Last Day Of The Month

I just had to get an entry in today so I didn't miss a month this year. We've been busy settling in. We had my niece, Ashley stay with us for a week at the beginning of the month. That was a good time, but it convinces me that I don't want a daughter. I thought I was going to have to throw a beat down on some tattooed tough guy one night while we were out walking Moon. Lisa and I were trailing Ashley and Moon, this guy was sitting in a yard talking to a friend and didn't see us following behind. He whistled and was trying some (what I imagine to him seemed like) smooth talk. I was quiet and just watched, he never crossed the boundary but, as I was feeling the need to say something anyway, Ash and Moon made it across the street and out of ear shot, both apparently oblivious. I found out later that Ashley heard but ignored him and just kept on going. Good girl.

Quick Rundown

I thought I would put up a brief record of the weekend. I've been in Cincinnati since last Sunday training for the new job so I got to run home this weekend to Zanesville. I stopped in Columbus to see Bryce. Unfortunately his air conditioning was broke so little Edison was at his Grandma and Grandpa's in Mansfield. I had a nice time with Bryce albeit brief. I had a gyro from East Side Cafe. It was pretty good. I headed home and met up with and took Brent home, picked up Ashley's friend Abbey and brought her and Ash back to Mom & Dad's to spend the night. I was beat so I was able to go straight upstairs to bed missing out on my Mom explaining The Lake House to my hyperactive teenage niece and her hyperactive friend.

The next morning was the moment I've been waiting for. I took the nieces to see The Dark Knight. It wasn't a perfect movie but it was as good as the hype. It wasn't anywhere close to as violent as a lot of people make it out to be. Most of the real violence was out of view and it wasn't as bad as a lot of other PG-13 movies I've seen.

Later in the day Rachel and Ashley wanted to see Step Brothers and against my better judgement I went. The funniest thing about it was that it was rated R and half the audience were in the neighborhood of 12 to 10. It earned it's R too. And it sucked, out loud.

After the movie I went to visit my cousin Jim. He's been doing a lot of fix up projects on his house and it looks 100% better.

Sunday I spent a little time with Mom and Dad and headed back toward Cincinnati.

There you have it. If you read all of that you must be pretty bored, with nothing better to do.

Rush Plays Rock Band

My brother, Bryce, sent this link to me today. I thought it was pretty good. I don't know anything about Rock Band, whoever wrote the blog entry said they did surprisingly good but 31% doesn't sound too impressive to me. Not that I care, Rush still rocks.

My Weekly Ride

I posted this at my other blog, Riding, but I thought I would put it here too.

This weekend's ride was to Hannibal Missouri, boyhood home of Mark Twain. The forecast was calling for thunderstorms through the day so I grabbed my rain suit and decided to leave the camera at home. As with last week's ride in to Illinois I had to start out on I-70, this time headed west. I had about a 10 mile section from home to State Route 61. SR 61 is a four lane road that runs pretty straight through some painfully flat farmland. There's not a lot of variety in scenery but since I had a specific destination in mind I didn't mind too much. The trip up was an uninspiring 93 miles. The road was decently paved and traffic was light at 10:00 on a Saturday morning. The section of SR 61 north of I-70 was no where near as interesting as the section south I rode last week.

Once to Hannibal I stopped for a quick lunch at Taco Bell along the prerequisite fast food, strip mall road off of the interstate. After lunch I felt ready to cruise around downtown to check out the sites. I have to confess that I've never read Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn or any of Mark Twain's other works. As a result I didn't spend much time site seeing. I decided to come back some other time with my wife to take a ride on a stern wheeler. The effects of the past couple of months of flooding were still evident with buildings sandbagged and debris and brown grass in the low areas. This would actually be a theme for the rest of the trip back. After consulting my map, I saw that State Route 79 actually runs closer along the Mississippi River so that's the road I decided to take. Shortly out of Hannibal 79 starts up into the hills. The road from Hannibal to Clarksville is as fun a motorcycle road as I've ever been on. There are constant twists, gentle, high speed arcs and several changes in altitude. One long gentle high speed corner was especially fun and I let out an involuntary whoop after going around it at close to 80 mph. There was little traffic and ample passing opportunities for the times when I got stuck behind the odd slow moving truck. I also saw a lot of evidence of the flooding and unfortunately I saw several homes with the dirty brown mark on the side some as high as half the height of the door. It really put a damper on my spirits and made me appreciate how lucky I am.

Most of the rest of the ride was straight and uneventful. I slowly started easing back into St Peters and before I knew it there was I-70 again. The total for the trip was 205 miles. I've been doing long rides to make up for the lack of mileage this summer and last.

Please give to the Salvation Army. I know the Red Cross is helping also but from what I saw the Salvation Army was everywhere and looked to be doing the most in the areas without the media attention.

My Memorial Blast

The guys from Shaw did demo yesterday at Quantico. Before I left I told them to put my hard hat on the shot and give it the proper send off, this is the photo they sent me. Even though I asked for it I thought the shape charge through the top was kind of mean.

Another Celebrity Encounter

I've got another name for my list of almost encounters. I was standing at the security check point at work and I noticed some odd looking older blond woman with HUGE sunglasses standing there. The sunglasses are what first drew my attention and I turned away. One of the guys I was standing there with asked me if I knew who that was. Thinking he meant the crazy blond woman I turned around and he pointed out everybody's favorite crazy old pervert voyeur/guitar player, Chuck Berry. I didn't even recognize him. He gave me a nasty look and sauntered off. I think he lives around St Louis.

My First Find Of The New Town

While Lisa's away, the man-boy will play. Mark Twain Hobby Center is just the answer to my plans of turning our basement into a model building paradise. It's a beautifully stocked hobby store with a lot of harder to find kits. Quite a few are ones you usually only see on eBay for a lot more money. They've also been nice enough to place it about ten minutes away from the house. Now I just need to get my first paycheck, and a new couch, and a new bed, and some other grown-up stuff.

Tee Hee

Looky, looky!!! That's really pretty smart. At first I thought he was a cheap bastard but he did pay for the Pro account.

How funny is that? And John McCain*? Well, check out his pointed commentary on economics and foreign relations.


*And no that isn't Presidential candidate John McCain