432...

that is how many staples I pulled out of a ceiling in a 7'x13' room, and yeah, I counted. Yes, we're back to re-habbing. We kinda slacked off while Connie was up. (okay, that's just a good excuse) We were back to it this morning. Butch was down in the demo'd kitchen grinding those kabillion nail heads out of the floor, and I was upstairs pulling down a ceiling. So tonight his knees hurt (from kneeling all that time) and my neck hurts (from looking up over my head for 432 staples).

This is what will one day actually be a kitchen. I know you're thinking where can I get that gorgeous combination of lower paneling, textured paneling with the 1800's theme over top and to say nothing for that unbelievable flooring. You just can't get a designer look like this at lowe's, this could have only come from the 1970's. We do have an avacado green stove and fridge, maybe I could get something for them at the yard sale. So I'm hoping that after layers of Kilz that I can paint the lower paneling white and the uppper a light blue with a chair rail running between the two. Hopefully, it will give the impression of wainscoating. Okay, so I'm not holding my breath, but it will look a whole lot better than this crap. The drywalled wall is where the cabinets are going to be, with the sink under the window. The stove will be in about the space now occupied by that darling rolling table and precious table lamp. It truly is amazing what crap people leave behind when they move.

Off to refill the ice in Butch's ice pack and to meet up with Dr Bacardi.

A visit from Panama City Connie

Butch's sister Connie from Panama City Fla is up here for a visit. She surprised Miss V, who had no idea she was here.

My little buddy Alex (V's grandson) wanted to use my camera, and he took these pictures:

Connie and Miss Mary (Bless her heart----Now, don't get me started!!)

A serious picture of Butch. If he would only wear something that didn't have FORD on it!

This is my buddy Alex and his mom Tina.

While the girls were up here, they did a ton of running around. Connie, of course, can't find hog maw in Fla. (go figure) so she buys 6 or so of them and carts them, and hominy home to Panama City. If you don't know what hog maw is, trust me, you don't want to know. Or, you could be brave and look it up. yuck is all I can say.
On Fathers day we had a big cook-out and Daren and Wanda and Christopher and his family came over. Miss V and R were there as well as the Fla girls. We ate, we drank, we told stories, and we threw some bocce. It was a beautiful day out and we enjoyed it immensely.

The girls were off first thing this morning to head to West Virginia for Mary, and then off to Panama City for Connie later in the week. Safe travels!

In the yard again

This is Butch tending to his hollyhock he planted across the road (along with the mint).

The next day, it was cleared by the guy who owns it. The triplets that live on the next road were starting to ride their motorbikes on it again, and they won't listen to the stay off my property, so he bulldozed it all. Damn brats.

Here is a picture of the peonie bush in bloom.

Hanging out

Not much going on lately, so I've been slacking on the entries.

Had a yard sale last weekend. Well, I guess I should say Miss V had a yard sale and I joined in. Believe it or not, I have never had a yard sale. Never even been to one. I know, it's hard to believe, but I do all I can to avoid them at all costs. There is no way I'm going to find some great treasure that the owner doesn't know about-ala Antiques Roadshow, and I have enough junk of my own. Hell, we moved two houses into one-we have 2 of almost everything. So we carted our crap, er, um-treasures over to V's. She helped me price things-how would I possibly know that a mismatched coffee cup would cost 10 cents. Well, Saturday comes bright and ungodly early I stumble over there and we proceed to "yard sale!" Let me tell you, people did not buy nearly enough crap. Butch had said, Don't bring anything home. If you have anything left, take it to Goodwill. There must have been hundreds of yard sales that day. There were entire communities that were one big yard sale. We didn't stand a chance back in her neighborhood. I made all of about 30 bucks and a sunburn. I think we're going to try having it at our house early in September. (after all, 2 races and a week at the beach in September are just not enough to do) We'll see if we have better luck here. I can't believe it was even my idea-I'm an idiot, what can I say.
We've also been working on renovating the other half of the Ringold street double house. We've got the kitchen gutted, and the dry wall hung. Next we have to work on grinding down the 4,000 nails that some dumas thought was the correct way to install the damn floor. We can't lay anything over them, cause they come right through. Oh, but the good news.....we bought a paint sprayer! You know this makes the painter happy. Got a great deal on a big Wagner-normally $198 marked down to $149, marked down to $99 as they were getting a new model and needed to move this one. Can't wait to see how much trouble I , um, I mean the painter can get into with that! Hey, all the carpets and everything is going to be torn out, so how bad could I be? I'll get back to you on that one....
Butch is doing his best to help stimulate the economy buy spending his government check on a new beer refrigerator for the garage. The old one was just so "inefficient", this will just save us a bunch of money in electric. uuum hmmm. He's out changing the door hinges on it now. Funny how that can make someone so happy.

gotta run...

Chirp Chirp

says the little birds.

Burp says Biscuit the cat.

Okay, I was going to tell you about the silly-assed robin that built a nest in one of our little blue spruces. I tore the nest out once and she built it again and did this.....



awwwww isn't that cute. Except that I was not climbing a tree when I took this picture. That's standing on the ground shooting down into the tree. See some foreshadowing here? So, for a couple of weeks when I mowed back there, she would fly out and sit in the liliac behind us and cluck at me like crazy. I'd try to mow around it as quick as I could. A week or two ago, Butch heard some chirping and looked in to find one baby robin mouth begging for food. A couple of days went by and I was out mowing again, and this is what I saw.....

three little birds chirping at me. Don't know what happened to four, there are always egg shells all over the ground here.
So I'm out mowing today and I do my donuts around that little blue spruce, and peek in and all I see is feathers. Big mommy feathers everywhere, and little bits of baby down. It was like saying Biscuits (the neighborhood cat) was here. I motioned to Butch that the birds were gone and his comment was "Wondered how long it would be before they were kitty breakfast" .

I know, I know, it's nature.
Rats.
Damn cat.

No Disney ending here.

Bonanza Extravaganza!

The firefighters in the tri-state area here put on a huge shindig this time each year. If you buy a raffle ticket for $100 you get to go. Or a $20 guest. This is a massive raffle. On Friday night, they call 15 $1,000 winners (must be present to win). On Saturday, they have the big raffle. Your 4 digit ticket number can get you unbelievable prizes. They pull numbers from a lottery machine every 5 minutes. The crappiest prize is $1000. Course, your odds are 1 in 9999. I'll still go for it. They gave away 3 Harleys, a Tahoe, an Avalanche, a Corvette, an Impala SS, Travel trailers and a pick up of some kind I don't remember. They didn't have any 4 wheelers this year. They do that with the raffle money. They make the REAL money in the gaming tent. People are crazy with blowing their money on fish bowls. (I never knew what a fish bowl was until I moved up here-hey, they didn't know what matzo ball soup was) They had any kind of spin the wheel you can imagine. But the real draw, is that for 10 bucks, you get a bottomless beer mug, for the entire weekend. There were some messed up people there! A bunch of us go down and camp there. We had a great campsite that James R had gone down and set his camper up on. That is, until the rain came. We were at the bottom of the hill. Guess who had a river running through their camp. Nothing like seeing Jimmy standing there, under an awning, cooking breakfast in his slippers standing in 4" of water and mud. Thankfully, he rung them out after he finished breakfast. We had a soggy but great fun weekend.
No pictures were taken to protect the not so innocent.
Oh, and Jimmy was the only one to win-he won a thousand. Butch and I were sitting in the music tent listening to a blues band, and eating lunch about 3pm when they started calling the next number for $5000. The first number was a 3, and I went "woo-call an 5!" and they said "5" and I yelled "gimme an 8!" and they called "8" and I STARTED SCREAMING "1-MAKE IT A 1!!!" and they said "7" and I said a whole lot after that, but none of it was particularly nice.
So, my number was 3581 and they called 3587 and I knew there was no way in hell that I'd get any closer than that. The 7 kind of fooled me too, all I saw was the slash and I did at first think it was a 1. dammit. 5000 bucks. crap. oh, well, drink another beer.

Spring 08 Richmond

okay, I'm late getting to this, but we've been really busy.
Here goes-
The weather was looking really bad all week before the race. I had every bit of rain gear packed and ready to go. Hey, we've spent quite a few spring Richmond races in the rain Saturday night, and racing on Sunday morning. You learn....eventually. We rolled down on Friday night, and spent the night at our favorite Flying J and met up with the guys Butch works with at Mack on Saturday morning. The day just got better and better weather wise. The worst we had was really windy.
btw, I took the camera but never took one pic.
The race was great, except for the squirrel wrecking Jr. I was glad Clint Bowyer won. All the newspapers and TV were saying that he stole the race. Nothing could be further from the truth. He ran an excellent race. Started like 31st and just methodically picked off cars, one by one, so that when the shit hit the fan, he was there to take advantage of it. Denny Hamlin just about stunk up the show. I imagine on TV it was probably pretty boring with the top 3 or 4 staying the same all night. I hope that they showed some of the real good racing going on back further. Like Clint.... there were a couple of Bowyer fans, one of them with us, and they had their chests stuck out when he won.
btw, I really hate that squirrel, bush.
I should have known it wouldn't happen. I saw Jr win his last race there at that prudy little track, and I really thought we might see him win this one. damn squirrel... and that's the nice name I have for him.