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Sunday,
3-31-19: GOT Season 1 and stairs remodel. There are only a couple weeks left until the tax-filing deadline so I should probably work on our own taxes. I will do a little of that tomorrow. Maybe? I dunno, depends on how much sleep I get tonight. We won't bivouac until 0200 because my awesome wife is working right now. This is her 4th consecutive Sunday night karaoke gig, and it still feels weird. I would have gone to bed two hours ago if not for this new job of hers. I am not complaning because we can use the money, but I do worry it will wear her out. We didn't do a whole lot today, and it was glorious. I did have to clean the floors twice because the dogs track in so much mud from the back yard. Our back yard needs luscious grass, but instead it is muddy with clumps of dead, lumpy, yellow grass. What a bunch of crap! I hope I can find some extra money to have our landscape guys come work on our yard, but I probably won't since we just had to buy a new furnace for the house last week. What a bunch of crap that was! It was around 60 degrees mid-afternoon so I went for a 3-mile jog. It was my first 3-mile jog of the season, and I made it the whole way without having to stop and walk any of it. 25:25 is not a great time, but I'm happy with it. I've done a few other 2 and 2.33-mile jogs in the past couple weeks so that is much better than what I had done at this point last year. Other than the jog and a quick trip to the park with the dogs I spent hours on the couch rewatching Game of Thrones season 1 with my awesome wife. We recently watched all 7 seasons of GOT, but it is so good that we thought season 1 was worth another visit before the final season 8 debuts in a couple weeks. The first time we watched GOT season one I almost mentally checked out, but I am glad that I stuck with it because it is a great show. A lot happens, and I have a pathetic pea-brain so many things from season 1 went right over my head on the first viewing. What a bunch of crap! Speaking of a bunch of crap, last night we watched some horrible turd of a movie called Silent Hill. FUCK THAT PIECE OF DOG SHIT MOVIE. It is an older movie, over 10 years old and based on a video game. I will never play that game, and I hope I never have to watch that movie again either because it was epic failer. Then we ended up watching the equally horrible sequel, but by then I was just happy to relax and do nothing and read online reviews about how terrible both of the Silent Hill movies are. GOT > Silent Hill and if you disagree with me then I hate you. I probably hate you anyway, but I'll hate you a little more. If I was a better video-gamer then I might have played my SNES Classic some tonight, but that system can still eat the peanuts out of my ssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttttttttttttt. I am still scarred from Friday night when I died at Super Ghouls and Ghosts about every 30 seconds. What a bunch of crap! I spent most of the first part of level 1 running around in my 16-bit pixelated skivvies because when you get hit once by a bad guy then your suit of armor falls off and you are almost naked. Gods damn it! So instead I did yoga and then I worked on our steps for a while. I am going to cover them with nicer flooring and transitions because what is there now sucks. A lot. I posted a photo of the fail-looking steps a couple updates ago. The steps are plenty sturdy and code-compliant 11x7s, but they look like 10 pounds of shit stuffed into a 5-pound bag since all I did with the pine treads was paint them with floor paint. The paint chipped off in many spots so now it looks all bad. Soon it will all look nice, though. Maybe? Hopefully! ________________________________________________________________________________________________
Friday, 3-29-19: FUCK YOU, SNES CLASSIC! I thought I would play Super Ghouls and Ghosts tonight, and in hindsight that was unwise. That fucking game makes Zelda look like a stroll through the proverbial park. I am not even joking about that either. I died 20 times in 15 minutes. Seriously. Over one death per minute, and on level one. OMG WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAP! I even went into the settings and chose BEGINNER and still I could not even make it to the first check-point. Expose sings Point of No Return on my 80s channel 1928. Soon I will be past the point of no return when I drink more booze at the bar. I should still be playing video games right now, but instead I am drinking my coffee brandy and bitching to almost no one about how hard the SNES is. Am I that old and uncoordinated now? When we were kids I know we beat both Zelda and Super Ghouls and Ghosts. Pretty sure we even beat the harder NES Zelda and Ghosts N Goblins, too. Ghosts N Goblins was a HARD fuckin' game. Like, seriously hard. ^Super Ghouls and Ghosts. You start off with a bootleg suit of armor, but if an enemy touches you then you have to fight in your underwear. One more hit and you are shit on toast and have to start over. I guess there are check-points, but I have not gotten to one yet. What a bunch of crap! This game is too fucking hard and can eat the peanuts out of my sssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttttttttttttttttttttt. Oh, there are also treasure chests that randomly pop up, but I didn't even know how to open them. Then once I figured it out some heel shot me with a "spell" and turned me into a baby. A FUCKIN' BABY! Of course the undead zombies ate my diaper-wearing ass within two seconds. What a bunch of crap! Mind you this was only the first level, the very beginning of the game. I worked on North Main some this week, 10 hours of carpentry. Pathetic, eh? I also worked on other things so I haven't slacked off too much. The final space, the "other office" as I call it looks like this now: ^Mostly painted with over half the trim installed. Next week I can do the floor and then check it off the list. I should have had it done this month, but instead I have done other things like clean my old bootleg office. That space still needs a TON of work including reviewing and hauling on many old business records. I have stuff from my first year as a slumlord, from 2004. Is a receipt from Aubuchon Hardware from June of 2004 something I really need to save anymore? Especially since it's for a building that I no longer own. The only and obvious answer is HELL NO. I have a couple tax appointments for tomorrow. My little tax office has a chance of taking in over $1000 for the year. Not bad considering I am not really "officially" even open. Of course expenses are five times that sum, but a loss for the first year is perfecly fine since a lot of what I bought will last for many years to come. Maybe? Hopefully. Losing money sucks, but lately that has been the norm. Thankfully my amazing wife is a great DJ and makes enough money to keep a roof over our head. Also soon enough winter will be over so bye bye heating bills. I can do some carpentry for others after tax season so we should make pretty good money this spring, summer, and early fall. Maybe? Hopefully! Alright shitbags, all two of youz, I am going down to the bar in a few minutes. The Red Sox are in Seattle for game 2 of their 2019 season. The season opener was last night, but they lost 12-4. What a bunch of crap! Hopefully they win tonight. _______________________________________________________________________________________________
Wednesday, 3-27-19: FUCK YOU, SNES ZELDA! Since my loser-ass could not sleep and was up at 0414 this morning I decided to watch some news and to play some more Zelda. I went to the mountain-castle, and I died twice within 5 minutes. F THAT. It is too hard so I just quit. Hey, when things are too hard the right thing to do is to just quit. Right? Hehehe. There are nearly two dozen other games on my SNES Classic so I decided to try The Secret of Mana. I thought I had played The Secret of Mana when I was a kid, but maybe not because nothing about that game seemed familiar at all to me. I played Mana for about 15 minutes, and then I quit that game as well and just watched more news. I don't know if I will play Mana again because I am not very impressed. The graphics kinda suck (not a deal-breaker) and the game also kinda sucks (more of a deal-breaker!) It looks like a bootleg piece of shit so maybe I will haul on it and try something better next time, a game like Mega Man or Super Castlevania. ^HAHAHAHA! That is a screen-shot of The Secret of Mana, and as you can see they all agree that SNES Zelda is impossible! I need cheat-codes gods damn it. We gotta roll out in 30 minutes to take the Acadia over to the shop for an inspection sticker, tire rotation, and an oil change. We've had the vehicle for a little over a year, and so far it has been fantastic. While the car is in the shop we'll go to WalMart to buy Aquaman and dog food. I have not seen Aquaman, but my Sweet Pea said it is pretty good. She saw it back in Dec in the theater with a friend while I worked. It is not too often she goes to a movie without me, but every now and again there is a movie that I don't give a crap about. Actually I don't give a crap about most movies, but the new Avengers: End Game looks awesome. That one will be in theaters in about a month. Hey good news we have awesome heat in the house again. Yesterday the heating guys came over to hook us up. Bye bye $3300 for that one. They had quoted $3500 so it was cool of them to get us under-budget. Even better they also replaced a back-flow tank on the water heater out in the laundry room for that price, and that was a bonus add-on. They have done a lot of good work for me over the past few years, and I would recommend them to anyone. I have not done much field-work this week at all. I spent most of Monday PM working at North Main, but yesterday was furnace day. While the guys spent a few hours here replacing our boiler I did paperwork, helped clean the house, and finally made a solid plan of attack for these stairs here at the house:
They are just painted pine, and as you can see the paint has not help up so well. Also this morning we will most likely stop at Home Depot to buy some more flooring and transitions so I can make all those steps look nice. After a bit of trim and wall paint the entire new addition-area of the house should be done. Maybe? Hopefully! _______________________________________________________________________________________________
Sunday, 3-24-19: I guess I will head out shortly. It's been an ongoing project of mine for well over 6 months, and if all goes well then I should 100% finish it at some point this year. Maybe? Hopefully! The fact it is not done yet is a giant bunch of crap. In addition to finishing that wall I also have to finish the ceiling and install some shelves in my office. Those shelves will be for old business records, tools, etc. I need to reduce this clutter in the gym: My old office over there will pretty much be storage since I have a newer and more badass office now at North Main. That old office was great for me for 3 or 4 years, maybe 2012-2014, but since I live so close to everything now that place is borderline obsolete as far as a work space goes. I love having it there still because I can store some gym stuff, records, etc. I use it as a changing room for my gym on occasion, and I also do have a safe bolted to the concrete floor for cash rents. There is usually not that much cash in the safe, and any thief with bad intentions would have a hard time getting the thing out of there. Plus any thief who would make the effort to steal it would be bummed out to open it and see maybe a few hundred bucks, if that. Hopefully I never have to worry about that, ever. I definitely do not regret having that little bootleg office still there because it seems you can never have enough storage. I still will keep my old desk and computer in there for possible use. I don't think I've even turned that computer on in at least a month, maybe two. HAHAHAHAHA. Who knows, maybe eventually I will decide that even having a computer in there is dumb, but for now it does make for a good and very secure data-backup station. ^I used to use that office as my "base camp" for when I lived with Kelly and her kids in Bradley. It was a 9.5-mile commute to Brewer so it only made sense that I had a place to station myself for my work. I had a TV, Interweb, a mini-fridge, and a microwave oven. It's only about an 11x9 space, but it was enough. A lot of days I was busy working on stuff anyway, but some days I would hang out in the for a while. I had a DVR and would record some shows like Gold Rush and Impact Wrestling. I definitely do NOT miss watching TV in that office because I would much rather be at home with my awesome wife. I don't have a TV, a fridge, Interweb, or a microwave oven in there anymore because there is no need. I have not even finished North Main yet and here I am working on something else. However, North Main is close enough and I need to organize that shit-show of a gym/office. I will work on both this week, and if all goes well then I might even flip on the OPEN sign at North Main and see if I can pull in some fresh meat/tax clients. So far I have done 15 tax returns, and I know I have at least a few more in the pipeline including our own. I am not in a rush to finish our own taxes, but I should get more serious about those since the filing deadline is just over three weeks away. We will definitely owe, but how much we will owe is still questionable. Probably between $2000-$3000. What a bunch of crap! _______________________________________________________________________________________________
Friday, 3-22-19: I worked for an hour tonight. They have sushi over at that place, and Kat loves it. Personally I think sushi is a bunch of crap! Maybe it is not sushi? It is little things that look like they are painted in rice. Guy Googles what the hell they are because guy does not even know after 4 coffee brandys and milk but don't tell the cops that I am driving to the bar. I did start drinking 3 hours ago so at least I have time on my side. ^That stuff. It looks like it might taste good, but then there is this ingredient called GINGER that totally makes it a mess. What a bunch of crap sushi is! I'll eat chicken and fish instead and still feel like I got my money's worth. We did take a nap this afternoon for a bit, and it was much-needed for my worthless ass. I woke up feeling pretty good so I lifted some weights and got demolished at Rball against Deno. He outscored me 60-11 over 4 games including one 15-0 win for him. What a bunch of crap! I am maxed out physically and need to listen to my body. No exercise for tomorrow, and none until maybe Sunday PM if I feel okay. My arms and legs are sore right now from jogging and other exercises. I'll get pretty drunk tonight, no doubt about that (I am halfway there already!) However, I do have work to do for at least part of tomorrow so I need to be functional for that. I have a tax meeting at 1000 and other taxes to work on. I might also do some more painting; I brought Groot with me and painted for an hour tonight before I decided to come home and update this worthless site that almost no one will ever read. I considered playing Super Zelda tonight, but F that I worked instead. That fuckin' game is too hard. I played for 15 minutes yesterday morning before I realized I was too tired to do it right. I think I am near the end of the game, but I have died quite a bit and have already "cheated" half a dozen times by looking stuff up on the Interweb so even if I do beat Gannon and save the whore beotch then I really haven't beaten the game. It would be like a tainted heel win in the WWE. Maybe I will mentally tell SNES Zelda to FUCK OFF and I will play more Super Mario World. That is a pretty fun game, except for the boss level 3. F that level! Thankfully I acidentally beat that stage by pure miracle once last month so I think we are up to level 6 in that game now. Kat even played that game with me for a bit earlier this winter, but then her and I got tired of it because we are old and watch Jeopardy more than we play video games each week. That last sentence is 100% true, too. What a bunch of crap! ^STUPID FUCKING ASSHOLE WIZARDS THAT APPEAR OUT OF NOWHERE AND CAUSE MISCHIEF AND MAYHEM IN BOSS-LEVEL 3, SUPER MAIRO WORLD. I NEED EASIER VIDEO GAMES GODS DAMN IT! I wonder what the next SNES classic game is that I will try? I'm leaning towards EARTHWORM JIM, but I dunno for sure yet. I suppose I should play more Zelda and Mario before I move on. There are something like 21 games in the system, but half of them will suck so that means I need to make the most of the best ones that came pre-installed. Alright turds, all two of youz, I am all done even thinking about it. I finished my drink and now it is time to go to the bar. I can play video games another day. The end. Fin. Goonies never say die! ________________________________________________________________________________________________
Thursday, 3-21-19: New building sheetrock work
= done.
Since I finished all the mudding and sanding at North Main I decided tonight to go mud and sand some more over at my gym. OMG I AM A 'TARD. However, the sheetrock work there is a joke because it is only one outside and one inside corner. No ceilings either. I was going to lift weights, but F that all the sheetrock sanding wore me down too much. I did go for a shitty 2-mile jog earlier today at least, but even that was a struggle. Hopefully I am less sore tomorrow so I can go play rball and lose to Deno. Poor Gav can't play because he busted his finger open on a nail at his house. I feel badly, and I know how much that sucks because I had a nail drive right into my forearm 3 or so years ago when I was doing demolition here at our house. What a bunch of crap! Even worse I came in and passed out for a little bit and then my wife would not let me go back to work for a while. Epic failer. Gavin is tougher than me so I doubt he passed out. He said he almost fell into a hole down to his cellar so that really could have been horrible. Our furnace here at the house is pwned, and that sucks. A lot. Kat and I agreed today to just blow off paying some property taxes and schedule a new furnace so I have to wait to hear back from the heating guys when they can get to it. Hopefully sometime next week if all goes well. Bye bye $3500 for that. What a bunch of crap! I did hope to wait and do it this summer, but F that we need a better heat source here than electric space-heaters and fires in the fireplace. Hell we are almost out of firewood because I ran out of time last fall to split a woodpile that is sitting in the side yard and half-buried in snow. That North Main property set me back badly in terms of taking care of our own house and other projects like my unfinished gym ceiling. Hopefully in the end we can look back and say it was all worth the effort... I also finished the siding at North Main yesterday. Oh Jesus hell ya! Now the garage over there will be the next big project, but I can't do that for a while to come because we don't have the precious... precious money needed for that rehab. That's why I need to work a lot this spring, summer, and fall and also sell a property. I have a tentative plan in place for the rest of the year that goes something like this: Now-mid-April - Do more taxes, finish "other
office" at North Main, and finish my bootleg gym ceiling and cleaning/organizing. It will be fun to look back on that list in 6 months to see how close I came to hitting the mark. I'm sure all kinds of other things will come up between now and then because they always do. One thing I know for sure, though. I AM NOT BUYING ANY MORE FIXER-UPPER BUILDINGS. F THAT! I've gotten pretty good at rehabbing old places, but it just takes too much precious... precious time to do. Damn Gav just sent me a pic of the nail that saved him from falling 10 feet onto a cement floor, and it is a big 16D that was sticking straight up. My phone only gets tiny little thumbnail photos because it is bootleg, but F it I can still tell what it is. Hard to do demolition and not be surrounded by hazards. Just like it's hard to be on Spaceball 1 and not be surrounded by assholes! Alright turds, all two of youz, I am going to log off of this shit-show and go have a beer at the Eagles before my awesome wife finished her karaoke show. We are both exhausted. I got up super-early because I was cold because the furnace didn't work. What a bunch of crap! I could have turned on the electric heater, but I was already up and there was no going back to sleep. Gods damn it. ________________________________________________________________________________________________
Tuesday, 3-19-19: OUR FURNACE SUCKS! The furnace will work sometimes for several hours at a time, but then it always decides to fault and stop working. The night before last the thing worked all night before dying mid-morning. Unfortunately last night it obviously died well before daybreak and revielle. We used a lot of blankets in the bedroom, and with us and the 3 dogs sleeping in there it never felt too cold, at least not cold enough to get me up in the middle of the night. I've already had to reset the furnace three times this morning and I've only been up for 45 minutes. Gods damn it! It is up to 64 in here now. I also have an electric space-heater on to help. Once we get up over 70 in here then the electric heater will keep the place warm enough for the rest of the day. I do NOT want to buy a new furnace right now, but I think we will have to do it because it is only March 19th and still winter. I'll reach out to Jordan in about 30 minutes and get him going on a quote for a new unit plus the install. Hopefully there is an "Efficiency Maine" rebate like there was for the furnace over at North Main last year. That was a $1000 rebate so the $3500 new furnace plus install over there "only" ended up costing $2500. Not too bad. ^Damn I want that $5000. I'm a Bangor Natural Gas customer so fork it over now! We'd probably have to put the equivilant of a spaceship-sized house condom on this muther in order to get every penny out of that program. R500 insulation, 10-pane windows, etc. Solar panels all over the roof and probably a few on stakes in the yard for good measure... Mom and Dad are coming up today for a visit and for their taxes. I already started their taxes with a few forms that Dad emailed to me so I don't think finishing it all up will take too long. For each of the past 2 or 3 years Dad has brought stuff up and I have done their taxes here at our house so it will be nice to have them in my actual tax office for the first time. Hopefully Mom is impressed with the offices now that they are done; when she saw the place with Aunt Susie back in December she seemed fairly critical of some ideas that I had in motion. However, Mom is often critical so I didn't get too concerned about it. She thought the interior windows were a stupid idea. What a bunch of crap! ^MY INTERIOR OFFICE WINDOW IS FUCKING AWESOME. IT ALLOWS ME TO SEE THINGS AND GIVES THE OFFICE A MORE OPEN FEEL WITHOUT COMPROMISING THE FEELING OF CONFIDENTIALITY THAT YOU WOULD WANT WHEN HAVING YOUR TAXES DONE. I WIN. I need to do our own taxes still; I've barely even started them so far. Getting those done will take a lot of time due to both selling a building and buying a building last year. I was planning to put $3000 into the IRA to help offset the tax liability, but now our epic failer furnace will probably throw those plans all to hell. Normally we owe a few grand in income taxes so probably this year will be the same. However, I do have tons of expenses I can claim so maybe we won't owe too much this year. The new tax laws give us a higher standard deduction so the first $24,000 is not taxable at all. Plus when I worked at JH I had plenty of taxes withheld from my pay there so that will give us a solid start to the tax liability. Alright turds, all two of youz, I gotta clean up the house some and feed the dogs. Then it's time to go to North Main and clean up a little before Mom and Dad arrive. There is a lot of dust and white footprints near the entry since I did 4.5 hours of mudding and sanding in the final "other office" area there yesterday. That space will be ready for paint soon! _________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sunday, 3-17-19: A holiday that I don't really
give a crap about. ^GOONIES NEVER SAY DIE! Favorite shirt of all-time, but I don't wear it that much anymore. I have way too many tee shirts in my life so some of my favorites have gotten buried over time. What a bunch of crap! My awesome wife is hosting the karaoke show tonight at a sizeable bar called the Pour House over in Bangor, but only a couple miles away from the house. That place is her new Sunday night deal, and this is her second week there. The bar is incredibly busy so this week I decided not to stay for her entire show. I stayed for the whole time last week, and she rocked the place. Because tonight is St. Patrick's night there are all kinds of people out bar-hopping. I will head back over to the Pour House for the final hour or 1.5 hours of the show, and then around last-call at 0100 we will wind it all down. The nice thing about the Pour House is the bar is located right next to a 24/7 McDonald's so we can get late-night snacks. How cool is that?! Pour House used to be called Reanna's years ago, and just recently it is under new management. Hopefully the new owners are great and so far they are giving me a good vibe. I find it is a hard balance of being at the bar too much during my awesome wife's shows and not enough. If I am there a lot then we spend more of our precious... precious money. However, if I am not there enough then I am hanging out all by myself and that also sucks. Last weekend we spent over $100 on alcohol and food, but that is not how we normally roll. For her first night ever at the Pour House I was more than okay having a bar tab of $40 (with tip included.) This week so far my tab there is a whopping ZERO. They do have a lot of beers on tap so I will have one more to finish out my night. I am NOT drinking much tonight; I drank plenty enough Friday night at Jester's. I was thankfully not hungover Saturday so I could lose to Deno at Rball. Tonight I was productive with my time, at least in the beginning. First I did DDP Yoga, and second I went over to my bootleg gym to lift weights for 30 minutes. After that I guess I was not so productive, but I did beat the "Dark World" level 7 in SNES Zelda so Oh Jesus Hell ya to that! Now I probably have to fight Gannon in his final boss-castle, but maybe not because there is some pyramid still. I suck at that game and have had to look up how to do things online 5 or 6 times already. What a bunch of crap! I am pretty sure when we were kids we beat that game all on our own without cheats, but hell if I can be certain. I am too old to figure it out anymore so I just watch YouTube videos when I get stuck. What a bunch of crap! I do try to get un-stuck for a while before I "cheat", but if not the for Interweb then I would not have finished either Super Metroid or SNES Zelda. I am too old gods damn it. Alright turds, all two of youz who read this pathetic excuse for a website, I am going to the bar to have one "tall" (22oz) beer and then to help my best friend/wife pack up her gear so we can grab a late-night snack and then bivouac. This Sunday night thing will take some getting used to, no doubt about that. If Kat wasn't working tonight then we would have gone to bed two hours ago! ________________________________________________________________________________________________
Friday, 3-15-19: Siding and mudding is almost
done. ^The north-facing side; I could have finished it 100%, but I would have had to work until 1700 and F that. Plus I needed to install hand-rails for the back deck since it is incredibly icy back there. It is on the lee side so it stays in the shade, and snowmelt off the roof has been freezing at night and making it dangerous. Debbie fell down and sprained her wrist on that ice earlier this week. What a bunch of crap! She did admit it was her own fault since they haven't been too regular with the salt. I gave them and most tenants a 5-gallon pail full of salt earlier in the winter. I bought it in bulk for a sweet price, and I really don't want anyone getting hurt for obvious reasons. I probably only have an hour or two left to 100% finish that siding. (Not including the ENTIRE GARAGE that I will do later this year.) The top part always takes extra precious... precious time because of all the trips up and down the ladder. Renting staging would save time, but it would cost too much for the scale of my operation. I had to chisel the ladder out of the snow and ice yesterday before I could even begin, and my feet got a little wet from walking through the snow and slush. It was about 45 degrees and felt like spring. I was going to quit and go for a jog, but F that there is still a lot of snow, ice, and puddles everywhere. Maybe today I'll take a spin around the block for the first time in months. We're looking at 48 degrees today. Not bad! I've also been spending a couple hours here and there all week doing my mudding and sanding in the "other office" area. It looks like this now: I'd guess I have 6-8 more total hours in sanding and mudding before I can paint. Hopefully by this time next week it is all painted and *maybe* I will have started the floor. However, maybe not because I have taxes to do as well. This morning I had paperwork to do and some cleaning in my bootleg gym-office. There is some water leaking into that gym so I had to deal with that as well. Thankfully it's not horrible flooding, just enough to be annoying. Now Jordan is working on our pathetic excuse for a furnace here at our house, and when he finishes we're going to Las Paplapas with friends for lunch. Hopefully the furnace does not need to be replaced entirely, but I have my doubts we can get it working properly since the thing is a bootleg piece of shit. Jordan texted me this about our furnace yesterday: "Well the truth is those boilers were the biggest piece of crap when they came out.." AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAP! In our nearly 5-years of experience here at the house I can 100% agree with that assessment about our heater. Maybe we will get lucky and limp it along for the rest of this winter. Hopefully! The tax filing season ends in about a month, and so far I've done around a dozen taxes for people. I'd guess I'll do a dozen more so when it is all said and done I might take in $1000 from my brand new tax business. That would be a good start, but the cost to get the office operational so far has been five times that sum. What a bunch of crap! I'm not really upset about that, though. I knew the business would lose money in its first year, especially since I've made capital investments like the computer, printer, desk, chairs, software, and most costly of all the security cameras (that I expensed to the tax business even though they are for the entire building.) Next year I can hopefully turn a little profit and then build from that in the coming years. If not I guess it will be back to Jackson Hewitt! ________________________________________________________________________________________________
Thursday, 3-14-19: Bye bye money. The furnace here at the house is incredibly frustrating. We have this little wall-unit-thing, and we keep having to reset it in order to squeak out some more heat. Yesterday I had the heating guys working on it again for the second time in as many weeks, and they still don't know exactly what is wrong. They already replaced a pressure switch, but now it is a bit of a mystery. Heat-exchanger maybe? Or maybe sometime else. We estimate the heater is 10-12 years old, but every heating guy who has ever looked at it has agreed that it is not a good brand or model at all. ^Fuck off useless shitbag furnace. Can I even call that bootleg thing a furnace? The smaller unit to the right does hot water, and that thing pretty much sucks as well. What a bunch of crap!
So now we might have to make a big decision. Do we replace it entirely or do we dump even more money into parts and repairs that are not even guaranteed to work. Thankfully today will be 44 degrees outside and tomorrow we hit 50 so spring is coming fast. However, next week we'll have a few days with highs in the low 30s and nighttime lows in the mid-teens. We definitely need a working heating system to get through that. Maybe I can keep resetting the furnace 2-3 times a day, but if I do that and then the thing dies entirely we are pwned. Either way we are pwned and it pisses me off gods damn it! Now on to the biggest thorn in our sides over this winter, and something we have not been happy to deal with. When Debbbie, Dillon, and Travis moved out last December they left us with a house full of bedbugs. FUCKING BEDBUGS. I didn't write about that on this bootleg site before because it is probably embarassing for them, but fuck it I am pissed off and I need to rant about it in order to save my psyche. They lived in the newer part of the house, and fortunately that area is seperate from our own living area so we don't have any bedbugs in our living room or bedrooms down here.
We bought treatment stuff and did the best that we could to erradicate the remaining bedbugs up there, and we thought we had gotten rid of them until maybe 1.5 months ago we went up there to start putting everything back together and found more. What a bunch of crap! So since I have had North Main to deal with and since we don't have money growing on any money trees out back I put that bedbug bullshit right on the back-burner. The affected area is vacant and apart from our own living quarters, and thank the gods who do not exist for that. My awesome wife saved up a bunch of money, and Dillon and Debbie won a free wedding (whether or not they should even be getting married would take way too long for me to write about so I will leave that one alone), so we finally had a little extra money to get a professional involved. I hired a pest company, and the guy has been pretty good to me. He thought we did a decent job with our own amazon.com chemicals and he thought we probably already got rid of them all, but he suggested we hire a sniffing dog to be sure. So two mornings ago we had this dog come and sniff around, but instead of looking for hidden narcotics like police dogs this dog was looking for bedbugs. Bye bye $350 for that, but we did get the good news that the house is bedbug-free. Oh Jesus hell ya! I brought my air-compressor over so I can reinstall baseboards, and we planned to do touch-up painting and get Katherine moved back upstairs this weekend. Sadly she went up there last night after work and just before we were going to bivouac, and she freaked out when she found an adult bedbug on the wall and still very much alive. OMG WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAP! Awarded to the dog and the dog trainer who ripped us off and gave us jack fuckin' shit. Flushed $350 right down the hopper two days ago. Fuck this. So now I have to call the pest-guy and tell him his trick dog was epic failer and we need his ass back here to fix our shit. Oh, I think the furnace just died again as well. Gods damn it when are we ever gonna get where we need to be?! Thankfully my awesome wife is working and making pretty good money so we can turn around and spend it all on this fuckstain of a house. Maybe we should just sell this house and go find a better one to live in... ________________________________________________________________________________________________
Saturday, 3-09-19: Stupid fuckin' Zelda game. Just go to the Thieves' Town, which is the fourth dungeon in the Dark World. To get there, head to the Village of Outcasts in the Dark World and look for the gargoyle statue. The Gargoyle seems to be holding something in front of a doorway. Pull at it to break it off and enter into the door. MOTHER PUSS BUCKET THAT IS ALL I HAD TO DO?! All I wanna know is why? Why could I not figure that out on my own? I am a useless pile of civilian shit. I tried magic-powder (laced with pixelated LSD hehehe), fire rod, bombs, etc. Epic fail and I suck all rolled up into one. Thank the gods who do not really exist for the power of the Interweb otherwise I would have been looking through all my old NINTENDO POWER magazines that I unearthed recently from the catacombs over in the basement where I used to live. Or most likely I would have just quit and watched TV. I don't have time or patience to wander around a frigging game for hours on end looking for trap doors and shit. It is early afternoon, and my awesome wife is taking a little nap because she got jack friggin' shit for sleep last night. We bivouaced around 0300, and she was up way before my loser ass. Last night was a fun night at the bar. The Debbie and Dillon showed up at the beginning of the karaoke show totally shitfaced, and then Debbie came up to Kevin and I and was complaining about how Dillon was being a dick to her. She said she is not mean when she drinks so I had to remind her that actually when she gets really drunk she becomes an asshole, too. She throws my hat and punches me. What a bunch of crap! She left in tears a while later because she was so mad at her fiance and my stepson. I told her to just divorce him, but oh wait they are not married yet. What a bunch of crap! I'm not loving the odds of their long-term happiness if that is how they get when they booze. The funniest story of the night was seeing a guy buy Kat's soes for $40. I did not witness this transaction first-hand, but it definitely happened and the weirdest thing of all was when the guy went outside and started sniffing them. OMG AHAHAHAHAHAHA! Cindy came out and asked him what he was doing, and he told her that he bought the shoes and can do what he wants with them. Then at the end of the night he was asking how to thank Kat for putting on such a great show, and Cindy suggested he tip her $20. Of course his drunk ass paid the $20 so she made out well on that deal. She said the shoes cost 8 bucks. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I was pretty boozed up by the end of the night, and I ran up a $26 tab which for us is on the high side. Not record high, not even close, but normally we're closer to $10-15. I stayed at the bar most of the night, and I only came home briefly to let the dogs play and of course while they played I had a drink and updated this bootleg site that no one will ever read. After the karaoke show ended and the bar closed we went to Denny's with some friends, and I ate a shitload of French Toast and joked with Neil and Angela about how I had penis-reduction surgery down to 3" because before it was just too big. We were all dying of laughter, and we always seem to get the same waitress who was also having a blast with us all. So today is a recovery day of sorts, but I am not hungover. Jason plans to stop by at some point so I can give him a wad of cash for installing our cameras, and maybe I will get the furnace guys back over since I have had to reset the damn furnace three times this morning. What a bunch of crap that is! The thing has been epic failing, but we hoped we had it fixed when the guys installed a new pressure switch a couple days ago. Sadly the switch does not seem to be the issue after all even though the blinking error lights on the front of the unit tell us it is a faulty switch. Gods damn it! I am so sick of spending our precious... precious money on repairs. ________________________________________________________________________________________________
Friday, 3-08-19: Mostly at the bar tonight. When I head back down to the bar shortly I won't put Groot back into the crate because the cat food is secured and I am hoping she will be tired and will just sleep. Maybe? Hopefully! There is a good crowd at Jester's so far tonight. It's not too full and it's not too empty. At 2100 when karaoke "officially" started there were only 6 people there, and my wife and I were two of them! Thankfully a bunch more people showed up, most of whom we know well because they come most weeks. I don't think I worked that much this week, but I dunno for sure. I don't think I even worked 40 hours so that's awesome. I know I did a total of close to 7.5 hours of carpentry at North Main in the "other office" area, and I have several hours of paperwork and budgeting in for the week. Also I helped my awesome wife with DJ-stuff, and I did some taxes. I also got a lot of exercise and am not planning to do very much tomorrow. Earlier this week the "other office" area at North Main looked like this: Since then I have installed 100% of the sheetrock. Oh Jesus Hell ya! Next week I will do a lot of mudding, taping, and sanding. Hopefully the week after that I can paint and do the floor. I want that space done by the end of the month, but we'll see how it goes. I have 23 friggin' days left to do probably 40-50 hours total worth of work in that space so if I can't finish it then I am officially a useless pile of civilian shit. The waiting area looks amazing right now, and I have a couple photos of that. First is the view looking in from the entry: A look in the other direction: ^The door off to the left goes to the bathroom. It was my awesome wife's idea to put up a shitload of photos, and I am glad she thought of it because she rocks. On that wall there are before and after-photos of the property and of the interior downstairs spaces. The bathroom, the waiting-area, and my tax office all used to be back storage for the grocery store that was there in the 1950s. We tore out a bunch of old wooden shelves. The remodel of that building has been an amazing journey, and I am very glad that we are getting closer to the end of the remodel because it has been a HUGE project that has taken up a ton of precious... precious time. Alright turds, all two of youz who actually read this bootleg site, I am going to head back to the bar so I can have a couple more beers before the karaoke show ends. Tonight is 90s theme-night so most of the songs are from that decade. I personally prefer the 70s and of course the 80s, but there were a lot of great 90s songs including Nelson's Love and Affection and Billy Idol's Cradle of Love (two that have been done so far.) Also Pearl Jam EvenFlow... _________________________________________________________________________________________________
Thursday, 3-07-19: The family name might continue
after all. ^Not only do you have to keep them fed and clothed, but when they shit themselves then you gotta deal with that. Also, when they cry you need to figure out what is wrong because they can't talk and tell you. I am NOT equipped to reproduce because I am a fuckup of epic emotional proportions. Maybe one day I will change my mind, but so far after 43 years on this Earth I am still dead-set against ever having a baby. Having a kid would be a giant bunch of crap! Doug has not had a kid yet, and he is 39 years old. Jason and Holly already pumped out one kiddo, but they have a girl so chances are that ain't gonna carry on the family name. I guess Nadia could grow up and have a boy and not get married and use her own last name, but come on what are the odds of that? I'm sure she will get married and have a new last name at some point in her life. Hopefully this boy they have does grow up to have more kids, but I guess I am like Morla from The Neverending Story...
I am happy for Jason and Holly. I am happy with my no-kid having life, and I am happy for their kid-having life. Even better they only live 3 or 4 miles from Mom and Dad now so that will give Mom something to do in her soon-to-be retirement years. Dad will just go hunting and fishing, but I don't ever see Mom pursing a passion outside of her work so boom now she is all set. I bet Dad is happy to have grandkids as well, but he is probably happier going deer hunting than he is playing dolls with Nadia. I know I would be! I texted Jason Monday night, and that is the quote of the month. Jason: "Havin a little baby boy we cant
believe it holly thought for sure it was going to be a girl!" AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Then he also sent me a picture of a massive buck that he recently shot, but my phone is too bootleg to even see the photo properly or to get it onto this bootleg site that no one will ever read. What a bunch of crap! Our family has a great history, and I am a little sad that I am too selfish to have kids. There really is no other way to spin it other than to call it what it is, selfish. I just don't want to take the time to deal with a kid. When I am old and crusty I am fucked, but thankfully Kat's kids are all cool to be around so I have my own great family. If she decides to haul on me one day then I will be all done so let's hope like hell that never happens. Her kids are better than any kids I would have raised anyway because she is a good Mom to them. She was like their Mom and their Dad all rolled up into one parent from what I can tell. When I met her the kids were 15, 18, and 19. Or something like that. They didn't need no diaper changes! Speaking of our family history, we spent some Time Monday going through some old stuff that I have had for seemingly forever. In a box labelled ART SUPPLIES were a couple different business cards. First is this gem, an absolute treasure: ^That business card might be from the very late 70s or early 80s. I doubt at this point even Dad knows for sure. I will say this, his bird carvings are fucking awesome. Dad was an incredible artist, but he decided that hunting, fishing, and firearms were his true passion and he found tremendous success in those avenues in his life. I have one of Dad's bird-carvings on display in my tax office. I am so proud of that tax office, and a large part of that pride is the works and articles from not only my father but also my grandfather, his father. ^There is no way to know how old this business card for my late grandfather is. 1960s? 1950s? Papa had his own art shop and studio, and he was a GREAT artist. He was a great man and I still miss him a lot. Same for Grammy. Mom's parents were damn cool as well, but they always lived further away so I was closer to my grandparents on Dad's side. ^Papa made this. It was in my bootleg little basement office by the gym, but I moved it into the tax office so it can be more appreciated. Since I gave up and am not having kids, and since Doug is likely not having kids either (I hope he does have kids if that is what he wants, but one time he told me it cannot happen due to reasons not suitable for this bootleg site.) Then Jason really needs to carry the family line. The talent that my grandparents and my own parents passed on down the line is immeasurable. Sadly I have wasted much of my talents. I'm not truly great at any one thing. At least not a master like Dad is and like Papa was. Where is that solliliqy from Blade Runner? I need it now, and then I need my own bootleg fail-trophy for myself... ^OK that is not the one, but damn it is funny AHAHAHAHAHAHA! I was thinking of the TEARS IN THE RAIN one that you can easily Google if you don't know it. Rutger Hauer Blade Runner. Now where is my fail-trophy? ^AWARDED TO MY OWN LOSER SELF FOR NOT GIVING A SHIT IF THE FAMILY LEGACY CONTINUES. WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAP! The pinnacle of my artistic "ability" is shit like that bootleg fail-trophy and things like this monkey-crap: ^Fun with Photoshop. Where's my psychologist gods damn it? Even though at least a small part of Mom and Dad must think I am more screwed up than a soup sandwich for never having kids of my own I do have to admit that I am pretty happy overall with how my life has turned out. I have a great wife, I have done amazing things, I have seen all kinds of the world, and I don't mooch off society. Humankind is probably screwed anyway when a giant asteriod hits us or when the aliens finally do take over and send us all back through the Stargate to be space-slaves. From that perspective everyone, well, either way it ends with PWNED so this is where I shut it down for the night and go play a little more Zelda before I go help Kat break down her karaoke show for the night. ________________________________________________________________________________________________
Monday, 3-04-19: Epic party at our new office
last Friday. Damn furnace failer. A few days ago I noticed I it was getting a tad chilly in the living room, and after I looked at the thermostat I knew immediately that the furnace was off. I went downstairs to find a red light flashing so I reset the thing and it worked fine for over a day. Then it died again, but the timing of that was much worse than the day before because it was 10 degrees and it was Friday night, late-night, so we were at Jester's. Thankfully I was okay enough to drive the 1/3 of a mile home so I got it going again, but then it died not long after than. What a bunch of crap! A second reboot did seem to get us through the night, but then over the weekend I have had to reset the bootleg thing a few more times. Gods damn it! Hopefully the furnace repair is not too costly, and if all goes well it will just need a cleaning. I just had to drop $430 on a rental-property furnace a couple weeks back, and that was a bunch of crap. The two things that always seem to be time-critical are fridges and furnaces as far as repair needs go, and I have a fridge that needs repair at another rental property. The door will not stay shut so it probably needs a new seal. I have my appliance guy coming for that at noon today, weather-permitting of course. My temporary repair at that apartment is some duct tape and velcro. What a bunch of crap! Hey it gets the job done and it not a bad interim solution. We had a party at our new property, an informal grand-opening of sorts for friends and family, last Friday. The party started around 1700, and nearly everyone who said they would come actually did come. We had plenty of pizza, finger-foods, great company, and a lot of booze. Unfortunately, maybe we had too much booze because half the people there ended up getting totally wasted by around 2000. What a bunch of crap! Debbie was the funniest when Kat and I told her to get some ice for her drink, and she dug out dirty snow from the bottom of the cooler instead of getting the bagged, cubed store-bought clean ice that was on top. She was so drunk at that point I don't think she even noticed. HAHAHAHA. The party was all kinds of fun, and no one seemed to want to leave so we had to tell everyone to GTFO just after 2000 so we could get to Jester's and set up for the karaoke show. Thankfully most of our friends did come to the bar and stay for the show. Only a couple people were too wasted to make it even to the beginning of the show including Katherine's new boyfriend. He had a few shots at our party and ended up wasted like Doc-J and 8-ball from Full Metal Jacket. I guess at age 21 he still has to learn how the hard liquor gets processed by the body. Hell I'm double his age and I don't even have that nailed down to an exact science! Our offices are now 100% operational with badass security thanks to Jason. He REALLY hooked us up, and I owe him bigtime. Our four new cameras show me this right now: . ^Obviously I have not even been there yet. Looks like I see footprints from the mailman to the front for the upstairs apt. No mail for our offices, but that is expected since I get about one thing a month there for the tax business (phone/Internet statement.) In addition to installing four awesome cameras for us Jason also redid all the ethernet and other cables into a neat and professional-looking case. I am a wire-nightmare, but he is on top of it all like white on rice. I wish he could have stayed for our party, but he has a family now and I know he had to get home to them. Holly is pregnant again, and if all goes as planned they will find out today if they are having a boy or a girl. I told him and Holly last week when we spoke on the phone they need to reproduce again and again until they have at least one boy since Doug and I ain't having kids. If Jason and Holly don't produce a male then our immediate family line will die off, and that is a little bit sad but not really because having kids would suck. A lot. ^Mama Fratelli says it best! I love that tee shirt. |
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