Remember when I said I was going to move the blog under the main page, I lied. Or rather, I changed my mind. I’m going to leave it right where it’s at /log. I mean, it’s a blog, it should be off on the side and the main page should be something flashy and cool. Now I just need to come up with something flashy and cool. Maybe I’ll even put up some more pages.

I’m a big fan of the way my posts get imported into Facebook with that giant RSS feed logo or my PSN card. Makes every update doubly annoying. Gotta figure out how that works/why it’s happening and make it stop. And I didn’t really do anything, but the twitter posts are getting imported once again.

My brother picked up a PS3, and unlike when he had a Xbox he’s online with it. I’m thinking I’ll be getting my football on… nope, not gonna happen. He doesn’t want to buy Madden 10, he’s going to wait for Madden 11 to come out next August. That’ll work nicely for me, in that Kevin and Jay have probably decided never to buy a Madden game again. Without them I won’t have the leverage I need to get Denis to buy next year’s game. Joel might be coerced in if everybody else was playing, but without them, it ain’t gonna happen. So all my football dreams are shattered. It’ll probably end up being me and my bro playing Madden come next year… I love it when a plan comes together.

Zachary is involved with a girl now, according to his Facebook page, I have no other details. Haven’t heard anything more about Tyler and his lady friend, beyond him wanting to borrow the car. Karin… yeah, I don’t know what she’s up to. Kirra is making noises about coming to stay with us, she’s saying end of April, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Rascal (Crooktail) is doing better, swelling is gone and he’s actually got some flick in his tail at this point, but it does have a nice crook in it about an inch-and-a-half from the base. I keep meaning to take a picture, but I’m lazy and forgetful.

Tasha and I have decided not to move. We’re going to stay put for another year. We’re in a nice enough place and the rent isn’t going up all that much. It’s mostly a financial decision, seems like the bills always roll in when you’re saving your pennies for something. We  don’t hate it here, we’d like a house, but Tasha is just getting regular paychecks again and we’re going to just sit tight for another year. As a plus, none of our friends will have to relearn where we live. I am toying with the idea of getting a second carport, it’s silly but I think the one next to us is available and that’d be almost like having a two car garage and as such my bike wouldn’t be nearly as crowded and I wouldn’t have to worry about the neighbors bumping my car.

That’s it for now.

Michigan tax refund has arrived, it ain’t much, but it’s here and that means the Federal refund can’t be far behind. Only took 9-days, electronic filing and direct deposit are both good things.

And it’s payday. Gotta love that.

Rascal is doing better, still lots of swelling and he’s still sore despite the medicine. I think he’s actually more distressed about taking the medicine every 8-hours than he is about the tail. Funny thing is that after we give him the medicine he foams at the mouth for 5-minutes. I tried to get a picture, but he ran off and drooled under the bed.

Rascal, one of our two cats, broke his tail today while we were at work. I figure it happened one of two ways, either he didn’t make the jump up onto the kitchen countertop and landed on it, or the dog got a little too physical while they were playing (they do that, it’s quite amusing watching them chase each other around).

I came home, hopped on the computer and started checking email. The cat jumped up on the desk, as he always does, and sat right in front of the monitor. I picked him up to put him back on the floor and he howled like I was killing him. It was quite startling. As he was scampering away I noticed that his tail was down and not moving around nearly as much as usual. I tried to get a look at it, but every time my hands got close to the base of his tail, he’d twist away. I knew something was up. I watched him a bit more and the more I watched the more obvious it was that there was a problem. So when Tasha came home we bundled him into the cat carrier and took him to the veterinary clinic.

We were there for almost three hours. It cost almost $400. And much to my disappointment, the cat didn’t get a tail cast. Wouldn’t that have just been amusing as hell! Apparently, they can’t do much with a broken tail except x-ray it and give you some pain medicine that the animal will fight-like-hell to not take. Whatever the case, he broke the tail behind the hips and as such there are no other problems, just a funny crook in his tail from now on.

What we wouldn’t do for our animals. Later.

Took the car in to Midas this morning. I’ve been meaning to take it somewhere for a while, and now that we have Tasha’s car here, this morning seemed as good a time as any. The thing has over 86,000 miles on it now and my list of things that need attention was long; mushy brakes, squealing belt, front tires and alignment, tune-up, and oil change. So I was hoping to get out of there for $600, but expecting it to be more like $1000. This is what happens when you wait too long for these repairs. So I was expecting to pay some cash. Which I was okay with.

I took it to Midas because, well, they just seemed like they were equipped to do everything I wanted done. They gave my car the thorough once over and brought back a slightly expanded list of things that needed attention. I pretty much expected that there were things I hadn’t noticed yet, so no surprise there. In the end, the oil was changed, the other fluids were topped off and the car given a tune up, the fuel injectors  cleaned, the battery was replaced, the brakes were checked (and were still good, but needed to be bled and adjusted to fix the pedal), both serpentine belts were replaced, the front end was aligned, we got a new set of spark plugs and wires, and we replaced all four tires (a nice matching set). It was a lot of work and I didn’t expect to see the car again until Monday afternoon, but they had it ready for us by 4:30 pm. It cost me just shy of $1,200, but we want to keep this car for another year-and-a-half or maybe two before we get another and just going on what I’ve had to do to this car in the past, probably this’ll be the last repair I do to it. So it was more than I thought it’d be, but not too much so and I feel confident in the work. It’s all good.

We got the all the laundry washed, folded, and put away, despite the fact that our new (or rather most recent, this thing may be 50 years old) washing machine seems to leak slightly. Which is very nice, considering the last one didn’t spin out anymore. We can deal with a slight leak for a weekend. Tasha did her house stuff, went to the store, and then made some very good nacho’s for dinner (after freaking out about the cost of the car repair). Apparently, stress makes her a wiz in the kitchen.

My Packers and I played my unofficial, preseason game against Kevin and his Lions team on the PS3 earlier. And the Packers (28) came out on top of the Lions (14). Jay was in the background, probably sitting on Kevin’s couch, and I like to think he was watching film and wondering how he’ll ever be able to beat this powerhouse that is Green Bay with his lowly Bears. He was hard to hear, but the fear and trepidation came through loud and clear. And Denis? rumor has it that he’ll pick up his copy of the game tomorrow. Not that it matters, he’s not very good at sports games or any games for that matter. I have no fear of his weak skills.

Oh yeah, I must acknowledge that Kevin has joined the Franchise. No more flack for him.

I’m off to play some Burnout with Denis on the PS3. Perhaps Jay and Kevin will be around later to join. So many games, so little time.

Later.

I’m getting everyone up to speed because I’m a slacker. I could put all this in one post, but that defeats the purpose of using this to keep track of my life… Soooo…. the next few posts are backdated. You’ve been warned

Took the day off work. A sick day, personal day, comp. day, whatever you want to call it. I was a little worried about getting paid for the day, what with the whole freeze on unapplied time through the first of November. But sometimes you gotta take a chance.

I slept.

Later.

I am beat today. Not sure why, it was just another day at work. Nothing particularly grueling occured, but I’m sitting here trying to write this and yawning like crazy. Very weird.

So we’ve moved in, bought some new furniture, and gotten the place looking pretty good. Other than the noisy neighbor things are pretty sweet. Well, toss that all on its head and give it a good shake. Tasha has a lead on a job. A good lead. A solid lead. Straight to  her email from her old boss lead. If she wants it she’ll get it sort of lead. And it’s probably a good job, no real details as of yet. Full time. Benefits. Doing what she wants to do. Good stuff. But it’s in Detroit. Not the western suburbs. Not near Detroit. Right downtown on the river Detroit.

It’s not the location, mind you. It’s the fact that we’re talking about a 155 mile commute. Two and a half hours one way without traffic commute. We’re talking about her moving back to the other side of the state  kind of commute. A what the fuck do we do now kind of commute.

When she called to ask/tell me about it (the job) I wasn’t about to tell her no. I know she hates her job now and doesn’t think much of this area and we did the long distance thing before. I told her if it sounds good send them your info. I don’t like it much, but I’m not going to hold her back from a good opportunity. We’ll survive and make it work somehow. If it goes through I’ll talk to my people about getting moved back to that side of the state. We’ve got lots of engineers over there. I’m sure I could find something, eventually.

So yeah, that’s what’s going on here. Best part is, if this happens it’ll probably happen as fast as it did when I went to work for Jones Lang LaSalle. I’m thinking within a month. So change is in the air yet again. You’ve gotta take the good with the bad and make it work for you. So that’s what I’ll do.

My boss mentioned that the Blessing of the Bikes is this weekend in Baldwin, MI. Sounds kinda cool, I guess he and Rob (another guy I work with) and another friend of thires are going. I’d probably have gone to check it out, but I found out about it late and I’ve already got plans. So maybe next year. Speaking of bikes, I’ve gotta get mine out more. I was gonna ride it a couple times this week and last, but every time it was nice I took Karin driving. Oh well, she’ll be gone come Monday and then I can drag Tasha out and go check out the lake shore. You know, now that I’ve figured out where I can go to see the lake without having to pay for it

I am so glad tomorrow is Friday. Give me the weekend, please.

Am I the only one who doesn’t get this whole Michigan budget thing? The gist of it, as I understand it, is that we have a 1.3 billion dollar deficit and our governor is making 300 million dollars in budget cuts. The rest of the deficit, ONE BILLION dollars, is being covered by the federal stimulus money. Not exactly a great plan to my mind and certainly not what I’d call tightening the states belt. What happens next year when we don’t have any federal stimulus money? And what about all that stimulus money that’s supposed to stimulate the economy and create jobs, isn’t that what we’re using to pay off our bills! I understand that Michigan doesn’t have the money to pay off the deficit and that huge cuts would be needed to get the books in line. That’s what’s supposed to happen during tough times. Right? And didn’t the feds put any guidelines on how the stimulus could be spent? It makes me crazy and I’m not going to talk about it anymore.

So I’ve been doing my research on angels, grigori (the watchers), and nephilim (giants). I’ve been using the Book of Enoch and the internet as my primary sources. And what I’ve come to find is that much like the bible, you can pretty much make whatever interpretation of this stuff that you want and find passages to support what you’re saying. I started this research with some basic ideas in mind and I haven’t found anything that actually contradicts my initial ideas. Which is good. I have found stuff that just doesn’t work, like the idea that the giants were 450 feet tall. Um… yeah, I think not.

Height-wise, I’m leaning toward the nephilim being nothing more than 9-feet tall and probably more like 7.5 – 8 feet tall and big. Og and Goliath, both giants from the scriptures, were 9 and 7 feet tall (based on a 12-inch cubit), or 15 and 11 feet tall (22-inch cubit). So it seems like that’ll work.

Story-wise Tasha and I came up with some good motivations for my nephilim and worked out the interaction between him and the other two characters. We also twisted a few ideas on their ear and got interesting results. If I couple that with some of the stuff that Doug and I talked about regarding my fallen angel and I’ve got a very nice skeleton to hang my story on. I need to finish note carding my scenes (and get away from a strange desire to edit up my own copy of the Book of Enoch) but I feel like I’ve got a good handle on this story.

Which is a great feeling, since I’ve had this idea stewing around in my head for three or four years now, but not ever feeling like I had enough of a handle on the story to really write it down. I tried once before with this idea, but all I had then was a fight scene and the idea that I wanted to do for angels what Anne Rice did for vampires. Not exactly the firmest ground to set a story foundation on. This time will be better.

Tomorrow is the writing call. I’ll let you know how things go and where we stand with our goals. Later.

This morning I took my youngest to the orthodontist, his little brother came with us. He’s too young to stay at home alone. I always feel odd taking him places, not that I’ve actually taken him all that many places. This is partially because he’s not my child, partially because his father has made it clear that he shouldn’t like me (this is bad because he does like me and that causes confusion in an 8-year old), and partially because he’s so damn demanding of my attention. The kid really wants something from me that I can’t give him. Or rather, I could, but I don’t feel like I can. It’s just rough. He sees me as his brothers dad and wants so badly to be part of their world (they’re 7 and 10 years older than he is) that he kinda latches onto me. This wasn’t so bad when I was seeing his mother, but it did make the confusion worse for him. But I’m not seeing her any more and break-ups are always hard on kids.

Funny bit, we were sitting in the waiting room, talking about I don’t remember what, and I said that I needed to get a girlfriend. He says, “Um… Ronn… What about my mom?” A little sarcastically and more as a reminder than a question. So I look at him and say, “We tried that, didn’t really work out. Remember. I haven’t been around since Thanksgiving.” That seemed to leave him at a loss. But hey, what else could I say.

Anyway, my son didn’t get his braces off yet again. He also got a promise to get the fuck kicked out of him if he didn’t get his grades back up. Yeah, I know I shouldn’t talk to the kid like that, but it works. Besides at 14 the kid has too much fuck building up in him as it is.

I’m going stir crazy. I took the rest of the day off and I don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve got a bank account full of money that I can’t bring myself to spend. And believe me, I’ve tried. I find I’m just obsessing about things I have no control over. Berating myself for once again letting things go without a fight. I’ve been to Best Buy, Kroger, K-Mart, the Chevrolet dealership, past a few rental homes, the pawn shop, and driven from Waterford to Clarkston to Oxford. Nothing. Didn’t buy anything. Didn’t sooth my soul. Didn’t make me feel any better. Now I’m sitting here in front of the computer trying to put up a post that doesn’t say what I want to say and still says something. I’m sure I’m going to end up back in the car. The driving and singing takes the edge off.

I mean I’ve got things I could do. I could go to my friends. I could go work out. I could go to the library. I could read a book or finish my late taxes. But no, I’m just beside myself. I mean I’m not sad or depressed or mad or any other negative emotion. I’m just bored, because I don’t know what to look forward to, don’t know how to suppress these feelings. Wait. Not true. What I need is to get a girlfriend and just move on. Problem is that right now I don’t want to do that.