Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog......

Yeah,.... I know it's been a bit since I have blogged, been a bit busy. Last weekend, I took the family to the Pierce County Fair. It's a small fair held in Graham and the main reason I went was to see my good friend Jeff Evans perform, which was the best part of the fair. Jeff puts on a really good show and he was promoting his new magic DVD. On Tuesday the 11th I went to Issaquah to help Jeff with his DVD release party. I had a good time helping out and teaching the young ones magic tricks. And It was a 4 day weekend for me, which made for a short work week. On Sunday despite the cool temperatures in the morning, I took the family and a couple friends to Wild Waves. We had the whole park to ourselves!!!! We didn't have to wait in line for anything!!! Even when the temperature warmed up a bit, it still wasn't crowded, we were there from open to close. I am a bit sore from running up the stairs to the water slides so many times without a break. After that we all headed to the Olive Garden for dinner, it was nice to spend the day with some good friends. What a great day!!!! We have really gotten our money's worth out of the season tickets. We will try to go at least once more before the Summers over.

4th of July weekend

Aahhhh, the 4th of July weekend is upon us. I'm on vacation and my wife has a 4 day weekend. On Thursday, I had to run to Tacoma to pick up my wife's nephews, Ben and Micheal. Their mother is out of town with some guy she met online and grandma didn't have the time to take them anywhere for the 4th. So we took them in, we have plenty of room. Friday we pack up and all go to Wild Waves, What a mistake that was!!!! The place was packed solid. There were some water rides that had lines an hour long just to get a tube to wait in another line to get in the water. We mostly stuck to the wave pool, still packed!! Things didn't start out very well on Saturday, I go outside to tend to the farm animals and noticed that my mail box is open....AGAIN!!! This has been going on for about a week, so we had to get a P.O. box, but still I was sick of this/these jerks!!!! I got my air tank, went to the paintball field and got it charged. Seeing that I still had 1000 paint balls, I would have some fun after the fireworks!!!!! We then headed out to Fort Lewis for their Freedom Fest, I go mainly to see my good friend Kevin Wolfe. Ive been going for the last 10 years or so and it's the same show every year,but I never tire of it. Kevin has even taught me how to make my own cardiographic effect. Why pay 175.00 for a magic effect when you can made one for less than 10.00. Mine doesn't look as good as Kevin's or Martin Lewis', but it looks O.K.

After the magic show I hung around and chatted with Kevin a bit while Darlene to the kids around and played. We then went home, I fired up the grill while Darlene took care of the animals for the evening. The plan was to grill up some ribs and have a picnic in Orting before the fireworks. Real pleasant evening and a good fireworks show, the kids had a blast!!! The show was put on by the Orting Lions, so it's not a very big show, but hey, it's close to home. We get home and get the kids to bed and everything settled down for the night. I put on my cammies, tactical vest, load my paintball rifle, grab my radio to keep in contact with my wife, grab my taser(should anything go wrong) and hide in the bushes across the street from my mailbox. Once my eyes adjusted to the night, I could see everything just fine. I didn't have to wait long before I heard movement in the bushes then saw a flashlight. I tell Darlene to call the police as I see someone come out of the bushes, cross the ditch and open my mailbox. I took my paintball rifle off "safe" and lit his ass up!!! I know I hit him because I heard the "splats"....... and the screams. The police were at my house within 5 minutes, I gave them a description....white male, white T-shirt.....covered with green paint. It took a bit to get this on paper as the deputy was laughing so hard. They didn't find him, but, we haven't found our mailbox open anymore!!!

My daughter finally got the bug outta her ass and is talking to me and coming over for visits again. She wants to earn some cash, So I pay her to help out around the farm. Her brother comes over to help out and visit me. It's good that she is some what back to normal.

"Vacation... Is All I Ever Wanted"

Well, right now, I'm in the middle of a weeks vacation. I have been at my job long enough to have earned 3 weeks paid time off, the hard part is getting the vacation request approved. You see, there is only one other person trained to work graveyard, so if one of us needs time off, the other will have to work a couple weeks straight without time off. At this point the most I can get off at one time is a week. I work Monday thru Friday, 11pm to 7am, so if I want do want something on a Saturday, I need Friday night off. It does get a little frustrating as one of my vacation requests was denied because there was no one to cover the shift, this was the night of my daughters graduation, I still went, I just couldn't hang out afterwards. I count my blessings though, I did get Fourth of July week off.
The week started great, a very dear lady friend from high school found me on Facebook. We were very close in school, we hung out at lunch, I walked her home from school, we just never crossed that boyfriend-girlfriend line. I left to serve in the Army and we exchanged letters for a while. I did tell her I had a crush on her and I lost touch with her when I deployed to Egypt for 6 months. Over the last few years,when I got access to computers, I have been trying to find her and she has been searching for me. Lifetime network had this long lost friend show that she sent a request to, no luck. We are now exchanging emails keeping each other updated and we talked for a couple hours on Sunday. She was rather surprised that I stayed in Washington, she in living in Elgin, TX. and is engaged to be remarried. It was great to reconnect with her.
We started off balls to the walls on Saturday, I got off work, saw it was a nice day and took the family to Wild Waves. I bought season passes in February for 49.99, this is half price and will pay for itself in two visits!!! I was up all night and day for this, it was worth it. I tell you, we couldn't get Andrew in the water, but once he was in, we couldn't get him out. The only water rides he could do were the wave pool, Hook's Lagoon and the Python water slide. He didn't care too much for the water slide, but he's not quite 3 yet, we'll take it slow as we don't want him to be scared of these rides.
Sunday was nice too, The Tacoma Magic Club had its monthly meeting, I really enjoy going to these meetings, even if I don't perform. This month, we had a guy out of Portland selling some stuff, wasn't too impress with what he was offering. He was selling a levitating card, I have the material for that, enough to last a lifetime. He was also selling a effect kinda similar to Rocco's Delight. Then my good friend and magic mentor, Rick Anderson gave some insight on performing Sponge Balls from Mouth. A fun and gross routine!!!
The weather was nice on Monday so we decided that just Darlene and I would go to Wild Waves and Andrew would go to daycare. The bad part of Monday was it was 9.00 admission to Wild Waves.... Son of a Bitch!!!!!!! That place was packed, we spent 20 min in line in the turn lane just to get into the parking lot!!! There is a long line of cars waiting to get in and some BITCH! drives past us all and almost hits a car in line to cut in!!!! Really!!!! Are people that F&^%% Shallow,that they can't wait a few minutes to get in!!!!! The line to get in was LOOOONNNGGGG. We had season passes so we at least got to bypass the line.The lines weren't too bad at first,but we had too leave around 3ish when the place really got crowded. Lines were too long and the wave pool was packed. There don't seem to be any special events planed for Friday, so we will try again.
Andrew is home with me all week, I have time off, I'm not gonna ship him off to daycare. I hardly see him when I'm working. I will really be working on his potty training. We have a little incentive for him. If he goes #1 in his potty chair, he gets 1 jelly bean. If he goes #2 he gets 2 jelly beans, if he does both, he gets 3. If he tells us he has to go and goes he gets a bonus jelly bean. Now, he's getting too smart, he tells me he has to pee, goes to the potty, uses it, gets a jelly bean and a bonus one. Then after we are done and get back in the living room, he will tell me he has to poop. we go to the potty chair, he uses it, gets his 2 jelly beans, then he says" I want bonus jelly bean" LOL!!!
Later today, I am taking Andrew to a park in Orting and get him worn out. This weekend is the Fourth of July, we will go to Fort Lewis for a couple hours, watch my good friend Kevin Wolfe's magic show. We will come home take care of the farm animals, cook up some ribs and picnic fixin's then head to Orting for their fireworks display. It's small compared to others, but it's not very crowded and doesn't take too long to get out and it's close to home

OWWIEE !!! OWWIEE!!!

I don't know where to start on this one, it has been a real crappy couple of months. I guess I can start with my daughter, Margaret. She turned 18 on April 2nd,at the end of March I got one of those REALLY nice cell phones, the one that opens up with a keyboard as she likes to text alot. Her and Nicholas have unlimited texting on there phones, which is a good thing as Margaret averages over 5000 texts a month. At the end of April, Margaret starts sending me texts demanding 13,000.00 for school after she graduates. I asked her if she has applied for aid or a grant and whatever they don't cover I will help her mom cover the rest. She refuses to to that and starts laying into me for not having collage money for her. I asked her if she has a job, she won't look for one. Now over the last 5 years whenever she wanted something her mother couldn't get for her, I got it, when she wanted money, I told her to come over, do some chores and earn it. She has squandered ever cent I have given her, and I called her on that. She got really mad, told me that she wasn't getting me a ticket for her graduation ceremony and told me to "F@#$ Off". I told her to apologize or the phone was getting shut off, well the phone got shut off. She wasn't happy!

Seeing that she wasn't getting me a ticket, I decided to go thru the Principal to get one and just sit in the back. I told them the problem and they had a ticket at the school for me. Margaret bought a prepaid phone and minutes(no money for school, bit money for this??). She lasted about a month on that before I got a call from Nicholas saying that Margaret wants me at her ceremony. Margaret asked if I would turn her phone back on, I told her"Not until you apologize for what you said and admit how disrespectful that was". We talked and she admitted she was wrong, so I turned her phone on. Now I don't have to hide at the ceremony.

During school, one of her classes read the book "Into the Wild" a biography of Chris McCandless. Now she wants to go backpacking across the Alaskan wilderness........SIGH.... apparently she didn't pay attention how the book ended....... he died....of .....starvation!!!!! I've been trying to talk her out of it, but it's like getting a German soldier to attend Temple during WW II.....not happening. Anyway at least we are talking.

On June 6th, I attended a reenactment of the D-Day invasion at Operation Paintball in Graham. I have been doing this for the last 4 years, but this year was a real CLUSTERF@#%. There were 3 teams, the Allies, the Axis and the French. if you know your history you can see where this is going. The French turned on the Allies, so in this game the French could attack either side. Apparently none of the young people have read a history book. One mission, I was given an assault team to take a German outpost and hold it for 15 minutes. I was given 10 men from the Allies team and 7 French. Before the assault, I explained if we encounter enemy fire, to move in 2 man teams performing a 3 to 5 second rush. That means as one man is providing cover fire, the other gets up, runs for 3 to 5 seconds, then gets down. Yeah right, of the 10 Allied men I had only 3 made it with me, we took the base, but for some reason ALL the French made it. We set up a parameter and watched for the enemy. as the 15 minutes was coming to a close I took a chance, I talked to my Allied team mates and told them to follow my lead and trust me, WE turned our weapons on the French and told them to surrender, one of the French said they were on our team and I shot him"Anyone else". They dropped their weapons and the game ended.. We waited for the guy running the game to come by so points could be assigned to the proper team, when he got to the German post that we had taken he is surprised to see one dead Frenchman and 6 Pow. Turns out,that at the last minute, the French were going to turn on US and take the base back for the Germans if we had succeeded in taking the base. I was asked " How did you know?" I was stright "A"s in history in high school and I love watching the History channel. The game broke down from there. After our Markers were Chrono'ed at 285 feet per second, someone cranked there's up to 400 fps and there was an injury, we all were rechrono'ed and the offender was kicked of the field. Then a fight broke out because when a guy got shot, was called out, had his gun up and was leaving the field, he kept getting shot. the guy running the game blew up and said the day was over and the field was closed. I was into this day for 200.00, the field fee and 2 cases of premium paint and we only played a half a day...a good share of that was waiting because of people being stupid. the owner stepped in and said "NO". Then the guy running the game quit. The offenders were kicked out and the game got going again. This time the right way.... for the most part. We got in a couple straight hours of good game play with some GREAT firefights, I did really well not getting shot. Then it was time for the "Final Battle" this is the all out "lets use up all your paint" game. The idea is to take the house in the center of the field and hold it for as long as possible. I was supposed to take it easy because of my shoulder and I did until the last game. I went Balls to the Walls!!! It was a 25 min game, my rifle ran out of air and paint at 15 minutes so I tried to finish the game with my pistol. I shed my Tac Vest and rifle and was able to move faster with just the gun belt and pistol. I managed to charge a few positions and take out several people before charging into a German "nest" and REALLY getting lit up!!!! I we counted the welts when I got home, I got hit 20 times in that charge. But hey, I was ending the day with a BANG!!!!

Me before the mayhem

Some guys setting up

Mother's Day

Well, as everyone knows,Sunday was Monther's Day. Of course, I called my Mom and spoke with her for a while, letting her know her grandchildren and daughter in law are doing fine. I haven't called her in a while so it was good to talk to her.

The Friday before, I asked my wife, Darlene what she wanted to do for Mother's Day. She wanted to go th Ocean Shores, WA. So I started things off Saturday night by making her a grilled New York steak, grilled corn on the cob and some Alaskin King crab legs. She was in heaven!!! Got everything cleaned up and packed for Sunday. We got up early and headed out, it was a 2 and a half hour drive, and a pleasent drive. I have never been there before and really enjoyed the drive..... As you can see the weather was a wee bit on the chilly side



We pulled in to a parking lot near a beach and found a souviner shop where we bought a kite for about 20.00. There as a nice wind so we each took turns flying a kite.
Then we made the mistake of renting one of these stupid contrapions, we learned that not only are these things HEAVY, we learned we are out of shape!!!!! We made it about 100 yards before we decided it wasn't fun anymore, turned around and went back!!!
For dinner we went to a pizza place called Dugans, it was a nice place but the pizza wasn't that great. Andrew doing his impression of a hampster

HOT... HOT....HOT!!!

Sometimes Things Started Rough

Had a very rough start to the weekend, Thursday night, my shoulder was killing me. I have had problems for the last year and a half with my left shoulder, I don't know exactly what I did to it. There is a constant pain and the heavy lifting at work really seems to aggravate it. I told the manager Friday morning that I would not be in that night, she saw how much pain I was in and got the shift covered. I called the doctor after work and made an appointment for 10 am, it was early so I called the Saturn dealership to see if the had an opening, I was getting a loud noise from my car's back end. Sounded like the wheel bearing, and I was right, hey, it's a 2002 Saturn Vue with 100,000 miles on it, it was due. I left the car at the dealership and they gave me a loaner car so I could make my appointment, go home and get some sleep. There's not a lot the doctor can do for me right not other than give me some powerful painkillers. I will set up a physical therapy session this week and I have an MRI set up for next week. We will just have to see how things go. I got a couple hours sleep and went to pick up my car. The bill; 963.00, OUCH!!! What the hell it's a nice car and I have to take care of it,don't I. My entire driving life I have buying piece of crap cars and driving them into the ground. Hell the last few cars I bought I got from my boss making payments to him, the car would break down and I would have to take it to the shop next door and make payments to the mechanic. Yes, they did help me but it was becoming a bad cycle, at one point I owed them about 3500.00. I was working 2 jobs, 6 days a week to pay them off. I met Darlene during this time, It's amazing we had and time to fall in love. Well I busted my ass, got them paid off before the car broke down again and worked on getting a better car. This is my baby and the only people I will let touch it is the dealership, yes it cost a little more but I don't have to worry about anything "breaking" while something else is being fixed.

On Saturday, I took the family to the Puyallup Spring Fair. Seeing that I didn't go to work Friday night, we were able to go earlier. The only problem was I had to have my arm in a sling and couldn't go on any rides or really do much other that keep Andrew on a leash. Darlene had to pack everything this year(heh, heh,evil laugh!!)

We had lunch there then we went to see my friend, Steve Hamilton A.K.A Steve the Pretty Good. He puts on a very entertaining show and the crowd really liked him, I met him about 10 years ago when he first came to a Tacoma Magic Club meeting, he has come a very long way!!!!

We checked out the booths, sites, had some treats, and saw the pig races. Then it was time for the event we came for, the Slam Fest Demolition Derby. I have never been to one of these, and it was a blast!!! These guys are nuts!!!! The loud pyro and engines were a little rough on Andrew, We had to cover his ears. Once the cars started crashing into each other, he went nuts!!!!!

Now it's Sunday morning and I got some errands to run, grocery shopping, pick up some shoes and get my registration paid for the D-Day scenario game at Operation Paintball for June 6th.

Well, Spring almost started.

I had a rough start to the beginning of the month, the 2nd was my daughter Margaret's 18th birthday. I was hoping to take her out to the Space Needle for dinner only problem was that she had to get dressed up. She doesn't like to do that, so instead of a night out I just got her a nice cell phone. When I gave her her birthday present, it was the first time I've seen her in 2 months. She stayed just long enough to get her phone and get it activated. She was supposed to come over this weekend with her brother for a visit, didn't happen. When I arrived to pick up her brother, I was hoping she'd come out and say HI, but she had already left with some friends. I guess now that she's 18 she no longer feels that she has to visit her dad. To bad child support isn't based on how often you get to see your kids, I bet their mom would make sure that I would get the time the court says I'm supposed to get!

My stepson, Jasper, is adding frosting to the drama cake. He's taking collage classes that he and his dad are splitting the cost of. Well, grades are out, his dad wants to see them, he won't show them, he won't even show us. The last time he pulled this stunt was high school when he failed several classes. We have him signed up for basic health insurance, we are paying that based on his income,17.00 a month premium and he makes a 15.00 co payment per visit and 15.00 for meds. To keep that coverage we need proof of his income, which he has yet to give us. His insurance is about to be cancelled. I have lived without health insurance,it sucks.

Things are rough at work, the business is being investigated by Liquor Control because it was reported that an under aged employee has been buying herself beer and drinking it on the property. She was written up and was supposed to be suspended for a week, the suspension never happened. This really bothers me, in December, I didn't make sure the gate was locked and although there was no proof that someone went back there on my shift and broke into one of the tow trucks, I got 3 days off. A coworker "copped" an attitude with the boss and was suspended, he later quit. These suspensions took effect immediately, hers has yet to happen, I don't think it will. The boss feels betrayed and is upset because a former employee ratted him out. I am on the fence on this, I have been there 14 years and don't always agree with the way he treats his employees, but I need this job. There is a lot of favoritism there and I feel morale is low because of it. Oh well enough bitching about that.

We had a couple of nice days last week, Saturday and Sunday. It was great, only problem was on Saturday I couldn't get any sleep due to all the motorcycles riding by. We live next to a biker tavern. Andrew got a kick watching all the motorcycles go by. I gave up on sleeping and just sat up with him and watched the show. I was too nice to stay in anyway.

Sunday, I went down to Famous Dave's, picked up a couple slabs of ribs and a chicken,came home, ordered Wrestlemania on pay-per-view and vegged. Great show!!

Easter weekend, my son, Nicholas came over and on Saturday we BBQ'ed some steaks, tasty meal!!!! Stayed up late watching Idle Hands on FEAR.NET. I love this movie!!!!

Easter Sunday we slept in, had Andrew hunt some eggs in the house as it was raining outside. I will be making a nice ham dinner this evening before I have to run Nicholas home.
A few weeks ago I decided to invest in some equipment to make busking easier.

I bought a Crate Taxi battery powered rechargeable speaker and a Sennheiser battery powered wireless headset transmitter and receiver. I am looking forward to trying this out. I think I will head out to the Seattle city center on the first warm dry weekend this summer and see how it goes.