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.

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