Its alive

yes i am alive. i have much to say. not time for it all now. promise to fill it all in soon.

free stuff

i love free stuff. well at least free stuff that is good and works well. recently my uncle, who is a bank manager, decided that he had out grown a couple of his suits. he asked me if i wanted them. i did but i was concerned because he is about 6'4" and looks to be a thinner person than me. i tried them on and they fit very well. the pants are a bit long but not a big deal. the second free thing i got was some Merrel mushrooms. they are very good, only grow in the wild and only for about 3-4 week per year. they have been known to sell for 30-50 dollars a pound. i went out for about an hour and a half the other day and found about 3 lbs. i had my mom and dad over for dinner. we all ate well. even my kids tried them and seemed to like them. i had well over half of them left that i gave to a good friend of mine. free (good) stuff is cool.

well that sucked

About a week ago Todd and I went riding together. It was great. I had a good day and made Todd have to work hard. I don't know that Ive every been able to do that before. now you have to remember that Todd has not been riding his bike very much. he has been concentrating on running, but i will take what i can get. we were on our way home when i saw some movement in the mirror. i gasped out loud when i saw my bike flying out of the back of my truck. i was just going about 70mph so no problem right? it only slid 40 feet or so. i was not happy. i can't afford to replace my bike. i think I'm going to be lucky though. it still shifts, i don't see any cracks in the frame, the wheels still run true. one of the arrow bars is bent pretty bad the computer is gone and, the quick release on the back is ground off kinda bad, but i don't think any real damage is done. what i am most proud of is that i did not say any swear words

story time

The other night went to Tae Kwon Do class. the kids did not go that night so i stayed around and had some fun. we did some high level kicks that most people cant do. Being the fat guy i had to work extra hard to try and out do some of the youngsters. i did o.k. and went home tired and hungry. when i got home at about 10:00 i decided to get some thing to eat(not supposed to eat that late if your trying to lose weight). i got a bowl of cereal and sat down to watch so TV. about an hour or so later i decided to go on to bed as i had a 7:00am doctors appointment. when i went to put my bowl in the sink i looked out my back window, and saw the most amazing thing. there was a car parked in my back yard. i stood and looked in amazement when some thing more surprising happened. a city cop, a county cop and, a state trooper with a dog walked up to the car. i went out to find out what was going on. i scared the cops because i got close to them before they realized i was there and announced myself. they sent me back into the house. after a bit i see another person walk threw and attach a cable to the car. so i went out again and spoke to the tow truck guy. i found out that the car that was in my yard had hit another car on the highway an then turned onto my street. it then went into the turn around past my house, realized it was lost, drove through my neighbors yard and got stuck in mine. we all gave the cops names, addresses and statements and started to go back inside. at that point here comes the driver walking up the road, still drunk. the cop that had the dog told him, "lay down M EF'er or ill let this dog go and you will get bit!" he laid down and they cuffed him. it was all very exciting(not really, but it makes a good story any way) i latter found out that this was not his first DWI incident. these are some pictures of the mess it left in my yard getting stuck and then getting dragged out by the tow truck. oh, did i mention, it doesn't look like he has insurance.

its about time

I'm a convert to the church i go to now. it was not the greatest bit of news for my parents, who are long time members of the church i grew up in. my grandfather on my dads side was bishop of the congregation for 20+ years and they used the pool at my grandmother on my moms side as a baptismal font. the reason i give the family history is to try to explain the extent of how bad the news was for them that i left the church. long story short, they did not take it well but, being as cool as my family is it went over as well as it could for such a big deal. my family rocks. every other family sucks in comparison. well any way, after some time, my dad, mom too, but it seems mostly dad started to find out all he could about the LDS church. after about a two year study he told me he wanted to start asking me some questions, that has been about two years ago. now at long last he has started to study with me. he has also invited me to ask any one who cares to to respond to his questions. so i will give you the first.

Does the President of the church have a direct link with God? Are his teachings inspired as the original 12 apostles? How is his selection made known; in other words, how do you know that he is the one that has been chosen by God?

Well there it is. I hope I can give answers that will at least make him stop and think.

let's take a walk, shall we?

Dana said something that got me to thinking and I realized that the war the Indians fought and the current one the Christian world is in now have some striking similarities. I asked why the Indians lost(like a lawyer, I knew the answer before I asked).The answers I got back where both what I expected and correct. They were out manned (not at first), the guns and the artillery gave the white man the technological advantage, they thought of war fair in battles not campaigns, they were divided amongst them selves, and Mary added that they did not love the Lord (they had spiritual beliefs but not Christ).

Lets look at it point by point.

First, out manned.

Indians- This was only true after years of conflict. when the white man first arrived there were not even close to enough to stand up to the native Americans. they (the whites) asked for acceptance and a chance to make a place for themselves. then their movement grew and their desire for more space and power grew. at first the Indian gave way and tried to keep peace but that could not last and some fighting broke out. by this time there were a lot more whites around.

Christians- this country has always been a Christian nation. you can hear it in the language they used in the framing documents "that all men are created equal and are imbued by their creator". I believe the percentage is as high as 93% of people claim some sort of religious beliefs. even if its not nearly that high, say its 75% (it is way more) that is still an overwhelming majority. at first the homosexual, pro-choice, pornography, socialist groups asked for acceptance. "all we ask is to be left alone to live our lives." but there movement grew, and now they are everywhere.

superior technology

Indians- the Indians had many weapons at there disposal and where very good with them. not only where they experts with bow and arrow, stick and stone, but they where masters of living off the land and could use it for shelter, nourishment, and as a means of stealth to ambush there enemy. but the white man had the means of sending supplies with wagon trains, the guns and other artillery gave them a major range advantage. they where able to shoot down the Indians with out getting to close in open battle.

Christians- in today’s world most technology outlets are controlled by some leftist organization. the news reports things in such a way that make conservatives look like some sort of throw backs. I remember when some tongans went and started tearing down signs that protesters (besiegers) had put on a temple. they where made out to be hateful homo-phobes. the left has most newspapers, television stations, and the movies. they are able to skew the information any way they want to put their views into the best light possible and make their ideas seem like they are the norm and mainstream. like the majority is not the majority. they attack us from every angle.

thought in terms of battle instead of a campaign

Indians- the Indians style and idea of warfare was limited to one battle at the time. if they had an argument they would go have a fight, whoever won got to be right and everyone went home to hunt and tend their crops, or move away in order to not have to fight more. the white man would loose, retreat and come back for more. they would do this until their resources where gone or their losses where to heavy and leave....but only until they had reinforcements and then come back for more. the Indians could not sustain such a fight.

Christians- we have seen over the years that Christianity seems to think in terms of right and wrong. once we establish what is right we can stop thinking about it and move on to something else. we concentrate on one issue at a time. we go have a fight (get prop 8 passed) and go home to "hunt and tend our crops". liberals seem to always find a way to regroup and find another way in. I heard a man talking about gay marriage the other day who said "we need to just keep getting the propositions out there. it used to be about 85% against but not the margins are narrowing. some places are down to around 55%." essentiality they are wearing us down. we don’t seem to be able to "sustain such a fight."

They were divided amongst themselves.

Indians- this may have been they biggest problem for the Indians. until very close to the end of the war they were still squabbling against other Indians. some experts believe that if they would have put aside there differences early on they would have whipped the white man right off into the ocean, out gunned or not. they were not able to set aside old arguments to work together and it resulted in there destruction. if they would have worked together against their common enemy they could have gone back to there way of life and to fighting each other happily.

Christians- Christians in the past have allowed other religious groups to be persecuted because we don’t like them anyway. what we need to realize is that if it is happening to another group, if we are not next, we are at least on the list. the only way to avoid being on the list is to join the opposition, but in doing so we have walked complicity into the destruction of our belief system. some spend a lot of time trying to put down other believers (they don’t have to believe the same way you do to believe). if we could remember that we have a common enemy we could join together, whip them and go back to happily fighting each other.

conclusion-

right now they have the technological advantage, but we are not out gunned. teaching and talking with the Spirit is the strongest ammunition there is. we are not out manned. we still have a 90% or greater majority, it’s high time we remembered that and used it. we can not think in terms of one battle. it is a life time campaign. a leader of the church I belong to said every member a missionary. I will alter it to say every member a soldier. we are all in this fight - if we want to be or not (rush song- if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice). while we have differences we need to be united when it comes to fighting our common enemy. being divided will only lead to the destruction (temporarily until the Lord returns) of our way of life. we must do what we can to spread the word of the Lord and sometimes that means standing up for people we don’t exactly agree with. like I said before, lets work together to destroy our common enemy and then we can go back to happily fighting each other.

holy crap! that is a lot.

Obama signed another spending bill to day. so in the first 50 days his administration has spent approximately 1 "B"illion dollars every hour on average.

yes this is leading to something

Why did the Indians (sorry(not really)native Americans) fail to beat the invading whites? At first there where more of them, they knew they land better, they where more mobile, and in general better fighters. with such a set up it should have been an easy victory. What did they do wrong?

am i missing some thing

ok, so this FOCA(freedom of choice act) thing. from what i have heard, its bad bad bad. i sounds like it lifts any and all restriction on abortion. any thing with no restriction is bad. for example, prescription drugs are usually a good thing(at least they used to be), but with no restriction you would have massive(way more than now) abuse. i have also caught wind of the government planning to lift the morality/conscience clause for abortion. so doctors that work at a hospital that performs abortions that think its wrong will be essentially forced to do the procedure any way. what is kinda(more than kinda) nuts about that is that the oath they take to become a doctor says "do no harm". the government will be forcing people to break the oath they made them take. it sounds to me like we(we, as in some liberal segments of our society) are trying to increase the number of abortions being preformed in stead of finding ways to prevent it. i was just wandering what you all had heard. like i said it sounds bad to me.

AND THE WINNER IS......

thats right, ross's car won the derby. he was very excited. so was i. i had never been part of one of these things and wasnt sure i knew how to build a fast car. ross's first race was against one of his good friends and the kid didnt take it very well. ross thought that now the kid dosnt like him any more and he lost a friend because race. after the official race was over some of the adults raced cars and the winner put his car against ross. this is the photo finish of ross beating the adult. they only stupid thing about the night was that all the kids got some sort of ribbon and ross did not git any thing that said he won 1st place. they said who won, but no special award, just the same as thing every one else. he was still excited when we left and wanted to call renaes parents and mine.

well, at least it looks fast

topside

Back
Its time for the pine wood derby. this will be both ross and my first one. i have found that its as much for the dads as it is for the kids. we had a lot of fun building the car. some one accused me of doing all the work my self. you would be surprised how much work the 9 year old did. he made the original design(i redrew it), he cut out the drawing and put it on the block of wood. i took him out to the garage and he used the radial arm saw(under VERY close supervision). he filed it down and did a lot of sanding both with a power sander and just using a peace of sandpaper in his hand. i did some of the final shaping and some carving on the fins(didn't trust him with carving knives). we did the paint together(5 layers of red, 2 layers of clear coat). i did do the clear coat for him. when he sanded the red paint it made it look pink. he was all worried we had ruined his car and he was going to have to bring a pink car to the race, so i did the clear after he went to bed so he could see it first thing when he got up. the hot wheals sign was his idea. ill take it to work with me today to weigh it. i have a scale that will show me the weight out to .00001 so i can make it perfect(the only worry is that there scale wont be as good as mine and might put the car over the limit). i think it looks relay cool. i think it will be fast but we wont know till we race it. the race is tomorrow night. the give awards for the coolest looking car and the fastest car. i don't think you can get both but if you could i think we would have a chance. ross and i have had a great time doing this together which im pretty sure is actually the point.

why are you messing with me

As some of you know, we have been trying to refinance our house. it is going to help us a lot because we are going to be able to drop our interest rate 1 hole point. works out to a substantial savings. the problem is that the bank keeps finding ways to mess with us. we started out trying to get a cash out refinance, but sense the housing market has crashed our house isn't worth enough to get any money out of it. so then they say, oh we forgot and you need to pay us $400 for sldkkjfiuvnsdvasdv! there has been one delay after another and our locked in interest rate is about to expire. then on Friday, we were told we might need an additional check for $380 to cover some outstanding closing cost that cant be covered by the lone. it all depends on what our final mortgage pay off ends up being. finally after all that we got every thing ready and set a closing date(today). called this morning to be sure every thing was ready and to get some final numbers, only to find out that there has been a hold put on closing because they are waiting for a VOE(verification of employment) to come back from my employer. so i called the HR department to find out what the deal was. i spoke to the person who does these things. she told me that this very important peace of paperwork, that has to be done so we can close today did not get delivered to her until yesterday. and i came by fax not through the regular mail. she was out sick yesterday, and she doesn't usually do the VOE's until Tuesday or Wednesday any way. i told her my situation and asked her to please please please try to expedite it as i am supposed to close at 2:00 this afternoon. she said she would. that has been over an hour now and i still haven't heard any thing. i hope no news is good news, but with the way this thing is going i some how doubt it. why do they have to mess with me. i just want this over with.

when you need that little some thing extra

Sunday Renae made a very tasty dinner. we had venison roast with potatoes and carrots. but as i was not feeling well and our three older kids were gone for the day to grandmas house, there was a lot left over. so, i got to have left over roast for lunch on monday... and Tuesday. well i was happily eating tuesday when all of the sudden i felt some thing stab me on my tong. i thought "well, some how a bone fragment got into the meat." i spit it out and realized that it was not a bone fragment but a peace of metal. on further inspection i figured out it was a BULLET! sense i work at a ammunition manufacturer i asked around and found out that it was a 40 caliber pistol round. now what is interesting about that is that no one in the deer camp i was in was shooting a pistol. we all shot 12 gauges. this is a 40 cal, metal jacketed hollow point. what is more interesting is that i helped skin and butcher all the deer that were killed in our camp and there were no extra wounds. all the wounds were ones that we caused. which means that this bullet had to have come from a wound that had had the time to heal, which means it happened at least a year ago. im glad i got it and not one of my kids or if we had had company over. or if i would have taken to big a bite and swallowed it would have been bad too. i wander if this is god telling me i need more iron in my diet. so this is what a bullet looks like after it has been shot into a deer. this is the view from back to front. sense it was a hollow point the front smashed back making the jagged points.

timing is every thing

last night we had a nice family night where well all got along well, had a good lesson, had a good snack and then we read stories after. i am reading the original version of peter pan and Wendy to the kids. when we got done lid fell asleep in my bed and i just rolled over and went to sleep to. i was getting to bed early for once with the intention of getting up early to ride my bike and get a workout in before work to day. i was just getting good and asleep when my phone rang. it was about 10:00. i had to get up, find all my stuff and go into work. it sucked because i it was a very technical problem that i had to use my brain (that was still half asleep) to figure out. it turned out that i had to find 3 separate records that where saved wrong in a file that had about 20,000 files in it. i got it figured out and went home. missed about 3-4 hours of sleep. it would not have been so bad if i had been awake already, but i was just out. i mean ill take the overtime money but how bout catching me before i go to bed next time please.

the "O" crap-a-meter

So i am wandering how many peoples O(Obama)crap-a-meter is going off. we were promised change. No lobbyists. getting rid of the good ole boy stuff. we were promised bipartisanship. i even herd some one talk about how they thought O was going to govern from the middle. well i already have a list of complaints. i was hoping that he was going to succeed in so much that his ideas would work and that i was wrong about how stuff worked, but all of this seems to be way off coarse. you've had Nancy paloci saying "we won so we get to pass the bills, get over it." the 2nd day in office he lifted the executive order banning U.S. aide for feign family planning. Many of his nominations have been bad, like the TREASURY secretary who doesn't know how to pay his taxes($33,000 in arrears). they went ahead and nominated him. there were 2 yesterday that had major tax problems. one of them for over $100K. he dropped out but some of the dems said that he should not because they had the votes to confirm him any way. this stimulus(i have trouble even calling it that, it is a spending bill) is just crazy. no one wants to run the #'s or look where the money is actually going (like about 25 mil to resod the grass at the Washington mall), or the fact that a huge chunk of the money wont be spent for 2-5 years at which point the economy will probably have fixed it self anyway. and i almost forgot the FOCA thing. look this thing up. it is seriously bad. from what i have herd it pretty much lifts all regulation on abortion. it would even force faith based health care providers(like st. Anthony's, a catholic hospital near here) to start performing abortions. and what gits me is how little of this most people know about. the network news is not telling us about this. if it weren't for cable news and talk radio we would be in the dark. on that there is major talk about reinstating the "fairness" doctrine. if you don't know what that is, it basically forces radio stations to have liberal shows to "balance" what is sent out. the fact is that liberal radio talk shows have historically sucked and not enough people want to listen so they go away. i wander if they will impose the same fairness rules to the movies coming our of Hollywood. for every left leaning movie they have to make a right leaning one. this is censorship. so all in all, i have not liked what our new leadership has done. but i guess i just some yokel who isn't smart enough to know better.

By Grapthars Hammer, were alive!

So the test was very good. First off all the people testing did a great job. There was the Housman Family. A father his 2 daughters and one of his sons(the other is getting ready to test for his red belt), another father and son pair, a collage age guy and one little girl. We had a huge panel of judges. Some of them old friends i haven't got to see very much over the years. As for me and my performance, well, to put it modestly, i was awesome. i am quite sore, but that was from their self defence section. When partnered with a tester you are what is referred to as a fall guy. and it can be as bad as it sounds, especially when you have a lot of big people testing. the idea is that you grab or otherwise attack them and then pretty much let them beat the crap out of you. at one point i was moving from ring to ring partnering with 5 of the 7 people. Luke(21 years old, 6'4", 210)threw me with a hip toss. when i hit the floor the whole room shook and every one looked over and said OOOOWW! it didn't hert.....then. so basically for about 2 hours i had 5 people taking turns hitting, grabbing, throwing, and holding me. Sounds like fun right? well then we got to the fighting portion of the test and i took my turn. you see now i get to fight back. we did 3 different types of sparing. Tae Kwon Do(like kick boxing only now punching to the head, you can kick to the head). Karate(its lighter contact, you can kick and use hands, you stop between each point, first to 5 wins, kicks worth 2 points). and grappling(basically wrestling but your are trying to get your opponent to "tap out" or say uncle). i was able to dominate the two(two minuets each) Tae Kwon Do fights i did. My combined Karate score for matches was 11(me) to 0(them)(i scored 6 on one guy because i had him at 4 and then scored with a kick). then the grappling round. 5 mins with the 21 year old i talked about earlier who also happened to have wrestled 4 years in high school. i tapped him out with a leg scissors to his neck. so if you haven't figured it out yet, yes i am bragging. its nice to have old friends that will bring you back down though, one of the other black belts said "hey, you looked good out there. Very light on your feet.....for a fat guy!" i am paying the price now for all of this. i am very sore. pretty much every thing hurts. my ribs from me being slammed into the ground repeatedly. my legs from doing so much high kicking. my neck arms and every thing else from all the holds and general tweaking i went through. and my bad knee is still stiff and swollen from...well being a bad knee and going through all this. all in all it was great and i will have fond memories from this for a long time.

sure i can do that, no problem

next week friday the martial arts school i go to will be haveing a huge test. 8 people will be testing for their black belt. i will be one of the judges at the test. that is not the problem. the problem is is that there are 3 really big guys testing. one of them is about 6'5" and 325lbs. he is a mountain. the other 2 are father and son and both are about 6'4". the reason this is a problem is that as the only black belt on the panel who is over 200lbs i will be expected to fight all of them and do a lot of their self defence. i will have to do 3 different types of fighting. Tae Kwon Do(which is the style we study), karate, and grappling. they(the fighting styles) all very greatly from each other. if it was just one i would not be worried, but im not in the best of shape(yes round is a perfectly good shape) right now and by the time i get done with all 3 i anticipate being a bit wore out. my instructor noticed me stretching last night and asked me "trying to get it back?" i said some thing about being ready for the test and he said after a moments thought, "oh, yes. well i guess ill leave you to it." and he just turned and walked a way. i hope that means he is confident in my ability and not "your out of luck sucker! you should have started sooner." i am quite sore from the added work outs and hard kicking i have been doing. do you think its possible to loose 30lbs by next Friday?

here we go again.....again

So I've started to try to lose weight again. i am up and down so much it drives me crazy. what is really dumb, it that i know what to do to get and keep the weight off. i just don't do it. all i have changed so far is that i have restricted my soda intake and i have lost 2.5 pounds in 3 day. haven't changed what i eat at all, and haven't started working out yet, just stopped drinking soda. i hate starting from scratch again....again. oh well, its my own fault so i should just shut up(not likely) and get to work. i did tell trent that i was committed to being under 215 before he leaves on his mission later this year. i started at 255.5 on Sunday. so about 41 total. sounds like fun right? Well maybe not fun exactly. Its going to suck. but i guess it like i told some one the other day, training isn't always fun(although some times it is), wining is fun. So i have to find some thing to win.