Long time no post...

I haven't posted a blog entry in quite a while it seems. There has been a lot going on.

• My ankle - I visited the doctor after injuring it almost two months ago, I've got a torn Achilles Partial, but still torn. For the last two months I have been limping around. My doctor said he was shocked I hadn't injured it even worse, or torn it completely. An x-ray showed no broken bones. Now I have a follow up with Ortho Arkansas to have an MRI. I borrowed a walking boot, and am wearing it as my doctor recommended it. I'll find out later how long this will take to heal I guess, if I am gonna need surgery, and I am sure I'll have to have rehab. Frankly I'm worried, I'm coming up on 35, and my back injury and then this, it makes me feel like I'm falling apart. I hope I don't have to have surgery, I have insurance, but still there is some cost involved.
• My motorcycle - My Vulcan 750 is still leaking from a seal at the rear drive shaft. I had to take it back to the dealer, and they're supposed to be working on it. I really hope the cost isn't expensive, this will be the second time I brought it in for the same problem and they said it was nothing last time. It's been leaking SLOWLY on the garage floor and soaking into the tire. So I had to put down oil dry to prevent it from doing that as it slipped in a curve slightly because of it. I love the bike, it's paid for and I can't afford to replace it with a new one just because a seal failed. So I hope they get it fixed, and they're supposed to re-moly the rear splines while they're at it.
• My dad - His health isn't much better, he has his good days and his bad days. He's starting to get very forgetful, he lost his winter coat the other day because he left it somewhere, and then he lost his wallet in the couch and couldn't find it. It's worrying me. I love him, and don't want to lose him. He justed turned 70.
• My grandma - I m starting to really miss her worse than normal, the holidays really make me miss her more. I was out today and looking at Hallmark ornaments, and there was a remembrance ornament which reminded me of her. It said something about those who are no longer with us. I'm sappy, yes, but I miss my grandma. As I seem to get older I seem to reflect a lot on the past. I'm starting to understand why my dad and other people do that.
• Gas prices and the economy - $1.89 in Maumelle at Kroger the other day for regular, ALMOST back to pre-Katrina prices. Never mind that the stock market is going to hell, unemployment is at record levels (6.5%), and people are tightening their belts. Companies are laying off like crazy, no wonder consumers are getting stingy, when you don't have a job Christmas gifts are the least of your worries. I've got friends who have lost their jobs, and are going through this stuff right now. It's actually quite ridiculous how many friends I have. In my circle of friends it's almost like 50% unemployment! I'm trying to control my spending, to rein in costs, but it's hard with the motorcycle repair hitting this month, and now medical bills for my injuries... Toss in trying to figure out how to afford Christmas gifts, and it's shaping up to be a bleak holiday season. It really seems like it needs to rain on Christmas day. I'm really wondering if the Black Friday sales will help retailers, or if they're all gonna still be in the red.
• Garden - I built a garden gate, and sectioned off part of my backyard for a formal garden finally. Dad was good enough to donate scrap wood, wire, etc... so I could build it. It turned out nice, I just need to fill the beds with more soil (free from Maumelle), and get another muscedine vine for the other side of the trellis gate (I've got to dig one up at Dad's house, I already planted one from there, black or dark red muscedine off the old family farm from 100+ years ago). I'm trying to do my garden on the cheap, free soil and using found materials. I'll still need to buy some more dwarf tree twigs, and seeds for watermelon, squash, tomatoes and other stuff for the garden... but I am hoping I can do that cheaply. If I could have fresh vegetables and fruit from my own garden, and maybe muscedine, pear, cherry, and nectarine preserves someday that would be nice.
• Netbook - Still using it, good little device. I have a cordless mouse for it now, and a nice case that wraps it. I installed GIMP instead of photoshop, since I don't really want Photoshop running on it and GIMP runs lighter than Photoshop. Should be fine for what I need, which is cropping photos for my blog.

That's it for now, I'm signing off. Keep me in your prayers, those of you who have been.

Gas Prices

I'm on YouTube!

I posted a video we shot at work from our cleanup effort on Saturday the 27th at Lake Willastein, pretty nifty. Check it out.

Freakish Tree Skirt

 Check out this tree skirt I found online.

It's from: http://homeandgardenart.com/redtreeskirt.html

Why would they think this is a good design? I mean, the little trim pieces are nice, but the whole radiation symbol kind of ruins it... I guess if you have a glow in the dark tree with radium lights it might be kinda cool.

Gas Shortages and the Credit Crisis, Cleaning up the lake

Gas Shortages and the Credit Crisis

I've been riding my motorcycle to work now for the last two weeks. This has stretched my gas budget quite a bit. The weather has been great. Since the hurricanes hit the East coast and the Gulf coast there have been reports of gas shortages. If you do a Google search at this time, you'll see pumps are running dry in Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, and parts of Tennessee. The issue seems to be that refineries were cutting production prior to the storm, so they could switch blends. This forced a shortage at the time the credit crisis is building to a head. Here in Central AR some stations only have regular, no premium or mid-grade.

The credit crisis has me wondering what the heck is going on. There needs to be some sort of solution. I hope we're not looking at the new milenniums version of the Great Depression. I realize with fossil fuels in short supply, and a need to move to new energy that a change is coming... but it's a very uncertain time, or seems that way.

Lake Cleanup

My team at work did some volunteer work at Lake Willastein in Maumelle today. I brought my Kayak and cleaned the shoreline and picked up stuff in the water. It was VERY nasty. It seems fishermen have no respect for the lake they enjoy fishing in. They dump beer bottles, beer cans, skoal cans, etc... in the lake. I found a gun case in the lake, and a bunch of other nasty stuff. Filled three 30 gallon bags with trash from the 1/2 of the lake I was able to clean in 3 hours. I saw a crane, a copperhead sunning itself on a board, turtles, ducks, etc. Several people thanked us for cleaning up. It's a great park. Some of the stuff in the lake were energy drinks, and health supplements. So joggers and runners and bicyclists also throw their stuff in the water. Pretty sad, they work so hard to keep their bodies fit but make the lake itself unfit. Hopefully people will not be such pigs, but cleanups like this will have to continue to just keep things decent.

BTW. This blog entry is written on my new Acer Aspire One netbook, with 1 gig of memory, and a 160 gig hard drive... from my couch. :-)

Update

A few weeks back I started riding to work again. I joined an adult kickball team, the Repeat Offenders, part of the Little Rock Kickball Association. I've gained about twenty pounds since I injured my back, some of it has been poor eating and the other limited mobility. My back had been feeling pretty good, and I was looking forward to Kickball, being able to ride my bike again, and all of that and then I injured my ankle. So over this weekend I've had it with a compression bandage on it, and the swelling is finally gone for the moment. It swelled up pretty bad yesterday when I mowed, and edged the yard but it's better today. I went grocery shopping, and will be planning my meals out now and working to drop the weight. If I am diligent, it'll take me 2 or 3 months to drop it, less if I can motivate myself to do some paddling at Lake Willastein. I want to get back to riding my bike, and riding my motorcycles. I think this week my ankle will be back up to the motorcycles. My dad is doing somewhat better, he's lost a lot of water on his legs thanks to the prescriptions the doctors have him on... and hopefully he'll continue to improve.

Tired, but can't sleep.

Haven't posted in a while. Quick summary of random thoughts:

• New patio furniture (on clearance!)
• Patio storage box (on clearance!) for the patio furniture cushions.
• Bought dogfood/Dog bones. Gotta submit this great photo for the Milkbones Model Dog contest I have!
• Had an excellent weekend.
• Miss our intern at work who was so awesome (Good luck Rebecca, you're gonna go places!).
• Dad got his A/C fixed, and they upped his meds dosage again.
• Need to clean the house (seriously).
• Need to mow (we had over 3 inches of rain last week).
• Been riding the bikes. Vulcan is fixed.
• Lastly... Going to bed.

Hot Weather

The Vulcan is still in the shop. I have been riding the Buell this week. I rode for 5 or 6 hours last Sunday, just getting back in the groove of riding. I rode to work on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. It's HOT! I did lunchtime rides each day despite the heat. I filled the bike up twice to the tune of $6.00.

I've been thinking about having a place to garden, things like Tomatos, Peppers, etc... so I decided I'd build some raised beds. I was going to use either railroad ties, or landscape timbers. I thought of building a traditional landscape timber bed, with rebar, having to drill holes, etc... but I cam across a gardening blog where they used pressure treated 2 x 6's and landscape timbers with lag bolts to build 6" raised beds. I did an assessment of how much pressure treated 2 x 6's I had. I had two 10' long boards, and a bunch of 24" pieces. So I got 16 landscape timbers, lagged them into two 5' x 8' beds, and then made two 2' x 8' beds which I sat on top of the larger beds.

The photo is photoshopped to show what they'll look like filled with soil. I am gonna have to go get a trailer load of free compost from the city trash collection area and fill them next. I think they turned out pretty nice though. I left plenty of space to mow in between and all around them.

Vulcan 750

Here's a photo of my Vulcan before she went off to the dealership, she looks naked without her saddlebags. I yanked them since they gotta yank the back wheel to replace the seal on the splines, and regrease the splines. New drive shaft fluid, full 4000 mile oil change is coming. Some mods you might notice (all cosmetic), accessories like the tank bib, tool bag, and the sheepskin seat cover. The tank decals/badges have been yanked, and the turn signals relocated for the saddlebags. She looks like such a small bike when I look at her in these photos.

I tinted the truck windows, and I like it. But I am gonna have them redone by a professional next month if I can afford it.

Busy, Busy, Busy

I gotta go to bed, but I've been staying busy with friends, and tonight was the first night I've been able to actually clean house in a week it seems.

• The Vulcan goes to the dealership for servicing and to have that seal replaced. They said it might be two to three weeks before I get it back since it's the busy season.
• Dad goes to the hospital tomorrow, there is the real possibility they may hospitalize him. Thanks for all your prayers, I appreciate it.
• I tried tinting my own windows, hah. You warned me Rob that I should get extra tinting material, and I figured it out that I should have bought two rolls. Nevermind, the one I bought wasn't dark enough for my taste. So I'll be buying another couple rolls on the way home tomorrow and hopefully installing it tomorrow night!
• Got my truck serviced by a friend of my dad's, they did a great job. Oil and filter, and Lucas Oil engine treatment. (I provided the materials, normally do that myself), transmission fluid change (with Lucas Oil Transmission treatment added), checked the brake pads, belts, hoses, installed an anti-theft bracket on my tailgate I had bought (sweet), new fuel filter, and the truck drives really good. No hard shifts, etc... There were no metal shavings or anything in the transmission pan. We're thinking it may have shifted rough due to the fuel filter needing replacing. I'll be tracking the mileage to see if it improves.