdom I took away from the weekend was this, though:

"You can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning."

Now truly, those are words to live by…

Lovin' The Greenway

I gotta say, I love the City of Raleigh's Greenway Trail System. I try to walk on it every morning, I run on it, I bike on it, I spot critters on it, I even occasionally try to single-handedly stamp out Wake County's copperhead population on it.

I've been neglecting to post a few photos I've recently taken while out and about, so today is catch-up day…

A geezer on the greenway:

A way cool house you can only see this time of year, when the trees are bare:I'd love to see this house from the other (street) side and have been meaning to go driving around in that neighborhood to find it.

Part of the boardwalk over the marshlands in East Raleigh:

First snake of the year, spotted on March 7th:I very gently shoo'ed it off the greenway path and back into the woods.

A beaver I spotted a few minutes later. You may have to click on this photo to enlarge it so you can see him:

The second snake, spotted March 9th:This one was also gently shoo'ed away.

According to this sign, located at one of the greenway's trailheads, I guess it is illegal for me to be whacking those copperheads. Both the cops I talked to about it said they'd do the same thing, but maybe they haven't seen the signs.

Of course, I ignore the bottom sign, too. Who the hell is gonna ride their bike under 10 miles-per-hour? Sure ain't gonna be me...

Say WHAT?

I can't believe I passed this test. My hearing's been shot forever. I ruined it with loud music many years ago - playing guitar in my bedroom as a teenager, listening to a way-too-loud stereo (through both loudspeakers and headphones), working onstage as a guitar tech, attending a million concerts without earplugs in my ears. Hell, I'm surprised I can hear ANYTHING these days.

I've had TINNITUS for over 20 years, so there will never again be any such thing as a quiet room. That shit rings all the time. I can hear it ringing now, even though I'm playing music over my stereo as I'm typing this.

Of course, if some woman I'm dating is trying to say something I don't like, I can always choose to ignore it and claim I didn't hear her, so maybe there's an upside to damaged hearing.

Here, you take the test and see how well you do...

Created by Train Horns

Cool Video...

Click on this: Cool Video

Hallmark Holidays and The McGangBang...

Yet another ridiculous commerce-driven, bullshit holiday. I’m not sure which one I detest more, St. Patrick's Day or Halloween. Sure, they both have somewhat more organic origins, but now they're both just an excuse to sell shit – booze and candy, respectively. I choose not to participate.

On another note, this is hilarious: The McGangBang.

And unlike the McRib, it's apparently NOT a limited-time offer. My arteries clogged just reading about this:

McGangBang (click it and behold)

Bored, With Typos

It's a cold, rainy, nasty day outside. Gonna be that way all day, I hear. Perfect for staying indoors and watching the ACC men's basketball tournament.

Watching the Carolina/Virginia Tech game, something kept bugging me every time they'd break for a commercial. I finally realized I was staring at a big fat typo in the on-screen graphic. See it?

You're right – there's supposed to be an "r" in the middle of the word Quarterfinals.

OK, rainy day, I'm bored, totally anal about typos (although I'm guilty of plenty of them myself), and the telephone is within arm's reach. So I called the Raycom Sports home office in Charlotte and tell Linda, the nice lady who answered the phone, about what I'd observed. I gave the situation 50/50 odds of being remedied. Would they care?

It took them until the end of the game, but they finally fixed it:

I wonder if some engineer somewhere was embarrassed?

Bob's Big Deck...

My poor ol' deck is just looking worn out these days and I need to get a few more years of life out of it, so I hired a feller to come by two days ago to powerwash and stain & seal it. The powerwashing alone made an amazing difference. After it had dried for 48 hours, he came back today to stain & seal it.

A work in progress:

I can already tell it's gonna look a helluva lot better…

Yay! Another Snow Day...

I don't think we got nearly enough of it, but it finally snowed again last night and this morning. The forecast originally called for us to receive 3 to 5 inches, but last night they backed it off to 2 to 4 inches.

I always like to take long walks when it snows, and today was no exception. As always, I headed down to the greenway and got a few shots along the way.

Fountain by the soccer field:

Crabtree Creek:


I got off the greenway at one point and was walking through the woods when I came across this chair. I guess someone put it there to just sit and enjoy watching the creek flow:

I sure hope that whoever sits there doesn't do any fishing in the creek. There are signs up all over that the fish are contaminated with high levels of PCB's.

Our favorite hang-out, the Ale House deck:


I wonder how many hundreds (thousands?) of beers have been consumed there by me and my friends???

My street:

View from my porch:


As expected, Foy emailed me early afternoon and wanted to know if I wanted to go with him and Terry to the Ale House deck for a few cold brews in the snow. And of course I did! Who wouldn't want to sit outside in 35-degree weather on a snow-covered restaurant deck and drink ice-cold beers? I mean, really?!?

They swung by and picked me up a little after 4:30 and down the hill we went. As always, the restaurant's management thought we were out of our damned minds.

We hung with the cold for about 90 minutes before surrendering to the warmth inside the Ale House. After a couple of rounds inside, the three of us headed to the High Park Grill, the bar & restaurant that's about 450 feet from my house, to end the evening. I walked home from there around 10pm for a late dinner.

With temperatures for the weekend ahead forecast in the 70's, I suspect we're done with snow for the year. Which I guess means it's time for me to go back to work…