Valentine's Day

It's valentines day and I'm sick as a dog. This doesn't surprise me since it seems I always end up sick this time of year. So I finally rolled out of bed and Mandy had made breakfast. She made this cake while laying on the couch post breakfast. I didn't think to take a picture until halfway through it. Hopefully I'll start feeling better by monday, looks like it will be a dedicated lay around the house weekend.

She's finally on the road!

I made her pack up and hit the road and told her I was tired of her crap....Mandy is on the road. 

OK, so that's BS. I'm actually referring to the S-10. I went and got tags for it today with no big problems. I've got 10 days to get a sticker and to my knowledge it should be ready to pass. Hopefully I can get that taken care of on Saturday. We took it out on its maiden voyage to my buddy Casey's house to see him, Heather and Gillie. We got brave and didn't even use a chase/support car. I did turn around a mile from the house to check the wheels because I swore one was loose. You get a little jumpy when you've had a wheel fall off (another long story). None the less it did just fine, there and back and even drove by a cop with no problems. We even went by Little Caesars and got a $5 pizza for old time sake. Ah, the memories. 

Jimmy Buffett tickets! Score - Center Section!

Like a well trained military branch we got up this morning and fired up the computers and printer planning a full on assault of LiveNation.com to buy Jimmy Buffett tickets for April. Economy be damned - I need my Buffett fix!

So it seems live nation and ticket master have split ties and no longer associate, I'm guessing they don't send Christmas cards either. My careful planning had me create a live nation account last night and log in a few times to make sure it all worked right. Good thing because frankly Live Nation is one of the most piss poor sites I've ever been on (next to my play list thing on the right).

The tickets go on sale at 10 and me and Mandy have 2 windows each already on the page waiting to refresh, on 2 computers ready to pounce because its takes precision timing of mouse clicks to get it all to mesh together. So with Disney credit card in hand we start clicking.....error. What the hell?! Error again, and again and again. Curses! We thought maybe it's because we are using google chrome web browser or selecting reserved seats. Nope, turns out Live Nation just really, really sucks. Oh sure, ticket master sucks too, don't get me wrong but at least you got the no tickets available screen or something. For 45 mins we continued the click, reload, error routine. Eventually we got through and I had some good seats, center section rear but pretty far back. After 45 mins trying to get tickets for Buffett, you take what you can get. So we proceeded hoping I could get through before something else crashed.

Now for serious concerts we have yet another plan. Take what you get so you have a fall back plan, then keep clicking like a mad man to see what else you can get. While I'm printing Mandy gets an excellent score and gets center section, down front 10 rows back! $$Cha Ching$$ We earned some more Disney points on the card. My last action will be to check a week before the show when the band and promoter release their reserved tickets back, thats how we got the 2nd row ZZ Top tickets. So now we just have to get rid of 1 set of tickets. I've got them on Craigslist and hopefully will them soon.

Stay tuned on April 24th to hear the story how some drunken loud mouth idiot spilled beer and nachos on me and I got PO'd about it and about got into a fight. Happens every time....but at least it will happen 10 rows back from Jimmy Buffett. Fins up!

Music and more music

Just for the shear spite of not having a myspace account, because I refuse to give in the the pressure, I added a playlist to my blog just to prove it could be done. Sure it looks like crap and doesn't line up for nothing but thats OK, I got it there. So listen to some mind opening music on my playlist from the likes of Todd Snider, Jerry Jeff Walker, John Hiatt, Robert Earl Keen, John Prine and of course, Jimmy Buffett. I've heard most of these guys on Radio Margaritaville and quite frequently listen to it at work. It makes a bad do go a little better and a cold day a little warmer. So listen up to some of these crazy songs in particular "Looking for a Job", (since it seems thats what everybody is doing now) and the story and ballad of the devil's backbone tavern from Todd Snider. It's great. Probably not for the youngest audiences but it's worth the 10 minutes of listening, pretty funny.  Sure beats listening to most anything on the radio today.

Polishing the wheels

Well with the break through of the headlights finally being wired up I figured I'd better get the ol' girl back into shape. So I vacuumed out the inside and put the center console back together. I'm about positive I cleaned this truck before I parked it but somehow the entire inside was just nasty. That will be an entirely different story and well get to that later. On to the wheels.

First, I'd just like to shake the man's hand that invented the Mother's Powerball and billet aluminum polish. Wow. I can't even begin to tell you the difference. I thought these wheels looked pretty good to start with but once I put the polish to them and the power ball it just cleaned them right up. I could probably put some more time into them but they'll look good enough for me. I'm not trying to sale them or win a car show just yet so they'll do.

This is the before, pretty shiny I thought.



This is the after (obviously). What a difference.



I tell you it's unbelievable. I also have a fond memory of having black polish under my finger nails and soaked into every pour so now I smell like polish. After my last set of wheels I polished by hand in my college apartment, I swore I'd never have another set of polished aluminum wheels. I couldn't pass these up and now that they look this good I'm pretty happy about buying them. I'd also like to add my wedding ring has never been brighter!

Let there be light!

Here are the new headlights and grill installed. Hopefully the next picture will be outside and with a license plate on it.

Finally got the headlights mounted and wired up on the ol' S-10. Now it will just be some tidying up and she'll be ready for the road.

a postcard

To all our friends and family, reluctant to come and see us, we just wanted to let you know how warm it is down here. So we invite you to come and visit beautiful, sunny Fuquay Varina, NC.

Snow in NC? Seriously?

Yep, snow in NC. 2 days ago they said this was going to be a dusting, maybe 2". Well it came down good, shut down schools, places of employment and cleared the grocery store shelves of milk, eggs and bread in case there is a mass breakout for the need of french toast I suppose. Even good ol' Caterpillar shut down today due to road conditions. All in all we probably will have 5" of snow when it quites.  We got out and played with the neighbors, their kids, their new Siberian Husky pup, another neighbor and their kid's and yet another neighborhood kid. We had a good time with 7 kids, 5 adults and a dog. Myself, I really enjoyed watching the dog bounce through the snow more than anything, I've seen kids play in the snow. I don't have a dog so its fun to watch him play around. Especially being in his element. Then sometime or another all the kids decide it's time to "get Scott" so I've got kids hanging off me every which way. We had fun and thank goodness I had goggles. 

Mandy also wanted me to add that Friday it's supposed to be 60.

This is our back porch. This was the biggest drift we could find, 4 1/2" of snow.

Mandy standing in the road in the snow.

Myself with all my ski gear. I'm not going down in a snowball battle without a fight.

WDW Blues

Trying to keep up on my blog better this year like Casey has been. 

We made reservations for Dec 09 this year for Disney since we missed out last Christmas. Not this year! We have a refundable deposit and nothing will stop us! So after coming back and telling boB  that we got our reservation, he mentioned he was going down in February, maybe June and September and December we got a little bit of the Disney blues. It's also freezing cold here and I'm listing to Jimmy Buffet on Radio Margaritaville (see Land Shark Lager link below!) and like a sign from above I hear the song "Everybody's talkin" wrote by Fred Neil with the great line in it that says, "I'm going where the weather suits my clothes" and all I could think was, dag gone I'd like to be in Florida right now or lower in the latitudes and warmer. So, to fix both the Florida and Disney fix here are some pictures from our last January trip. I'd like to take the time to tweak them a bit and get them printed out big, 13x19 or so and hang them up. Like the thousands of other pictures I have, they'll just reside here on my computer for a while longer. I'll get to it eventually.

Always let your heart be your guide...

Get home (or to the hotel) by midnight!

Their are 999 haunts....but we have room for one more.

You might be a redneck if....

...you've ever taken a camera to a liquor store.

To those that aren't in the "know" this is Junior Johnson. One of the fathers of modern day NASCAR. To this day he'll tell you the fastest car he ever drove was his shine' car! People, that's saying something! I've been 140mph on a track and he used to do it on dirt roads with the lights off...but faster. He's as personable a guy as you'd ever meet and probably doesn't care how famous he really is. None the less we stood in line outside the ABC store at Lowe's Motor Speedway to get his autograph (the 2nd time for me) on a bottle of legal moonshine sold under his name, "Junior Johnson's Midnight Moon". This picture was when we got 2 bottles for Mandy's dad and brother-in-law, which I guess is technically my brother-in-law too but no need to try and sort it all out. We didn't want to post the picture before Christmas since Mandy's sister, Julie (hi Julie) checks out my blog on occasion.  Out of my 22 famous autographs I have (I just counted them) this is probably one of my favorites. It wasn't like I stood in the sun for hours or had to stalk him to get it, it's just cool to have an autograph from somebody who is kind of a hero to you. Now if I can only corner Jimmy Buffett and Billy Gibbons, I'll be set.

Guess that Bruise!

It's time for another rousing game of: "Guess that Bruise!"

So I lied when I said we didn't have any pictures from paintball. Mind you this is Tuesday night, we played Saturday day. So just like some CSI work we took the pictures with a tape measure for reference. This way you can print them out to scale and look at them for a while to try and determine who's is who's. I know your just dieing to do this and may run a buy a high grade photo quality printer to accomadate yourself. If need be, I may be able to print them out on mine and send you copies. All pictures are of course copy righted, reserved, have applied for patents and may very well have been the 5th Beatle.

BTW - No, these are not nipples! Get your mind out of the gutter!

So it probably didn't take a genius to figure the top one was me, the bottom one Mandy. Mine was on my inner thigh, take my word for it, it hurt. It pretty much put me on the ground when it hit, granted I didn't have far to go since I was squatted Barney Fife style anyway. Mandy's on the other hand is on her lower back to the right. This was a "I'm hit and walking away" hit. There was probably some in the air before she put her hand in the air to declare she was done. There are 2 more above this but not as bad. 

I truely hoped you enjoyed this round of: "Guess that Bruise - where nobody wins and your glad its over!"

Played paintball again today....ug.

No picutures to show this time around but we went out and played paintball again today. My neighbor, Will, went with us and 11 other guys from work met us too. We had a good time and quickly remembered how out of shape we were and how a ball filled with paint traveling at 250 ft/sec hurts. We played about 5 hours I guess and in one game even included a lot of the local kids, the so called walk-ons. These little punks have $300 guns that run on nitrogen and shoot something like 10 times per second. These were also accurate has hell. So when you got hit, you got hit a lot and you damn well knew you were hit and if that didn't work they popped you 5 more times before you got your "I'm out" hand up. That lasted about 5 mins and we said, nope, not again. Ever been schooled by a 12 year old that has no concept his daddy is buying boxes of paint at $40 a pop and he's going through them like I do mountain dew. It's not pretty.

So at last count I had 14 welps about the size of silver dollars so I suppose I did OK. Mandy has a nasty looking dark purple bruise on her back where somebody got her good and her legs were ate up. Will did a little better but his back was dotted pretty hard. ....and yet, we actually paid to do this, we weren't forced into it. Crazy.

Land Shark Lager Widget

Get this widget!

I stumbled acorss this 'widget' while being on my favorite site, Margaritaville.com. This widget allows you to listen to radio margaritaville and has some wallpapers and a screen saver. Nothing to exciting but it looks nifty.

I finally gave the mouse enough money!

Happy Festivus!

I'm sure there is a saying and if not, there is now; it goes like this, "Never be surprised when you give an idiot or engineer tools and time." Sounds pretty snappy right? Thats what I thought too.


So to the issue at hand. I was handed the daunting task of planning our holiday lunch for our group. This lunch has been deemed, the Festivus lunch. There must be ten thousand people in our group and I've been planning this for weeks on end. OK, that BS. There are 12 of us including me so I basically just asked everybody, "hey ya'll, where you want to eat on Thursday?" This went out as an e-mail and so the Festivus jokes began. Well it seems my ignorance was challenged and they didn't think I could come up with a Festivus pole. So again, refer to my new quote and you get the net result. After days, (sadly days) of hunting we finally found all the parts required for my vision. I used some small pipe from home depot and found a cheap ornament that recorded sound at wally world. I took the ornament apart and integrated it (caulked) to a small box I built from scrap wood. Now the famous lines from the Seinfield episode play on command through said pole. Pretty awesome huh?! Well, I think 2 good sized paragraphs are about all I can say about a pole stuck to some wood and some caulk.


Another great man once said, "Your not showing your ass, your just showing the world you're in the lead." That man was in my wedding party and I think I have just offically taken the lead.

Mandy's Christmas List

Mandy's favorite place in las vegas.

Some much better pics

Here is a much better shot of where we stayed. We didn't have a tull strop view but thats OK. We were hardly in the room anyway. I can say if going to Vegas, we highly recommend staying at Treasure Island.



We went on down to the Forum Shops at Ceasar's Palace. We've been her 3 different times but for some reason we've never made it here. I can only say 'wow'. The place is huge and pretty awesome to walk around. We couldn't afford anything but wow, that place was huge. It's like going to the mall without the the screaming kids or teeny boppers.



Pete Rose was there signing autographs. It was one of those wow moments. Of all the people to see, Pete Rose. I wasn't a big enough fan to buy a $40 picture to get an autograph but holy crap, Pete Rose.


The ceiling of the entrance to Venetian. Wow. Not quite Michael Angelo but it was pretty awesome.




The Fremont Street Experience. Every hour on the hour it lights up and has music that goes along with it. This was Queen - We Will Rock You/We are the Champions. Very cool. There were a lot of bands and entertainers around the area some quite talented, all in all, very cool. That part was cool, The Fremont Street area was pretty creepy compared to the strip. Do not stray from the path, do not walk past the main hotel areas, it's scary. We got a taxi there and back....$44! Yep, thats what I said too. The upside if we spent that on the slots we would have only seen the same ol' thing, the screen on the slots. At least with the taxis we got some entertainment from the near death experieces we had.



The famos smoking cowboy.


Here is the video of 'We Will Rock You' shot from my phone and Mandy's so it's not exactly high-def. Still, you get the idea, it's a TV screen that 3 city blocks long.






This was late at night out of our hotel window. You can see the little bitty spec of the Sahara we stayed at last time. Man that place was small and smelly.



Thats about it. Sunday we checked out of the hotel and checked our bags for a few hours and went and walked around the Wynn. It's by far the nicest place on the strip. It has a Ferrari dealership in it. Also, several Ferrari's were in the area. I got a pic but it's not much to see. You can look that up just the same.

Now we just get to kick back and enjoy a few days off for Thanksgiving. "I'm thankful for....4 days off."

the fun is all over...

we are on the plane getting ready to leave. all the fun is over and we are broke. i forgot how much i didn't like reality. I'll be updating everything and seeing if i can get some better pics online sometime this week. TTFN

Mystere @ TI

us at the cirque show. had a photographer using, dare i say, a nikon. but its a good pic.

treasure island

just a quick pic of TI