9-04 10-04 11-04 12-04 1-05 2-05 3-05 4-05 5-05 6-05 7-05 8-05 9-05 10-05 11-05 12-05 1-06 2-06 3-06
4-06 5-06 6-06 7-06 8-06 9-06 10-06 11-06 12-06 1-07 2/07 3-07 4-07 5-07 6-07 7-07 8-07 9-07 10-07 11-07 12-07 1-08 2-08 3-08 4-08 5-08 6-08 7-08 8-08 9-08 10-08 11-08 12-08 1-09 2-09 3-09 4-09 5-09 6-09 7-09 8-09 9-09 10-09 11-09 12-09 1-10 2-10 3-10 4-10 5-10 6-10 7-10 8-10 9-10 10-10 11-10 12-10 1-11 2-11 3-11 4-11 5-11 6-11 7-11 8-11 9-11 10-11 11-11 12-11 1-12 2-12 3-12 4-12 5-12 6-12 7-12 8-12 9-12 10-12 11-12 12-12 1-13 2-13 3-13 4-13 5-13 6-13 7-13 8-13 9-13 10-13 11-13 12-13 1-14 2-14 3-14 4-14 5-14 6-14 7-14 8-14 9-14 10-14 11-14 12-14 1-15 2-15


"Is that your Rolling rock on the bar?" -Me to Tommy at the house
"Yeah, I traded three boxes of my crap for a case of beer!" -Tommy

Friday, 3-27-15: Almost time for karaoke!
Calm down ya Giblet-heads, all two of youz. I ain't gonna go sing karaoke. F that! The last time I sang karaoke I think the bar emptied out. I suck at singing, but hot beautiful future wife is down there now kicking ass and taking names. She had her first gig down in Ellsworth at a bar called Tags last night. She didn't think I would be able to go since I worked til close to 2000, but after Katherine got home from work a tad after 2100 I headed down. Her gig was from 2000-midnight so she left early to get set up, and I rolled in just around 2200. The bar down there is pretty big with lots of pool tables, and I would call it a huge success for her first night there. There was a good crowd. The owner even gave her extra money at the end. Oh Jesus, hell ya!

Tonight Kat is down at Jester's, the usual Friday routine. Over the past few weeks I've found it very beneficial to go with her to Jesters to help her set up and then to come over to the bootleg office and gym for a couple hours to get some exercise, wash up, pay a couple bills, throw a bootleg Crap blog online, and then head back down to meet her there and to stay until close. Last week I did stay with her for the entire show, about 5.5 hours including setup and breakdown of gear, but normally I like to leave and come back. I don't hate being at Jester's, but I enjoy it more when I'm not there from start to finish every Friday.

Tommy made it to AZ several days ago. he stopped off in Chicago to visit his family for a while, and so far I think he's having fun out there. Now who will body slam me at Jester's when Tom Sue decides to sing Hulk Hogan's Real American theme song late-night?


^Awesome! He didn't really body slam my ass; thankfully he set me down somewhat gently. We both hulked up and pretended to be wrestlers during most of this show. My hoof hit the ceiling tile, but thankfully no damage was done. Major props to one of the patrons who snapped this photo with his cellphone.

I have my JH work secedule for next week: 53.75 hours. I worked about 51.5 hours this week. What a bunch of crap! The next paycheck will be pretty fat so I guess I won't complain too much. I worked all 7 days last week (Sat-fri work week at JH), and I work all 7 days next week. It's looking more and more like Easter Sunday April 5th will be my only day off until the tax filing deadline.

I should hit the road now. It's 2230, and I want to get back to Jester's so I can see my sexy and amazing soon-to-be wife. 22 days until the wedding. Oh Jesus, hell ya! I wish the wedding was tomorrow.

Wednesday, 3-25-15: Three weeks.
I'm writing this bootleg update from work as an email draft, and I will post it on my crappy site tomorrow. So you Giblets, all two of youz, will have to wait an extra day to read the postings of a guy whose fake Internet name was once Rambo. Actually, maybe it still is because just a couple hours ago a Mr. John Rambo wrote a glowing review for one Mad Kat DJ... hehehe.

Kat is a fantastic DJ. Obviously my opinion is quite biased since I also happen to be in love with her. We got her site going, and things are looking up. She just picked up a Thursday night karaoke gig down in Ellsworth, and she booked a wedding in Nobleboro for July 25th this year. AWESOME. The wedding gigs are great because they pay the most $$$$$, but every bit helps and she does birthdays, company parties, and everything you can think of that might benefit from the services of a badass DJ who can bring an amazing light show along with rippin' tunes.

www.madkatdjservices.com. If you don't hire Kat to be your DJ then I hate you. I probably hate you anyway, but I'll hate you just a little bit more.

I was supposed to have today off from JH, but Crystal apparently quit yesterday so the boss sent me a txt around 2030 last night and asked if I would be willing to work here at the Brewer kiosk. I think when you quit you lose your bonus so that is an epic fail for her, but hey that ain't my problem so hell yeah to overtime pay for me. The hours here are 1000-1900, but I couldn't come in until 1300 because I had some things to do this AM. We rounded up Kat's two boys and we hit up Henry's for measurements for our suits. The wedding is only 24 days away now so we can't be slackers about anything. Lots needs to be done, and thanks to Kat being awesome at life lots has been done already.

I just booked a place for us to stay on our wedding night. We contemplated just going home that night, but screw that we deserve a little more privacy with a more intimate backdrop. I told Kat it was going to be a surprise, but I'm excited so maybe I will tell her. I'll keep it a secret for now.

I really would have loved to stay home today, maybe use the gym and get some rental property billing statements (and rent increase notices!) ready, but overtime pay is pretty good so I'll take it. Earning an extra $70-80 after income taxes works for me! At some point there needs to be a line drawn between work and life, but right now I'm willing to spend these next three weeks more on the "work" side of the line so we can bank extra money for the wedding, for bills, etc. This winter was VERY expensive, more-so than I expected, and that is a bunch of crap. Once tax season ends I will have more free time; hopefully I will spend the majority of it on the "life" side of the imaginary work-life line for most of the spring, summer, and fall.

I've only had one real customer today, and the rest of the time I've been taking care of other things, doing some research, etc. Today I learned exactly now nonstatuatory employee stock options are treated for tax purposes with bought and sold. A code V goes on the w2, the value of the stock counts as income, and then when it is sold you gotta do some extra math to figure out the correct basis that ends up getting reported on the 1099B. If you screw it up then you pay double taxes on part of that money. Paying double taxes = what a bunch of crap!

My own taxes are filed; I finished those on Monday. I owe in the neighborhood of a shit and a load. Uncle Sam wants $3046, and Maine wants $597 from my ass this time around. I don't even have the money to pay it this year so I guess I will put myself on some kind of a payment plan. What a bunch of crap! Oh well, their interest rate isn't that bad. I guess by August I should be able to pay it all off. I hope!

Gotta love the two certainties in life: death and taxes. Fortunately, both Kat and I have many Goonie adventures to look forward to so we can continue along the road of life using one of our favorite expressions.

Goonies never say die!

Wednesday, 3-18-15: Winter remains. We should move.
I just finished lifting weights here in my bootleg gym, and then I hopped onto the elliptical for 10 minutes. The fact that I still have to use the elliptical this late into March = what a bunch of crap! Last Wednesday was 51 degrees, but this Wednesday is about 20 degrees with a wind advisory posted. Gods damn it! We got another half-foot of snow on Sunday and a bit more yesterday. I'd normally be jogging outside on a regular basis this time of year, but not this one. Winter 2014/2015 is totally ridiculous. There is snow and ice everywhere. What a bunch of crap! At least both Kat and I got to play hooky from work Sunday thanks to the snow. A little bite out of the paychecks as a result of losing those 5 hours each, but a nice day of hanging out and watching movies made it worthwhile.

For the first time in my life I am seriously considering leaving this state. This winter did me in. Plus it really affects Kat. Her lupus and all this cold = epic bodily fail. I don't know how she does it; I would have given up years ago if I were in her shoes. She wins at life, that's for sure.

^WINNER AT LIFE. (She agreed to marry my pathetic ass. OMG!)

There have been a few times this winter that I've thought hard about an exit strategy. Maine is a useless piece of shit from about December-Feb (this year Nov-March.) What's the point of living in a place that totally 100% sucks 25% of the time? Summers here are great. I don't mind spring because I have summer to look forward to, and I like the fall because I can go hunting.

I was driving down Broadway earlier on my way to Bangor High to get Katherine, and I thought to myself as I navigated around 100 potholes "This is the worst fucking road I've ever driven on in my life." It's true, too. There have been worse roads in terms of overall condition, but Broadway is a MAJOR TRAVEL ARTERY IN A CITY OF 30,000. There is no excuse for Broadway to be as fucked as it is. It's not just the potholes either. Broadway fucking sucks year-round. The traffic lights are retarded, and it's always jammed right up with simps both inbound and outbound. Plus a school and a church are right in the way near downtown Broadway. What a bunch of crap!

The roads around here are mostly fucked; the northeast needs an overhaul. All the ancient horse-buggy roads became major travel arteries that have needed serious upgrading for decades. There really should be two travel lanes on ever major road around here (Broadway, State, Stillwater, etc.) but there can't be beause of all the houses jammed up in the way. We really need to bulldoze a bunch of places to make things work better, but I don't see that happening. Ever. Broadway does have two inbound and outbound lanes for about 1/2 of a mile. HAHAHAHA. What a joke that is. Wilson St. here in Brewer is okay, but Bangor can kiss my hairy ass. Actually, half of Brewer can kiss my ass, too. Both North and South Main St, Rt. 9, should have two inbound and outbound lanes as well. Gods damn it!

^Broadway and State St. in Bangor. Two shitty, obsolete roads that we are stuck with as major travel arteries. A fucking church parking lot is literally part of Broadway. WTF, over?! What a bunch of crap! (That building in the lower left with the reddish roof used to be Gavin's apartment building. Hahaha.)

We're not moving out of this state anytme soon, but another winter like this one will break me for good. I was thinking of possible exit strategies as I used the elliptical not long ago. Either I haul on every bootleg apartment building that I own or I hire a management company to oversee them all. If we do move where do we go? That's a hard question that Kat and I haven't considered too seriously yet, but within a couple years I expect we will get more serious about it. Leaving for just the winter would be awesome, but then how can we afford the house up here and a place in a warmer climate? Only time will tell.

Four weeks until the end of tax filing season, and 31 days until Kat and I get married. I should finish up my vows. Vows = the nice things you say before you say "I do." I guess most people already know that, but to a marriage-novice like me then everything regarding weddings represents a learning curve. Sometimes I think to myself "Wow, I can't believe I'm actually getting married." I'm not nervous at all about it. It still 100% feels like a great decision, and thankfully no Giblet-Heads have recently questioned the marriage. In the beginning when Kat and I first got engaged some people (cough:Mom:cough) were shocked, but now we have received support. Even Holly didn't want my own niece, Nadia, to be our flower girl at first. OMG!

I don't blame any nay-sayers in the beginning because Kat and I had only been dating for three months before I asked her to marry me. That's not very long, but fuck it Mom can't talk since she eloped at age 18 with Pop and tied the knot back in Nov. 1974. They just passed their 40th anniversary a few months ago. 40! Amazing. Kat and I will be pusing 80 by the time we hit our 40th anniversary...

I should do other things now. In conclusion, I'm getting sick of Maine. I'm not ready to haul on this state, my state of legal residence for over 33 years, just yet. However, I have been giving the notion more serious consideration lately.

Goonies never say die!

Friday, 3-13-15: Friday night in the office.
I'm about to spread out of here and head down to Jester's shortly. I kinda like coming over to my bootleg office after I help my sexy soon-to-be wife set up her speakers on Friday nights. I left Jester's about 1.5 hours ago, and I came right over here to get my swell on in the gym. So far this month I've been much better at getting exercise than I was last month. In fact, I've already eclipsed what I did for the entire month of February so far this month, and this month is not even half over. Nice!

On Wednesday we got all the way up to 51 degrees outside. I went for a 2.33-mile slow jog (20:17) for the first time since December 27th last year, and I shovelled some snow around the house. We had some great melting, but there are still mountains of snow everywhere and more is coming this weekend. Winter Storm Watch posted for tomorrow night through most of Sunday, 6-10" possible. What a bunch of crap!

Coming over to the office for a couple hours, give or take, after I help Kat set up at Jester's lets me get some things done. If I get it done now then I spend less time at the bar spending our precious... precious money on beer. That also gives me more time to spend with my Sweet Pea during the day since I'm not over here doing my work. I like Jester's, but I like it a lot more when I'm not there for five hours. A couple or three hours there a week is more than enough for me.

We wree awoken from a slumber last night at 2345 when one of the Giblet-Head tenants called in a dither. She was bawling like a little sissy-mary baby. "Waaaaaaa the cops are here and I think we're getting arrested and the neighbors are watching out their window and we weren't even being that loud waaaaaaaaaa sob sob waaaaaaaaaaa now they're searching my friend's car because they said it smells like pot and they found drug paraphanelia. Waaaaaaa."

AAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! OMG WTF, OVER? HEY NINCOMPOOP, DON'T YOU THINK YOU SHOULD MAYBE STFU AT NIGHT SO THE NEIGHBORS CAN SLEEP AND MAYBE YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE YOUR BURNOUT FRIENDS SMOKING DOOBS IN THE CAR WHEN THE COPS SURROUND THE PLACE?! EPIC FAIL AND WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAP ALL ROLLED UP INTO ONE.

The situation at that building is totally ridiculous. The downstairs neighbors have called the cops on the upstairs neighbors about half a dozen times THIS YEAR. OMG. Sometimes there is no doubt that the upstairs neighbors are too loud, but the downstairs tenants are totally ridiculous about it. I called them out on thier bullshit earlier, too. I told them I understand they want the upstairs neighbors to be quiet at night, but they have two dogs and the dogs bark a lot. Shit, when I go to collect the rent one of the dogs acts like I'm about to rob the apartment and kick the shit out of the down-syndrone kid of theirs. That's pretty fucked up considering most dogs think I'm cool like a boss.

So all of the tenants in that building are Giblets, but thankfully the college Giblets are leaving after this semester ends. I just gotta limp along with them for another two months, if that is possible. I should purge that entire building and get tenants who do not suck. Gods damn it!

The JH job has been fairly boring over the past couple days. I've had one customer in the past 13 hours of work. Fail! Sometimes I have a lot, sometimes not so much. I did call the IRS practitioner hotline last night and stay on hold for two hours before I gave up and went home. TWO HOURS! The IRS is pathetic, really. They totally suck, and they make me lose a little faith in the USA. Sometimes if you try to call the IRS it just says "We're too busy call back later." Even the practitioner hotline, the phone number that us tax preparers are allowed to use, sucks money balls. I feel badly because one of my clients is owed a $9200 refund that she can't get because the IRS sucks. We need to call them to give them her identity PIN number, but we can't get through to them at all. What a bunch of crap!

I guess I should get out of here. I wanna go hang out at Jester's with my sexy future wife for a while and maybe have a couple beers. 36 days until the wedding. Goonies never say die!

Wednesday, 3-11-15: Heater is off, apartments on Craigslist.
It's not cold in my bootleg office this morning. I had my little heater on for about 30 minutes, but it's comfy in here now so I just turned it off. It's sunny and about 40 degrees outside, and it's shaping up to be the warmest day that we've had since perhaps last year. Several times this winter my office has been in the 30s so walking in and seeing it in the 50s was awesome. Winter is finally starting to loosen its grip. We still have mountains of snow everywhere, though. What a bunch of crap!

Today is my only day off from the JH tax job all week. I do only work 3.25 hours tomorrow, though. However, my week total will still be around 44-45 hours worked. That's a few hours of overtime pay so I'm not gonna complain. The extra money will definitely come in handy so I can pay heat, plowing, property taxes, etc.

Kat is at the eye doctor for an appointment, and I just finished paying a stack of bills. Bye bye $1260 for February plowing, bye bye $3263 for February heat from the business checking account. (plus another $265 gas bill for the house that I paid from the personal account.) It's the most I've ever had to pay for one month of plowing or gas bills, ever. What a bunch of crap! I should raise rents. In fact, I've spent some of my free time at work checking out what the competition has to offer on Craigslist. It's important to know what the market will bear for prices before I just go arbitrarily hiking rents.

In general I've found the current market has to offer average two-bedroom apartments in the $800 price range and three-bedroom apartments in the $900 price range. I rank different listings based upon location, appearance (using photos available), and amenities. I look for units that appear to be most comparable to my own; a 5-year old 3br condo for $1200 isn't going to compare to a basic apartment in an older building. A 1br loft for $600 can't compare to my offerings since I don't even own any 1br apartments. I do look at almost all the listings just to see what is out there, but my main focus is on the 2-3br apartment rentals right now.

Some of the apartments out there are totally ghetto, and I would never want to live in them. Just the photos alone give away the epic fails, and the ones that post their location can also indicate an epic fail. Apartment on 5th street in Bangor, nope. In addition, some of the photos just make me shake my head and wonder wtf. Look at this photo of a supposed 2br:

All I wanna know is why? Of all the different angles you could possible choose why would you pick that one to use in your advertisement? What the hell am I looking at?! Is that supposed to be the "dining room" next to the fridge? What can you possibly use that space for? Thee is no room for a table there. It's great they have a fridge and at least one cupboard, but that photo makes the entire apartment look like a broom closet and not a 2br. What a bunch of crap!

I don't understand that photo above. What room is this? Is it a dining room, a living room, or a bedroom? Nice to see a window and a tiny closet. I guess? The floor would be awesome if not for the GIANT BLACK MARKS right in the forefront. They stick out like a sore thumb. What a bunch of crap! Plus everything is painted white, even the trim. The photographer definitely should have tried a few different angles. I guess from the photo this room is dinky, and that's not the perception you want to leave with a prospective tenant, at least not with anyone who might be decent. Epic fail!

I haven't decided what apartments, if any, will see a rent hike this spring. I tentatively have a few in mind, but I won't make a final decision just yet. My 3br apts here rent for $1000 (with cable TV and high speed Internet included!), $870, $870, and $800. I'm definitely below market average for all four of them, but not too badly. The $1000 apt has only one occupant plus I use the Internet here in my bootleg office. One of the $870 apts was $890, but I dropped it $20 since there are only two people living in it. I do save money on the water/sewer bill with fewer occupants per apartment. Not to mention wear and tear and other intangibles. The other $870 apt is guys who have been with me for years, and the $800 is a single tenant who has been living here since BEFORE I BOUGHT THE BUILDING OVER 10 YEARS AGO. OMG! I'm $100 below market for her apartment, but she always pays rent on time, she keeps to herself, she never causes problems, and most importantly, her apartment needs some upgrades and work. Her carpet is probably 30 years old! Hahahaha! I did replace her kitchen a couple years ago, and then I raised her rent from $760 to $800.

Oh wow, I just looked back at my 2005 Bootleg Properties spreadsheet. When I first bought this place the rents were $675, $650, and $645 (I lived in one of the four 3br apts here.) The lady who pays $800 a month now paid $645 ten years ago. The address was totally different, and the entire property needed work. Since then I've done a lot of repairs and improvements to the place, but it's impossible to do a total overhaul of one apartment when people still live in it so hers will get done when she eventually moves. Hopefully she stays until she has to go to a nursing home! I think $800 a month is a little too low so I probably will raise her rent up to $830, maybe $840. I want to be fair with rent prices, but at the same time I can't be Santa Claus.

Five weeks left of tax season. It's gotten a little busier for me this week as compared to the last couple weeks at JH. I really wish I could just haul on the next month, push the FF button and skip it. I don't hate working at JH, but I just want it to be spring and I want to get to the wedding and the honeymoon. I want to take off to the tropics with my sweet pea, and I don't want to look at snow and ice anymore. I don't even know if I ever wrote about our honeymoon yet? I should do that next time, but for now I gotta spread out because I have a few other things to do before Kat calls me. We're gonna move a few more things into the house today. Tommy left last Friday, and since then we (mostly Kat) have been working at making the house our actual home. When Tommy lived with us it didn't feel like home all the way because he hogged up the downstairs, but now we can finally make it our own.

I'm out of here. Drop and give me 25! Oh wait, I haven't done a pushup in a couple months. What a bunch of crap!

Friday, 3-06-15: Tommy is heading west.
It's 2215, and I am in my bootleg office tonight. I helped Kat set up for her usual Friday night karaoke show at Jester's across the street just about an hour ago. Since then I walked over to my bootleg office so I could spread some rock salt in the common areas and collect rent from one of the apartments here. The first Friday of the month is usually a big rent collection day, and today was no exception. I gots $5775 ready to drop off at the bank tomorrow AM. However, my plowing and heating bills ALONE take up most of that number. What a bunch of crap! I make zero profit in March, and most years March ends up in the red for my business. March sucks extra because property taxes are due, quarterly water/sewer bills are due, plus the heating and plowing bills from Feb. are due. The onyl good thing about March is it is the end of winter. The past couple years I haven't even paid those property tax bills until May. What a bunch of crap!

Hopefully we get little to no more snow this winter. I took some pictures last week at the house of the epic snows that we received in late January and Feb:

^Our backyard and porch by the garage. BURIED.

^Our back deck. BURIED.

^Our driveway. BURIED.

Our driveway sucks right now because of all the snow. No snowblower and no plowing = lots of shovelling. What a bunch of crap!

Oh cool, Don Henley Dirty Laundry. Don Henley is awesome and if you disagree then I hate you. I probably hate you anyway, but I'll hate you a little more.

Tommy left today. We said our goodbyes this morning just before Kat and I had to go to an appointment, and when we got back he had put this town in his rear-view. He took what he could fit into his Chevy sedan, he mailed some of his stuff out to Doug's place in AZ, and the rest is boxed up here in the gym area. He said he'll send me money at some point and I can send some or all of the boxes out to him. He's heading to Chicago to visit his family and from there he heads down to AZ.

It won't be the same here without Tommy around. There's a damn good chance he never returns to this snow-covered state. Ever. If I were him I wouldn't come back, at least not to live here. He has no family here and only bad memories from a Giblet-Head ex girlfriend. In a perfect scenario he would have gotten an apartment locally and lived happily ever after, but the world doesn't offer perfect scenarios that often. He did stay about 10 weeks longer than we expected, but he had nowhere else to go so Kat and I had to help.

So now that Tommy is officially moved out of the house we have the downstairs for Katherine to use as her bedroom and hangout space. There are two mostly finished-off rooms down there including a bedroom with good closet space and a weird office-hybrid-room that she can use for misc. purposes. The ceiling is low down there, perhaps under 7 feet, but it's not horrible because it is finished off. A tall person surely would hate it, but we can make it work with. I do wish Tommy had cleaned it a little better before he left, but I'm just glad he is heading out for a new life.

I helped Kat and Katherine clean some down in Tommy's old room before Mom and Pop came over to the house to visit and to have me work on their taxes. We had a nice lunch thanks to Kat and Katherine, and it was surreal having my parents over for lunch. I'm 39 years old and I've seriously never had my parents over to my place for a meal. Ever. What a bunch of crap! In the past when they've come up to visit we've gone out to eat at the casino reataurant or to some other local place. I've gone down to their place too many times to count for a nice lunch or supper.

Mom and Pop are fucked on their taxes. They owe the IRS and the state just like I owe. What a bunch of crap! I still don't know how much I owe because I need one final number or two from the settlement statement on my house. It's probably in this bootleg office somewhere. Maybe? I need to spend some time cleaning this shithole, but I probably won't get to it until May at the soonest. I took a picture of some of the crap that I have piled up in various corners in here:

The deer was made by hand with love from Katherine as my Christmas gift, and I cherish it. Eventually I will hang it up on the wall, but I like where it is right now because I can look at it and think of my family. Those two water bottles on the window sill have started to freeze a few times this winter. What a bunch of crap! When my office is subfreezing that is an epic fail. I have a thermometer in here that has read as low as 33, but on the windowsill it gets even colder. Fuck this state in the winter.

Simple Minds, Sanctify Yourself. Simple Minds are awesome and if you disagree then I hate you. I probably hate you anyway, but I'll hate you a little more.

I will owe $3500-$4000 on my taxes state and federal combined. Put my arse on a payment plan please! If I were more responsible I would have made quarterly payments last year, but instead I bought my house, got engaged, and went on a vacation. I'd be a selfish asshole if I never paid my bills, but every cent of every bill that I possess will get paid. I'm not a gods damned society-drain. I give more than I take.

Tommy is in NY at a Holiday Inn express tonight. I think he will make it to Chicago tomorrow. He was joking through text messages that their gym only has 25-lb dumbbells. What a pathetic bunch of crap! I can curl 25lbs with my dick.*

Now that Tommy is gone I need a new best man for the wedding. Tommy was going to be the perfect best man because he was there the night Kat came over to the house for late-night fire on June 27, 2014. Kat and I had casually known each other before then, but that was the night we really hit it off. Our first date was an impromptu hike on Sunday, June 29th followed by a bootleg meal at CitySide and an ice cream at Jimmy's. Ever since then we've been inseparable.

I thought I would have Gavin be the best man at the wedding, or even Phil or Walter, but then I decided to have Doug do it. I didn't expect Doug to come all the way back from Tuscon, AZ for the wedding, but Mom bought him a plane ticket back. Doug and I have had a roller-coaster ride of ups and downs over our years, but having him be the best man feels right. Gavin, Phil, and Walt are all great friends, the best friends a guy could ever hope to have, but I know Doug is family, I was his best man once, and Doug would be happy to fill the role for me. Doug joked he'd only do it if he could wear a Hulkamania shirt and rip if off after the officiant pronounces Kat and I husband and wife. Classic!

^Whatcha gonna do bruther? Whatcha gonna do when Doug-a-Mania runs wild on you? I need photos of Doug dressed up as Hulk Hogan from last Halloween. Kat showed them to me through her Failbook page, but I will never have Failbook because I hate that fucking thing. "You kids get off my lawn." What a bunch of crap!

*Obviously lie.

Wednesday, 3-04-15: Bored at work.
I'm fighting off the boredom that always comes in the tax mid-season. We get super-busy at the end of January and into a good part of February, but then things slow down for most of March before picking back up at the end in April. Only 6 weeks (42 days) left of the tax season, and 46 days until the wedding. The end of this season and winter can't come soon enough.

^My purgatory until 1900 today. However, my kiosk looks even more bootleg and it has fewer red signs all over the place. (Generic Google image that I've used before.)

We got above freezing today. Awesome! That last time that happened was late January. It might hit 40 on the thermometer, and I left my winter jacket in the truck. Pretty sad when 35 degrees feels like a heat wave. What a bunch of crap! The sad thing is, this is pretty close to where we should be for this time of year. I used my gym before work this morning, and I actually needed to turn on the fan for the first time in weeks. After being in the upper 50s in that basement gym it had warmed all the way up to about 63. Nice! I got a pretty good workout in this morning, the best one I've had in quite some time. I have a hard time getting it going when it's brutally cold so hopefully the worst of winter is in our rear-view now. The extreme cold really saps my motivation.

I've been here at the Brewer kiosk since 1000, and I did one very simple tax return just before lunch. Two w2s, $73 for state and federal, thank you come again and give out the referral coupons please. It took about 30 minutes, and it might be the only one I do all day. Hopefully I get more clients since I'm here til 1900. (I might sneak off at 1859. Hehehe.) I did have some tax research to do for one of my clients from Bangor yesterday, but that didn't take too long. I had to calculate the RMD for his inherited IRA.

Working inside WalMart can be entertaining. Right now two old fuckers are jamming up the entrance to the shitters with their motorized scooter-carts. My kiosk is near the restrooms so Giblet-heads are routinely leaving their carts and crap right in the way so they can go take a piss. Earlier today some lady who spoke very broken English was staring at our promotional "Get a $100 WalMart Gift Card instantly when you file with us!" poster so I asked her if she needed help. My bad. She needs help alright, but not the kind of help I can offer. She ended up wasting about 10 minutes of my precious... precious time as she talked about how she doesn't need to file taxes since she and her husband mooch off the system receive social security.

HEY LADY ALL I WANNA KNOW IS WHY? WHY DID YOU EVEN TALK TO ME IF YOU DON'T EVEN NEED TO GET YOUR TAXES DONE?! WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAP! She saw my name tag, she pondered it for a minute as I wondered if I would become her next mass-murder victim, and then she said my name meant I am a saint. AAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I need to change my name tag to RAMBO. Then I can tell people to disappear and go watch my movies.

I worked on a crossword puzzle, I read an article about how a key provision of the Obamacare law is in the Supreme Court (again!), and I started making a list of songs for the wedding. I'm sure Kat will veto some of my choices, but classics like Motley Crue's Wild Side and Warrant's Cherry Pie are going on the final list, damnit. I also have a bunch of other hair rock and some pop classics like Roxette's The Look, The Cars Magic, and of course Cyndi Lauper's GOONIES R GOOD ENOUGH.

I need a radio in my bootleg little JH kiosk so I can rip out tunes. This bootleg computer doesn't even have speakers so I can't stream music. Thankfully I can at least use the Interweb or else things would be even more boring here. I need clients! I could chase people around the store, but it's not even that busy here right now in the entire store so screw it. Instead I'll just keep hanging out. I did bring my laptop PC to work today so I can work on some other stuff. I'd rather do taxes for customers, but since there are no customers here I will just do other things.

I'm out of here for now. Goonies never say die!

Monday, 3-02-15: Records fall, frustrations mount.
February was the coldest month ever recorded in the Bangor area. Ever. EVER. The previous February cold record was 1993 when the average temperature was 11.3 degrees, and the previous coldest month ever recorded was Jan 1994 when the average temperature was 8.4 degrees. So we didn't just break the record; we crushed it. Dead and buried. We beat the old February record by over 5 degrees, and the all-time record by over 2 degrees.

This is not something to be proud of. Records have been kept since 1926 so there is plenty of data from which to pull. When natural gas prices are high, and when it's 15 fucking degrees below normal then we have a problem. A huge problem. Plus, on top of the shit-show that will be my heating bills for February, my snowplow bill will be astronomical. We're already at #2 on the all-time snowiest list for Bangor. What a bunch of crap!

I wrote my hate-letter to the gas company last month, and that is posted in the archives. Since then the head honcho of the company actually called me about the letter. OMG! He said the reason they are price gouging prices are so high is because there is not enough pipeline to get the gas into New England. Those mudda fuckas! I've actually been reading about it some, and it's true. The price goes up in the winter in New England because they just can't supply it. Economics 101, and epic fail 101.

^Need more of these heading north and east across the USA. ASAP.

I'm going to have to send along my payment for my next cycle of gas bills with an "IOU" note attached. I literally can't afford to pay these prices, not when we get a winter this brutal and they make pathetic excuses about their price. Fuck them. I will pay most of the bill, but the remaining balance will have to carry over into the spring. I just don't have enough money to give them what they are billing me for. This winter has put my bootleg apartment business in the danger zone (no fun Kenny Loggins song) It won't put me under, but it is a severe stretch of the already thin budget, and I won't make a financial recovery from it until sometime in the summer or fall. What a bunch of crap! I already had to haul on my FedEx 401k last week for some extra money. Gods damn it...

I'm writing this bootleg blog update from my kiosk at the Brewer Jackson Hewitt. Thank you, Internet and email access. I never have free time to update this toilet anymore when I'm off work because I have other things to do.

February was a disaster of a month. It was one of the worst months of my life, and it was depressing. Not only did all the cold and snow bum me out, but I also had a roommate who didn't move out when he was supposed to, I hardly used the gym at all, and Kat got diagnosed with a tumor in her left eye. I had a sewer backup that spewed shit (literally) all over the basement at one of my rental properties, I had giblet-head tenants complaining about plowing and heat issues, and if I didn't have Kat in my life I probably would have gotten drunk every single fucking night on the entire month. Then maybe I would have sat outside and just become a popsicle. At -19 degrees it would have been easy, that's for sure.

Hopefully March will be better. Tommy is finally about to leave for AZ so we will have the house as it was intended to be when Kat and Katherine moved in. That has really stressed me out, bad. In hindsight I should have been more forceful about telling Tommy to get out, but he's my friend and the world puked on him so I was trying to be a good guy. He was originally supposed to move out by Jan 1st, but that got all fucked away. I won't go into details about it, but his ex-girlfriend is a selfish beotch who deserves to get thrown into a Sarlaac Pit and be slowly digested over the course of 1000 years.

^For you, Mary. I hate you.

Kat's health has been a big concern this winter. We knew that there would be tough times because she has lupus, but this winter has been way worse than we expected. It's hard for her to be healthy when everything is so cold. She's also been working at Jackson Hewitt, but her eye tumor makes her have headaches and get dizzy when she spends prolonged time under the bright, fluorescent lights here in WalMart. Plus it's cold here so that makes it even worse. I've taken over many of her work shifts, and keeping JH manned plus the bootleg apartments under control can be a challenge at times. On Friday evening I got one final February FU from the world when a 5-minute plumbing repair turned into a 2-hour one.

It all started when I needed to unscrew a tub drain to reinstall plumber's putty and then hook it back up. A pesky occasional leak was causing water to drip down into the bathroom below so I needed a fix. The leak has happened on and off over the past several months, but it's frustrating because it's so sporadic. I've tried a couple other times to fix it, but I haven't found a perfect solution. So I thought maybe the tub drain needed to be resealed. When I have an occasional leak from a tub the first thing I think is water pressure from when the tub is full of water causes enough downward pressure to allow some water to leak through a bad seal. A shower running won't cause a leak, but a full tub can make a big difference thanks to the added weight of the water and gravity. (same concept for a sink.) I got it all apart, no prob, and I had the putty installed within 5 minutes. However, the gods damned thing would not go back together. It wouldn't thread properly and I fought it over and over again. Finally, two hours later and after a trip to Lowe's at 1830, I had it back together and working again. What a bunch of crap!

^Stipud fucking plastic that strips out because it's a bunch of crap.

Oh, the Giblet-head tenants in the apartment had the heat set to 80 degrees. Oh, the Giblet-head tenant in the apartment below were $46 short on rent and wasn't home when he said he would be home because he decided to go get his two dogs nails clipped. Fucking what the fuck, over?! If I wasn't so damn busy I would evict them all, but that can wait until spring. I plan to purge that building and give it a reboot because the tenants there now suck. They don't stiff me on rent, but they are ignorant and need to gggggggggggggggeeeeeeeeeeeeeettttttttttttt oooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuutttttttttttttt!

In conclusion, things haven't been going so well lately, but there is a light at the end of the shit-filled tunnel. The days are getting longer, spring is on the horizon, and I get to marry the woman of my dreams in 48 days. Then we take a relaxing honeymoon in the tropics and we will have time to relax and live at a more leisurely pace over the spring and summer. Only 44 more days left of this tax season, too. I'll have to write more about the JH job next time.