not fair not fair not fair

i work at a large plant in Illinois. there is a lot of fenced in or otherwise protected areas around the plant. there are also a lot of crop fields and woods around the plant. there are also some HUGE deer inside the plant. they do not allow any hunting of any sort, so all i get to do is look and dream(drool).

this is a typical seen in the plant. there where at least 10

more deer that did not fit into frame that were in plain sight.

there are about 15 deer in the pic. a monster all the way

to the right.

one of the many quality bucks to be seen.

notice the split brow tines. some what rare.

this one is an absolute beast. 15 points(7 points by western counting)

he is huge. there are also 2 very nice ones seen behind him.

another view of the beast. he is grunting a challenge in this picture.

no one accepted.

this one is big and has 12 points, but what makes it truly awesome is that it has 3 drop tines.

very unusual.

whos bad!

last night i was grappling with the big guy i told you all about, and i got him to tap out(made him say uncle) for the first time. i caught him in a hold on his ankle. i was very stoked but could not celebrate very much because he is getting ready for a fight next month and i, as his partner need to help him keep his spirits up too. but it was very cool.

stuff that has been swirling part A

lately i have been watching a lot of political stuff(have been for a while). the first thing i have for you is an observation. we have had many elections won or lost because we don't care about who we are voting for but who we are voting agents. i did not so much vote for McCain i voted agents Obama. when it was bush, the dems weren't voting for Cary they were voting agents bush. voting agents some one does not work. you have to have a candidate that you believe in. if you do you will talk about them or maybe even campaign. we as conservatives(i used to think of myself as a republican but stopped a long time ago) have a chance to turn things around in our government right now. the libs have shown what their ideas and plans are and most people don't seem to like it. granted that if(big if) the economy was doing well we would not have as many people paying attention. BUT, if the republicans put up a bunch a dorks(i like the term "democrat lite") , they are in trouble for the foreseeable future. i will not trust them at all(not that i do much right now). i want conservatives running the joint. i don't want politicians to play politics. i want them to actually do some work. if they get into power(and it looks like they will), and if they do not try to swing things way WAY back, it may be the end of the republican party. i will truly be looking to start or support a different party. what worries me are statements like i heard the other day. a candidate was promising to "scale back the RATE of increased spending." that is not what i want. i want to scale back spending. i saw where some city spent $250,000 to advertise the fact that it was facing financial ruin. hello! any body in there? the days of good ole boy politics need to be over. listen to the people. fix it quickly or we will try to find some one else to do it. it looks like your about to have your chance. don't screw it up.

is it wrong to think this is funny

i know i should not laugh at other peoples misfortune, especially death. but......come on this is funny and you know it. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39377851/ns/world_news-europe/?GT1=43001

i hate to say i told you so, but....

heard a news story yesterday. the stimulus bill that is helping our economy so much(i hope you hear the sarcasm in my voice, or in this case, my fingers), is being used for so many wonderful things(more sarcasm). a grant was given to a university. the grant was for over $800,000. what was the money used for you ask? they put together a team to teach uncircumcised men how to properly wash their genitals. yes you read that correctly.
with great projects like this, i cant imagine why the economic recovery hasn't blasted off. i mean, teaching some guy in Africa how to wash his junk clearly is a fantastic was to create jobs here in the USA(more sarcasm).
shame on you people for not trusting the government to spend our money wisely. you know you just need to give plans like this time to work. remember, your just a bunch of racists if you don't agree with how the president is doing things(sarcasm, sarcasm, sarcasm).

why the difference

There is a bit of trouble going on right now because a church has gotten a hold of several copies of the Koran(about 150 at last count) that they plan on burning. i would like to say that i agree that this is insensitive and they seem to me to be trying to provoke a response of some sort. having said that, they are within their rights to burn these books. i read a report that referred to the Koran as a "holy book." the government and the press has made a mountain out of a mole-hill on this one. first we are talking about a church of about 50 members. second, we are talking about 150 copies. they are not trying to destroy every copy there is. although they probably would if they could. they story is much bigger now than it every should have been.

my next and real problem with all of this is, how have other such acts been treated? i have seen video of people protesting the general conference for the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints, that have tossed the "book of Mormon" on the ground, stepped on it and set fire to it. why no out rage from the media or government on that one? why are they not worried that the Mormons will be offended and start an uprising? there are several million Mormons that are here in this country that have the means to organise some trouble. Mormons hold the book of Mormon to be a holy book. why are they not afraid of outrage from this group. i have another example. a church group had a few cases of bibles printed up to be handed out to the people of Afghanistan. they shipped them over to a soldier. when those in command found out, they not only said that they could not hand them out(which may be agenst regulation), but they confiscated the bibles. and what did they do with those bibles(we know there are plenty of people that believe the bible is holy)? they had them burned. why were they not afraid of the out rage that would come from burning this holy book. don't they know Christians world wide might be offended by the burning of there holy writings. there are many Christians world wide with the means to organise and support an uprising.
Why the Difference?

always get the rest of the story

if your martial arts instructor tells you that he has a student that is training to do a cage fight in November, and wants to know if you will be a regular sparing partner for this guy, before you agree, you should probably find out that it is the 350lb former semi-pro football player, college wrestler guy that he wants you to work out with. these little bits of info can be important.

It finally happened!

Renae and i have been together for almost 17 years now. in all those years we have been through a lot. On many occasions, she has told me i was crazy. On a few occasions she has told me she didn't want me to do some thing. last night, for the first time ever, she put the two together and said, "that's crazy, i dint think you should do it." i was stunned. is it because I'm getting old and she doesn't think I'm capable of doing crazy stuff any more? who knows. will i take her advice? probably not.

!!Warning!! Graphic Photos

There are some pictures at the end of this. some of them are ugly. you may not want to look. O.K. So i dont know how many of you know this, but I just may be the luckiest man alive. there are numerous reasons I could give for this, like, I have a beautiful wife that I dont deserve. my dad is one of the coolest guys i know. i have the gospel in my life. i have 5 healthy, rockin cool kids. but none of those is the reason for this post. some of you may not know the story so i will tell it. last year i took a week off work to spend a weekend with renae for our anniversary and to do some work around the house. one of those jobs was to burn the burning pile. i started to fire with gasoline. i have done this many times. after starting the fire i went off to do some other things. i came back a goodly am out of time later to find out my fire had gone out. i checked it over carefully to make sure. it was out. no flame. no embers. no smoke. so i got the gas can and went to restart the fire. as i was liberally splashing gas onto the pile i found out my fire was not quite out. the fire ignited with enough force to bring the guy from across the street out of his house(i was in my fairly large back yard) to find out what had just shook his house. when it went up. i saw the fire ball go around and past me. i quickly did the STOP/DROP/and ROLL. i thought i was on fire. my friend that was with me told me "your OK, your OK!" i got up and looked at my left elbow. reached over and pulled a large hunk of skin off. to which he said "oh, your not OK." i found out that if you are a burn patient you go to the front of the line at the ER. i was in, checked, treated, and out in less than an hour. the hair on my head was singed. eyebrows shorter(i had glasses on). eye lashes curled. but my arm took the brunt of the blast. i was burned bad, and it hurt. the swelling hurt more than the burn though. the pressure made it throb when i stood up. but what hurt the worst was the wound care center. it takes a special person to work at the wound care center(evil). they started off with a pair of tweezers and a small set of scissors and then went to a scalpel. they did not cut with the scalpel, they used it as a scraping tool. i just knew i was scarred for life. well here are the pictures. turn your head if you have a weak stomach. i mean it. Im not joking.

DAY 1

i ended up with the bubbles growing and eventually connecting into one big one and then popping.

top view of day one

DAY 3

Day 4

Brown stuff is a protein layer that built up. it had to be scraped off.
i did most of the scraping my self. did not like the wound care center.
the people were great it just hurt. a lot!

DAY 4
reverse view
i did the scraping in the shower. there was often enough blood
that the entire floor of the shower was red even with the water running.

DAY 6

DAY 9
this is what the bandages looked like after my work day.
i did not use the arm during the day. the fluid in just natural oozing
of the wound and bleeding.

DAY 9
it took about 10-15 min to get the bandages off.
they were stuck. had to be ripped off.

Day 15
I figured this is the scar i would have for the rest of my life

1 YEAR
This is what my arm looks like now. you have to look to see a scar.
i think in a couple more years it will have faded completely.

Like i said lucky. Blessed. Watched over. all these are true.

is all in how you spin it.

big new story. "U.S. pull all remaining combat troops out of Iraq!"
the story i watched made a big deal that we are done with the war. The operation is over. then they spent about 5 seconds saying that there will still some support and training staff left behind. the story i watched left out that there would still be over 50,000 troops in Iraq for at least the next year if not more.
i, like a lot of other people, feel done(or at least that we should be) with Iraq. i feel good about some of the accomplishments that we made there. but we have been there for most of the last decade and its costing us an awful price. a price in more that just dollars. we did good, but at some point we have to leave. the people there need to take care of the country we handed them(and i would not mind them paying the bill for what we did there. we could use the money). but saying "see, we left, just like i said we would" and not really be out is not entirely honest. i know we will most likely have a presence in Iraq for many years. we still have troops in Germany and that has been over 60 years now. but to leave 50,000 seems like a lot to me. it seems like 50,000 GIs could cause quite a bit of trouble(for the bad guys). it seems we have not done much more than retitling these guys(and galls)and changing what we are saying they are there to do. one of the reasons i have said that we should get out is that we need to fight of not fight. dont talk about it. dont make it political. defeat the enemy, and go home. but if your going home(for what ever reason), go home. dont say "we are done" and not really be done.

fat slow fat

it is a humbling/humiliating thing to not just get beat by you 62 old dad in a race but to consistently get beat by your 62 old dad. i swear, I'm going to run him down with my truck. we went running the other day and he had to stop and look back for me. he said "sorry, i forgot and started to take off." sorry? sorry? he forgot what? that i was slow, fat, or that i was there. i mean come on. he is 62 freaking years old. OLD. Old should trump fat. its not fare. i was sired by a freak of nature. i have got to get up off my lazy but and get into shape.

WOW!! thats great news

News flash! scientists have now developed a car that can be fueled by water.
the only problem they are having so far is that they can only use water from the gulf of Mexico.

am i the only person having trouble with the story that is being given to us about the oil spill thing? my BS meter has been going off for a few weeks now.

never had any douts

Ross's team(the one i'm coaching), just had their first game. a 10 to 0 victory.

the bat

my two older boys decided that they wanted to play base ball this year. we have already talked about that i know, but, some of the stuff that goes with playing a sport is equipment. sense they had never played before, they did not have any thing they would need. so i made a trip to the store and got a glove for each of them, a bucket of balls to practice with, a bat to practice with and some tennis balls(tennis balls don't hurt as bad if you miss a pop up and it doesn't miss you). well stuff cost money and a lot of stuff costs, well, a lot of money. so all that in addition to paying for them to be in the league was really adding up. then one day i came home with another bat. but, this was not an ordinary bat. this is a game day bat. its a limited edition, double wall titanium, demarini(brand name). renae asked me how much i had spent on this used bad and was horrified when i told her $50. more than the new bad i got at w-mart. i tried to ease her mind. that i had indeed had got an excellent deal. the original price on this bat(meant for little leaguers to use) was $325. she was still horrified. partly i think that we had spent so much on base ball this year and that a child's bat could cost so much. on the good side, if we take care of this bat it should last us through all 4 boys base ball needs. so really I'm saving money right.

OK! some people tick me off

There are some people in our country that are starting to get on my nerves. the other day, cinco di myo, i am sure i spelled that wrong, there where some kids that got sent home from school and suspended for having a USA flag on their clothes. i think it was for(the excuse used) harassment. so now we cant even be proud of our country on a supposed Mexican holiday. i thought the 5th of may was their Independence day, but it turns out that it celebrates a battle won against the French some 50 years after Mexico declared their independence from Spain. i heard a quote from some kid that was there that was of Mexican decent (he had no accent which i assume means he was raised here and might be a citizen) "the Americans where wearing and flaunting THEIR flags on OUR holiday." as it turns out the day is hardly remembered in Mexico. they don't get off school or work for it. it seems like the beer companies have propped it up so they can have another good drinking holiday. so just remember before you have some thing on that has the flag on it(at least our flag), to be proud of your country (at least if its our country) is not patriotism, its actually racism and hatred.

better than last year

so last years deer season was not good. if you'll remember, i shot my friends truck by accident. not cool. this years result was much better. i shot 3 deer from the same stand in 3 consecutive hunts. first a doe with a shotgun at about 15 yards the next a small buck at about 25 yards with a pistol and the last a doe with a shot gun at about 10 yards. the 3rd one i was asleep in my stand waiting for a guy to come pick me up for breakfast on his way to the house and a slight rustling noise woke me. i looked up and there where 3 deer standing about 15 yards off. as i got into position to shoot one of them came closer and made the shot even easier. i have gotten to where i can field dress a deer in about 5 minuets. after break fast i packed up and was getting ready to go home and asked if i could have one of the kittens i had seen running around the house. a cute little calico. i loaded her up and now we have a new cat. you have probably seen some pics of her on Renae's blog. all in all a very productive season. the one bad spot was that i took to long in butchering all the deer and some of the meat spoiled and i had to throw some away. that is very much breaking one of my own hard core hunting rules. you make shore the mead you kill gets used. i repented and said i was sorry for wasting the blessing given to my family. i hope its not taken back on me next season.

thats right i said repeat

we had the pine wood derby again this year and Ross's car won again. very narrow margin of victory this year. every heat is best 2 out of 3 and many of the races had to do all three runs. but he took it the whole way out. still no special reward for the winner. in fact the fist child to get eliminated got their pick of the awards, which was a picture of a real car. so in some ways you were rewarded for losing first. ross won the thin and got last choice of the pictures. he still had a good time though. mark will be doing it next year so he will get most of my help but ross has seen and helped do 2 so he should be ok. i know there are some dads that are gunning for us this time. so ill have to make sure we build fast cars this year.

this may not have been my best idea

I have love old cars sense i was a little kid. i really went nuts when i saw the movie "Christen". as the coarse of regular events goes, about three years ago, i was out at the farm where i hunt talking to the guy that owns the place about a bunch of stuff. i remarked that he had a lot of cars around. he told me i hadn't even seen all of them yet. he took me around to one of the many sheds he has and i saw several. he had a story about all of them.(i love old people and all the stories they have its living history) then i saw one in the back of the shed. it had a bunch of junk piled on it and was absolutely stuck in the corner. after a bit, i said i would love to have an old car like that and eventually asked him how much for the car. he told me he would have to get as much as he payed for it. and again i asked how much. $250. so for the next three years i kept telling him i still wanted it and said that i would start making payments on it until i payed it off and would come and get it. well i never made any payments. then i started to joke, that some day i would just show up with the money and get the car. he always laughed at that because i was always broke. so this year we got a pretty good tax return and i begged my beautiful wife until she finally broke and i went and got it. it took 4 and a half hours just to get it out of the shed. another 2 hours to put it onto the trailer. it almost didn't fit on the trailer. the trailer is 18 feet long and the car is 17.5. it needs a lot of work. i thought i would start with some thing easy that would help me do the rest. i will take the wheels of and grease the barrings so it will roll easy into and out of my garage. the passenger side came off pretty good. i mean i had to lean into it the break the bolts(yes lug bolts not lug nuts) loose but not to bad. i went over to the driver side and could not get it off. i tried different things for the next two days all to no avail. they would turn but would now break loose and come off. i just wasn't making any progress until i got a call from a friend of my dads who is a car gooroo. he asked me "its a 1951 right", yes, "Chrysler right?" yes "driver side?" yes. "those are going to be left hand treads."

so i went out side and much to my chagrin, i had been turning the bolts the wrong way. i turned the other way and they came right off. i hope this isn't a sign of the way this whole care is going to go.

how time flys

so, its been over a year sense i last did a blog entry. i have become a lurker. shameful i know. so as expected i have much to talk about. i will talk about the most recent today. the base ball team. what happened is this. ross and mark decided that they want to play ball this year so we signed them up. a bit later we got a call from the boys and girls club to get some extra info from us. i was talking to the lady on the phone and she asked me if i had any interest in coaching. i told her that i would be happy to show up to practice when ever i could and would work with the boys as much as i could but i didn't want to be THE coach. she went on to tell me they needed one more coach otherwise the league would be a team short and all the boys from that team would have to be put onto the other teams making all of them be to large and that some of the boys would not get to play. i told her i would speak to some of the other parents and that we would figure some thing out. two days later i went to the meeting she told me was a parents and coaches meeting. turns out it was a coach's meeting. i went to sign in found my name on the list and next to my name was the word COACH. i guess to her "we will figure some thing out" meant, yes i would love to coach. so now I'm the coach of rosses team. we had our first practice last night. the first thing we had to do was go over the "players code of conduct" and have the boys all sign off that they herd and understood. i then dismissed to boys to go play catch while i talked to there parents. i went over some spectator rules with them, like no swearing, no arguing balls and strikes and , talk nice to the kids. when i got done with that i told the parents i was happy to be the coach and that if any of them had any questions. ideas or constructive criticism i would be happy to talk for as long as they wanted about what ever they wanted. i then went on to say "but if you have any complaints, don't bother to call, i don't want to hear about it. if your just going to try to bark at me it will end up not being pleasant for either of up." then i had the kids spread out on the field and we had batting practice. no joke, it started raining withing 30 seconds of me trowing the last pitch for the last kid. i hope i don't make a complete fool of my self.