Trach & Black

Trachodon & Blackstarr yukking it up

Ghost Story

Okay I apologize for my last post, but I really do think all the scripts people are using in their blogs are getting out of hand. On with the next post:

As I was walking up the stair,
I met a man that wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today,
I wish, I wish he'd stay away.
    ~Unknown

A couple months back I woke up and was somewhat surprised to see that my dresser had been pulled almost two feet from the wall. Bleary-eyed and not yet caffienated, I decided the best thing to do was to just put it back and forget about it. No problem.

The next morning I awoke to the same thing. Again I just put it back.

And the morning following that - same thing. Now I'm growing rather alarmed and curious as well. I ask other members of the house if they had heard any furniture moving around in the night. No, they had heard nothing.

This continued for almost two weeks. Every night, without fail, my dresser would be pulled from the wall. I am strongly considering calling a priest to have the house blessed, as I seem to clearly have a prankster poltergeist messing with me. I am starting to become afraid to sleep in my room.

Finally, I wake up in the middle of the night, and catch my ghost in the act. It is nowhere near as frightening as my recent dreams and imagination have made it out to be. It was in fact... my arm. In my sleep I have been sticking my arm behind the dresser and pushing it forward. So half-asleep I get out of bed and move the dresser and nightstand away from my bed where I cannot reach them. The ghost was never heard from again.

The End.

Make poverty history

Okay it sounds good, but in my opinion its a pipe dream. As long as someone out there is willing to make a buck at the expense of others, poverty will always exist. It's nice to know that all you people with your white banners care so much. But please remove them from the right hand corner of your blogs. Kudos to you who have thought to put them on the left-hand side.

But the banners on the right side make it impossible to click the next blog button (that is if you haven't been so completely insensitive as to remove that button altogether).

and while I'm at it I would like to ask that anyone who is using clever javascripts to make messages appear in the status bar, or to have little popup alert messages that just have cutesy sayings (that I have to click 'OK' to get rid of), or soundfiles that play automatically upon visiting, or mouse pointers that have interesting effects... GET RID OF IT! it's not cute. it's not cool. all it does is aggravate me while I wait an extra 30 seconds to get the hell away from your blog while pages load.

Dan

Was thinking about my brother a bit today, I miss him a lot. I can't help but wonder about what happens once we are gone? In life Dan was plagued by such a large conglomeration of mental illnesses, that the so called psychiatrists that he had seen all his life could never quite put a finger neatly onto one of them. If I were to attempt to guess at what might have been his trouble, I'd say manic depressive schizophrenia with autistic tendencies. But thats just a lable. Sure he had his bad days, but he had lots of good ones too. When he was in school, they kept putting him in the special ed classes even though he was probably just as smart as any of the normal kids, if not smarter. The problem was he just didn't know how to interact with people on a social level. Especially when it came to females. But he was very clever, witty, humble... lots of good qualites.

It would take a person a good while sometimes for Dan to warm up to them enough where he would feel comfortable talking to them, and often never, as too often people would speak condescendingly to him as if he were a simpleton which he was not by any means.

Anyway, what I mean by 'what happens when we are gone' is more in reference to the psyche. I don't care to get into a big theological debate about it, I consider myself a Christian in the broadest of terms, have read the bible a few times, but I also believe in karma & reincarnation, which are apparently beliefs that are disdained by the majority of the Christian population.

In life, Dan's mind was plagued by a multitude of problems, and I wonder - did he shed them along with his body when he passed on to the next world? Does he now finally have clarity and understanding of this world such as he was unable to fully grasp in life? I really hope so.

It's still kind of hard for me to talk about him even though I think of him almost everyday. He died of brain cancer Feb 2001 at the age of 29. Don't you all start getting depressed over this post, as in a way, his passing I assume was a sort of mixed blessing for him. But I still miss him and hope he is doing well.

okay, the flood :)

I know I should have said more about it when I first mentioned it a while back, but at the time, it was all that was talked about on the news and in the paper. It has been a few months now, so my somewhat diminished short-term memory can for the most part recall only that I was very busy for a few months (thank you mother nature :D )

I can't say now when exactly it all happened, funky weather between January & March... first we got some bad ice storms that pulled down power lines and trees across half the state of Ohio (some counties even had to declare national disaster). But then it all thawed fairly quickly, and we got hit with the most rain we have had since 1927 (I'm quite sure I'm wrong on the year there, but it's pretty close - give or take 20 years)

Dayton and other surrounding communities in southwestern Ohio are fairly hilly, and where there are hills, there are valleys. And just about everyone living in the valleys ended up with around 2 feet of standing water in their homes. It was a mess. So I was doing a lot of tearing up carpet (and flooring in some cases to exposed joists), and stripping the bottom 2-4 feet of walls, and pulling out all the soggy insulation and setting up fans all over to help dry out the wall studs. Then put it all back together after it had a couple days to dry out. I think all that carpet was the worst, as 180 sq. feet or more of soggy carpet is very very heavy. The first house the home owners helped me get it out, but after that I just got it to the door, and drug it out to the curb with a chain attached to the truck.

I would really rather there wasn't a flood causing that much widespread damage, because most people simply don't have the kind of money to pay for such extensive repairs. Many people were insured of course, but a lot of them weren't. So for most of these people I barely charged them more than just the cost of materials (around 15-20% extra, give or take). was still able to make a good amount cutting prices because of the sheer volume of work that was needed. There are still a lot of them that haven't paid me in full yet, but I don't think I'll press them for it really. Just keep sending them monthly statements that they might or might not pay lol.

I have to admit I do tend to change my prices rather frequently - I have my standard prices that are about the same as any other contractor, but I tend to cut them depending on what I think the home can afford. I mean really, a single parent with 3 kids and a $500 car with 30-day tags simply isn't going to afford to pay what a couple living in a $250k custom home with a new BMW in the garage can pay. Maybe I'm too nice, but I don't really care as long as I can keep paying my bills & extra laborers when I need them.

heh

Ah yes, the blog! I haven't forgotten about it, but as uninteresting as my life seems at times, I can hardly justify boring you all with it. :)

If I could think of a topic that would be great. I would then write paragraph upon paragraph of meaningful and insightful drivel that may or may not be read by anyone.

I dont care, its fun anyway lol

Thanks everyone for stopping by though, its just I have more fun reading your blogs than taking the time to write in my own hehe

Oh! I am now a great uncle! My eldest niece just had her first baby. Wasn't she just born 5 years ago herself? Oh wait she's 19 now... how do these things happen? Anyway, My niece gave birth to a beautiful (if a bit pink and wrinkly) baby girl - Adriana Nicole. I went to visit her last weekend, and I'm quite sure I have never seen a more wriggly 4 week old baby. I held her for a little bit, but was afraid I was going to drop her, as she was squirming around quite a bit, making it rather hard to keep hold of her while still properly supporting her head. But she didn't throw up on me, so thats good :)

I cant imagine what I would call her for short though, as Adriana doesn't seem to lend itself to an abbreviated version. Dri? Didi? Not sure.

Going over there again tomorrow though to rip all the panelling out of her house (at least he ground floor). Looks like a big dark cave right now. I'm afraid to see what's behind it all. maybe I'll be lucky and it wont have been glued at all, and the walls will mostly be intact underneath (dream on). More likely the panelling will be hiding numerous cracks and holes, and will be not only glued on (and the glue will rip more plaster from the lath when I take it out), but it will be nailed on as well with possibly the wrong kinds of nails, and I'll have to go through and try and pull out a bunch of 3 inch spikes that are normally used for framing :P ah well I'll find out soon enough.

well, I'm gonna surf for a little bit, then get a few hours sleep as its a 2 1/2 hour drive to her house. She should just move here, thats too far lol.

Ciao

Sorry folks!

I been kinda busy lately doing a lot of flood damage stuff, plus been playing around a bit (or should i say studying?) this geek stuff is quite fun lol (web design junk)

Happy New years! I hope everyone had a safe holiday season!!

I really cant think of a single thing to write about at the moment, perhaps something remarkably clever will come to me soon?

Sorry if I made any of you worry, God Bless, and I'll try to stop back sooner =)

Messin around

Here I am at about 18 months... I just found this pic and have never seen it before, but couldn't resist sharing it.

I was getting a bit frustrated with the old background failing to load from its previous location, so I thought to attempt using the accursed Hello uploader to use this one here. Another thing I hate about hello- it uploads JPEGs only, and the old BG was a .gif, so I couldn't upload it here.


So I made this one to upload here, and maybe the URL will work better.

Banner ad for Runescape to replace the one I am currently hot-linking in hopes that it will load faster.
This image is owned and copyrighted by Jagex.com.