since there's only a few people who actually read this, which I can't complain about really (I don't come here to read other guy's blogs either), i figured i would say hello to all 5 or so of you and let ya know all about the things going on.

I have spend my entire weekend and the previous weekend fixing up our house, and arranging to look at other houses. It's been exhausting doing it all alone, as my wife is pregnant and my daughter is... 5. So can hardly be expected to help me for any extended period of time. It's turning out great though. I love working with my hands. I took wood shop for all 8 semesters in high school so I love getting a chance to use it all.

Also I've been listening to one of my favorite books in audio form for the first time. "Anansi Boys" by Neil Gaiman. i've really started to like audio books. I prefer reading, but between work, school, family, and the house repair and house search I really don't have much time to do anything else. Hence why i forced myself to come on here and look at pretty pictures for a while. I made a series of very bad measurements and cuts and realized I needed a break.

As for the house hunting: we have placed a bid on a house we like. We had been told by the realtor that there were no other offers on the house, so we were pretty sure our well research and carefully constructed offer would be accepted by the bank, who owned the home, without much fight. We were wrong. First they responded saying they had multiple offers, which seemed unlikely, and they asked for our "best offer". We did that and raised our price to the maximum we were willing to offer for the home, that definitely needs work. The bank accepted us as the party they wanted to deal with, but would not budge on their overly inflated price. I don't like feeling pressured. I don't like to be toyed with or intimidated. It doesn't get the desired response. I entrench and I become very combative. Meaning that when our realtor emailed us with the banks ridiculous counter offer, my response to him was "Tell the bank our offer stands. With all the work needed we won't pay a penny more. They can take our offer or go fuck themselves. And god help anyone who buys that home from them at that price."

Now I don't really care if we get that house. If the bank comes back and accepts our offer I am almost inclined to lower our offer by $5,000 - $10,000 after our inspection just to fuck with them. But I hold out no delusions of hope that a faceless corporation will back down to what they may see as a perfectly reasonable price. So we are looking at around 10 houses tomorrow. No use waiting while we wait for the corporate bureaucracy to come back and tell us "no". Also we were not initially told that the home was a foreclosure. Which I do not like the idea of in the first place. I don't like the idea of gaining from another person's misfortune. But, as I often do, I ignore my beliefs when the good of my family is a factor.

Here is a quick bit on the progression of our place:


Also here's a picture of the water tower my daughter named "Henry" as i drove to work the other morning. The sun rising behind it. I just liked it, though it's a simple snap shot with my phone.

waiting to buy comic can badges for my daughter and i. while studying economics, eating pancakes and watching "hugo". after this i need to get back to touching up our place so we can sell it.

today i'm touching up the exterior paint and continuing to pack up the living room so we can install the wood floors. miles to go before i sleep.

I don't celebrate valentines day.

I may get my wife something small, but not usually.

I feel if you love and appreciate someone you shouldn’t be obligated to show it on a specified day, you should show it every day, and occasionally in random unexpected ways. I think our relationships and lives would be a lot better if we all kept that in mind

Like when I randomly showed up to my wife's work wrapped up in wrapping paper with flowers, and she unwrapped me in front of customers and coworkers. Or taking a day off without telling her and cleaning the entire damn house, or painting and putting up a glass tile backsplash the kitchen. All things done on random days, which I think makes them more valuable.

As for today, we're going house hunting. No flowers, no chocolates, just looking for a goddamn house... Ok maybe chocolate. I like Cadbury chocolate bars.

there was some family visiting LA this weekend, so we drove up to see them. and we essentially ate our day away.

we started off at Devilicious donuts in Mission Viejo. Delicious crazy donut creations... so of course we bought a dozen.

top from left:
pumpkin pie donuts, oreo donut, chocolate sprinkle donut, chocolate bacon donut, maple bacon donut
middle from left:
Hello kitty donut, chocolate coconut, graham cracker and nutella donut.
bottom from left:
PB&J, s'more, red velvet cake, m&m

They also have a cool mural.



then we went to fullerton and wandered around seeing various weird things until we went to lunch.



we went to lunch at Cajun Swamp, which as you may have guessed, serves cajun food. this is what I got, a small vat of crawfish, potatoes, sausage, and corn. i only got through about have of it so now i have a fridge full of extra spicy swamp bugs.


then we went through to botanical garden in fullerton and wandered for a bit


and got attacked by birds at a viewpoint near san onofre on the way home.

some big news this week. My wife is pregnant! Yes, my penis works and I am attractive enough that she will have sex with me, or she loves me enough to look past my ugliness. WOOOOOO!!!! now to start looking at houses, as our current place is not really big enough for 2 adults and 2 children and all my crap.

also school starts next week for me. technically i'm now taking enough credits to be classified as a full time student, but am also working full time, i've been writing more for my various stories, did some more patch panels on my car, and can now add current house seller and house hunter to my list. also friends and friends of friends are asking me to shoot their weddings throughout the next year. i'm going to lose my damn mind these next months.

but my awesome hot wife is now pregnant too. so that brightens even my impending mental break down.

Also I took my gun out for the first time last week. I hit the target, which was my only intention, and when I go back I can start trying for accuracy, as this last time was really just breaking it in. Also I've found that i should keep to myself at gun ranges as most of the people there are crazy, dumb, and don't like you shining a light on their not-well-thought-out beliefs.

i've been creeper status the last month and a half. just looking at boobies on here from across the room, while wearing a hoodie with binoculars. but the other things i've been up to include hiking, finding wild grown food, exploring the abandoned mansion some more, working on my car and writing. finally started writing again. picked up a few stories i started a while ago and even picked up my bass and mandolin again. but here's some pictures.



did some patch panel work on bettie. took care of the rear corners and one of the inner fenders. need to do one more inner fender then the lower quarter panels on each side.


a couple shots from our hike to the mansion in jamul. we found a new wing with what appears to be a bedroom where a large mirror was once over it.


then a prickly pear cactus, one of the things i've foraged for recently. made some cactus candy and jam.

can someone tell me what's so bad about socialized medicine?

$1,500 for 2 ER visits where they didn't actually fix what was wrong with my wife, even when we knew what was wrong, seems a bit ridiculous. if we didn't have insurance it would have been ten times this, for something that we knew was wrong but they wouldn't fix even after the second visit.

happy frickin holidays american medical care system. i hate you.

Dear hostess connoisseurs....

I feel I should apologize to everyone. It's my fault hostess is going out of business. I have not bought any hostess products in over a year. This must have affected their profits more than I had projected. I did this to slow my decent into obesity but I now see the error of my ways. I will be stock piling cupcakes and twinkies once I'm off work today. I don't want my daughter growing up in a dystopian world without twinkies.

been mildly busy. got my floor back in the rumble seat area of the car, bent the rumble seat deck lid to fit, and beat my first spicy food challenge. the blazin hot challenge at buffalo wild wings was nothing. 12 of their hottest hot wings in 6 minutes. i did it in 4 minutes 20 seconds.

first here are the 2 pics i took in the spicy challenge. I love spicy food, love it. I grow the hottest pepper in the world, the Trinidad Maruga Scorpion pepper, in my garden and use it on all manner of things. Today I had it on my omelet and on my spaghetti for dinner. So this spicy challenge was hardly a challenge. The wings are spicy no doubt, but the hardest part was just eating the actual wings. Most of the wings were little winglettes like you would find at most bars, but a few were pretty big, so while trying to eat them quickly I got the hot sauce all over my lips and in some of my facial hair. There were 2 other people taking the challenge with me, one beat my time by over a minute, but he did have smaller pieces of chicken than me and did not handle the heat that well. the other was my friend victor who puts me to shame heat wise. He could eat lava with gasoline on top of it. Victor finished 1 second behind me only because he didn't care about winning the challenge, he'd done it before.

After we were done eating we sat around talking, the other guy was having a rough time handling the after burn and was drinking a lot of ice water. i noticed my face was starting to tingle. I had wiped my face off, but didn't realize how much there had been. the tingle became a burn as my hair follicles began to suffer what my taste buds had not. the blazin hot challenge had found it's own kind of revenge on me. But I was able to wash my face in the bathroom and the burning stopped. I was a little pissed off to find that they did not have the shirts that the challenge winners receive, but the sweet burn of victory was enough.

this was me that day. not the hottest i've had, but this is what i imagine when i eat really spicy stuff


as for my car... putting the floor back in was simple enough. i had done it before. the most time consuming part this last week was arching my rumble seat deck lid more to fit the body. this took some doing. I had to clamp the deck lid and repeatedly hear the metal to relax it so that it would not simply snap back to it's original form. To get it right took several days of heating, turning the clamp a little more each time and checking the fit on the body. finally i got it to fit and can now begin on the actual seat pad.


i like fire

bettie now has braces

I didn't take pics of me measuring or welding it it because that's tedious and hard and i forgot. but here's the grill for bettie. tomorrow i'll cut out the section to make it fit around the suicide front end.