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So I'm standing in the grocery store last night with my most wonderful wife pondering deep things such as, why can't I have some Little Debbie snacks, when i found myself staring at an enormous wall of bottled water. Water bottles in every shape and size you can imagine, some from as far away as artisan wells in Chile. I didn't know they had artisan wells in Chile. One was even called something like Black Mnt Water, stamped with a seal declaring it drawn from the Asheville municipal water supply. Granted, we have one of the cleanest water supplies in the country, but, for real? Last time I checked, we were still in the grips of a severe drought around here. Water restrictions and the works. How does the city of Asheville sell something that really isn't theirs, that we need, to outside parties? I found the whole thing odd and I'm going to do some more checking on it to see what kind of distribution it has.
All this got me to thinking more, as tends to happens when the sawdust smokes! What kind of idiots are we, as the American public. Over 160ft of aisle space in one grocery store was devoted to bottled water. That doesn't even include endcaps and random displays throughout the store. How much of this water is any better than the average city's tap water? I, for one am generally not guilty of buying bottled water, but will on occasion or use it if it's given to me. That's why God brought along people smart enough to make something like the Nalgene bottle, something that's reusable.
Must be a hell of a margin on bottled water, because the competition is fierce! I counted over 25 different companies and about 15 distributors.... for water.... in a bottle..... I can just imagine some jackass commenting on how they prefer European bottled water over the American aquifers, or some other equally revolting crap! It's water! Not wine or not beer, water! Neither of those flow freely from our faucets, although that makes an interesting mental image. Hmmmm.... maybe all those "lifetime in a landfill" commercials are getting to me. More likely it's all the assholes buying something we already have at home. They're just too damn lazy to put it in a bottle! Just another symptom of a disposable society.
Wow, I almost sound like I should join PETA or something! : )
Friends piss me off. How do you decide when a friendship is worth continuing putting effort into? When does a friend become an acquaintance? How do you deal with an acquaintance that wants to be a friend, maybe even a best friend, but is not really interested in putting the effort into it? Why do I feel like I'm back in high school? I guess that's better than being in HighSchoolMusical!
What do you do when someone you care about, hurts you, and then asks weeks later why you're being a stranger? I sometimes wonder if I'm not better off focusing on my relationship with Cat (my true best friend) and just let whatever happens in my other relationships happen. Unfortunately, Cat also just had a falling out with one of her closest friends, so I guess we're both having to reevaluate the role of friendships in our life. All I know is that I really don't have the patience, time, or resources to deal with it right now. Life is hard enough to deal with right now without the people I care about kicking me in the balls!
So I'm making a commitment to spend more time posting on my blog. After suffering through almost 6 months of inactivity, I'm going to make a better effort to post more regularly. Maybe something like 3 times a week if there's nothing really going on, maybe more if there is. Cat is a driving force behind this to some extent. Anyone who reads my blog regularly has probably looked at her blog at some point. (If you haven't, you should. When you see both sides of the crazy, things seem to somehow make sense.?) She is committed! The woman is like a blog machine. I've already gotten a dirty look for being on the computer. She wants it so she can post a post about me posting a post, when I'm posting. Crazy, huh?
I started turning the garden over on yesterday, with hopes of turning another bed today. We (I) are lacking a tiller at the moment, so I'm going OOOOLLLLDDD school and turning it with a mattock, hoe, and a garden rake. If you read Fire Pit or Pit of Hell, you can see my praise of the mattock. Right now I'm cussing it. We have a fairly decent sized garden, and the thought of digging it out by hand makes me sore just thinking about it. I think it's something like 12'x70', so.... maybe 800 or so square feet to turn by hand. Oh well, I guess it will help me get into shape for spring fishing! We're still coming up with the game plan for the garden this year, but likely we're going to go with square foot type set up with "raised" beds 3'x4'. I'm not sure, but I am sure it will be entertaining no matter what!
I hope to go fishing this week. It breaks my heart that I have not caught a fish all year. Pathetic! This is the first time in something like 10 years that I've let my license expire. I'm hoping to hit the Tuck on Mon or Thurs with Adicus for some big bows and browns, if I can
remember how to set a hook. My next pattern will hopefully post this week. A steamer called the Hale-Bop that is absolutely deadly on stupid fish, particularly big brookies. I like to throw a size 6 or 8 in chartreuse, one of the uglier flies you'll ever see me throw. I've seen groups of brookies and browns coming after that ugly thing like a pack of wolves! Refer to photo below.
Well, that's enough randomness for now. Cat is watching network news as she like to do on Sunday mornings, and I think my head is about to explode over the new stimulus package. I had decided not to talk politics on my blog, but that has decidedly flown out the window. The level of idiocy and what seems to me as pure theft has left me no choice but to rant somewhere about it. But I regress, time to get in the yard and get something done today before the trappings of a good nap take over.
Sometimes life seems to get out of hand, at least for me that is. I'm having one of those moments right now and things are getting REALLY out of hand! Seems I pissed of the head ranger on my side of the Park, so I was shitcanned! Office politics has never been a specialty of mine, so navigating the minefield of what's probably the most political NP in the country was not something I was capable of. Obviously there's a little more to it than that, but I don't really want to get into it, I'm still livin it. It amazes me sometimes the stupidity of the things that I do without thinking out consequences or the effects on my life. This year has been a difficult one for Cat and I financially, so in my royal wisdom, I've now made a bad situation worse. It's almost like I have a demon that haunts me, waiting for success before he strikes. My mom used to comment that it was like I had some aversion to happiness, so I'd go and screw my life up every 6 months to a year.
Sadly, the effects of this are not felt by me me alone anymore, but also by my selfless, loving wife who has to put up with this crap because of me. An amazing woman no doubt, I don't think she really signed up for some of the stuff she's living with! But like the trooper she is, she just regroups and keeps on rollin. For this, I am eternally grateful. Will I be able to fix this situation before the whole thing folds up like a damn deck of cards? I don't know, but I'm sure as hell not going to sit around pissin about it. Life really sucks sometimes and it's not something I deal with particularly well when I know it's because of something I've done. But I do know that change is inevitable and sometimes drastic things are required to bring change around in our lives. One look at gas prices will show the proof of that.
Enough of all that depressing crap. It looks like we might actually get some rain this week. It would be nice to go fishin again. God knows I need to get on the water for a bit. On the up side, I've been goin out for more rides on the bike since I got new tires. Feels like a totally different machine. The new front tires make her quick and effortless leaning into turns at speed, I'm sure there wouldn't have been such a notable difference had the tire that was replaced had any trad left on it. My carbs are still being testy, the idle speeds variate constantly, so I think I'm going to take them off again for a total rebuild and then synchronization. They are probably out of sync and need a more thorough cleaning, so hopefully I can get around to that sometime soon. As usual, the task is made more difficult by some stripped screws that I need to get replaced once I can get them out. Cheap, but requires a special tool to remove the screws and ordering replacements online.
I'm going to attempt to build my own synchronizing tool out of some plastic tubing, 10wt oil, and a yard stick. I've heard good things about it all, so my hopes are high. At a $1.55 you can't beat the price and it's supposed to be more sensitive than other types of store bought gauges. Am I delving into some things I don't really comprehend, for sure. But hey, that's how I learn to do new things.
So things I've learned....
Keep you're mouth shut! It's hard to piss someone off if you never say anything.
Never under any circumstances ask if things can get worse. They can and they will!
Life goes on, things change. Get over it and deal with it.
Motorcycles are like boats, there is always something that needs to be done to them!
This in honor of the fattest piece of crap cat I have, Gizzy, aka: Fat Bastard. Gizzy was the first cat to come into our lives after moving in together. Cat (my wife) had another cat that she had retained from her childhood that hated me, so in my logical (retarded) thinking, I decided to bring home a little orange furball that I found at work when we lived in SC. Gizzy was sweet little kitten, loving, full of life and spunk; he would curl up in my lap after work 
each night. As Gizzy grew up he, turned into quite the mammas boy, to my disappointment. George (Cat's earlier cat) had been sent back to Ga. due to hating me with a depth that is not easily described. That's for a different story on another day!
Cat (my wife), threw all her attention towards Gizzy in the face of loosing George back to her parents (me or the cat). Gizzy thrived on the attention. During this time, we had moved back to Atlanta and Gizzy began to dislike me. Now I'm the first to admit that I was slow to come around on cats, but the worst thing I ever did to Gizzy was harass him. Maybe put some cling wrap on his paws for shits and giggles, but that's it. Gizzy, in his infinitely moody ways, began peeing on my stuff while we were living in a hotel, waiting for an apartment to become available. Worst thing, he was just coming of age and had not been snipped. Gortex jacket: $250, 40 degree sleeping bag $75, the smell of tom cat piss 10 years later camping on a rainy night, priceless.This was really the beginning of my love-hate relationship with Gizzy Monster (mostly hate). This cat has the innate ability to drive me crazy, it's like he has some path into my psyche and knows how to push 
me. Cat (my wife) tolerates some of the strangest things from him. I think she mistakes his abuse as love! If he's hungry when she's sleeping, he'll lightly bite her cheeks and claw her hair. She thinks it's cute, he tried that crap with me one time....... Lately he has been in the habit of crawling onto the table between where Cat and I sit so he's in the middle of everything. When he's hungry and we're up, he'll waddle through the house screaming and alternately slapping any other cat or dog that happens to cross him.
Did I fail to mention that Gizzy weighs something like 22lbs. and tells Adiucus and the other three cats what's up in the house. He is king shit. We clash heads because I won't bow to him, he makes me CRAZY!!! At this moment, he is sitting on the table staring at me, probably debating on trying to come over here. That's the weird thing, lately, he's tryin to be mister nice guy. Everywhere I go, he follows me when I'm around the house and the workin in the yard. I know he knows it drives me mad when he walks through the garden, or beats on the shower door while I take a shower. Takin that mornin moment..... there's Gizzy.
I guess lately he's been really wearin on me. Between 4 cats (2 of which are obscenely large) and a GSD, we're at total biomass in our little house. Everyone else is pretty chill, except for Gizzy and occasionally Scooter, who is known to drag in the random wild animal from time to time. But really, it's like no matter what I do, there's Gizzy. Sometimes he nice, sometimes he's not so nice. Kinda like a hurricane, you never know what's going to happen when he walks into the room. When he's being foul, everyone takes notice, even the dog. Gizzy plays no favorites, except for Cat (my wife).
So this is my rant about Gizzy Monster, the fat bastard, shithead, and myriad of other names developed in angst ridden moments over the years. This is by far my wife's favorite cat, although she says she just loves them all differently, but I've seen her cater to him for over 10 years, I know what's up. I can still remember the look on his face the day we brought home Ivan, our obscenely fat Russian Blue. You could see his jaw hit the floor before he reg
ained composure and started growling. When he met Adicus, he slapped him around a few times. Adicus learned that despite looking soft and fun, cats were sharp and pointy!
Despite my writings, I can remember being very concerned for him as we waited at the Emergency Vet ($$$$$$), because of crystals in his urinary tract that were causing him to pee blood. Poor turd. So as I said before, it's a love hate relationship. On most days he drives me nuts, but occasionally, he'll look up at me with those golden eyes and you can see something almost like love, but not really, because Gizzy feels no Love! Except for Cat (my wife), of course! Sorry about all the (my wife) stuff. Me calling her Cat, and her loving cats the way she does, things can get downright confusing. I've always said that if something happened to me, she would turn into the crazy cat lady on the corner that had something like 100 cats.
Well, I gotta go. Gizzy just waddled through crying for dinner. A final thought: Thank God cats don't have pockets or thumbs, they would probably rule the world!
