full circle

ya' know how the story of the full circle goes? our parents take care of us when we are young but as we age they start to depend on us to take care of them.

i experienced a little of that yesterday. me mum (no, i'm not british but i like the way that sounds) called me friday and axed if me and me brother could come over on saturday and help my dad work on his lawn mower.

now, my dad can do anything on a house. he taught me all of my carpentry and plumbing skills. but, he never did teach us any mechanical abilities growing up. cuz, he doesn't have any.

my brother became a pretty good self-taugh mechanic working on his cars because he was poor when he first married and always had piece of shit autos and couldn't afford to pay someone to work on them. i've helped him change clutches out on his old truck.

i learned quite a bit of mechanical skills through my job. even tho' i was technically an electronics technician, the truth is, the electronics rarely fail. but the mechanical parts of machinery will fail just through normal wear. beed has replaced hundreds of bearings and pulleys in his lifetime.

back on point. i had just finished working on my pool filter yesterday morning and my little bro' called me and said "did mom tell you she wanted me and you to work on dad's mower and rhonda's stove?"

i said "yup about the mower but i don't know anything about rhonda's (my little sister that is moving in across the road from me mum's house) stove" he said "well, it's not working either" i said "glad you told me, i'll bring my voltmeter (actually a multimeter but the 2 or 3 folks that read this drivel will understand voltemeter better) with me"

we both load up our respective conglomeration of mis-matched tools and head to the mum's casita. nobody was home but the mower was outside so it didn't matter. pops was trying to get the blades and the rear wheels off his mower to replace them. he had previously rented a tool to help him pull the rear wheels but the puller they gave him didn't work.

we decided to take the blades off first. them sumbitches wouldn't budge so i suggested we drop the deck and pull it out from under the mower. that way we could stand the mower deck on it's side and tommy could crank on one side and i could lock down the top pulley. the nuts were rusted on solid so we used a 3 foot long pipe as a cheater bar on the ratchet. i had to use all of my body weight to hold my side whilst he cranked on the ratchet. we got both off.

i use my multi-meter and check the fuses that go to the stove. sure enough, one of the fuses was blown. no continuity in that baby. electrons need continuity to flow from the fuse box to the stove.

tommy wanted to try to beat the wheels off with a crowbar. i argued with him that he'd booger up the axle too badly and suggested we go to lowes to buy the blades and fuse and then on to e-z rent and find a puller.

since i'm the older brother he bowed to me and off we went. before we could leave me mum and dad had returned and were hovering over us thanking us repeatedly for coming over to help. i repeatedly told them, "don't worry, we don't mind at all" (we really truly didn't, glad to help, hell, it's our parents....what kind of sons did you think us carter boys are?)

before we could go to lowes they made us sit down and eat a sandwich and drink a coke on them. the cokes were very cold and in aluminum cans. i don't know why but they just taste better that way.

we get the stuff at lowes and then on to rent a puller. they had about 5 different variations. at first we didn't think any of 'em would work but then we saw one that if we stopped at a hardware store and bought some long bolts and some nuts it just might work.

it wasn't easy and still took about an hour but through me and my brother's imaginative rigging we were able to pull the rear wheels. pops again with the "ya'll don't know how much we appreciate this, and i'll fix you two a steak dinner whenever you want one."

they had to leave and were going into town and would be able to drop the puller off. then we went over to my sis's house and installed the new fuse. since nothing ever goes easy we had to kind of bang the fuseholder into the fusebox. but it fixed the stove. heck, we even set the time on it.

we both drove off and i had a really good feeling about how my day had unfolded. i was truly happy that i had been able to help my mum and pop. it was good to spend time with them. i also enjoyed spending the day with my brother. two men doing manly things. busting their knuckles. you can NOT do any mechanical job like that without busting your knuckles at least once and this job was no exception.

tell you what though, my ass was sore as hell this morning. when you're an office puke like me that manual labor can put it to you. but it's a good sore. let's you know you're alive, doesn't it?

i know that as my mum and pop continue to age we'll be called on more often to help out but i don't mind. the tally sheet is still way ahead in their favor. don't know if i'll ever catch up and don't care. just happy that i can help out.

i love me mum and pop,

your friend (the devoted son)

dahbeed

flora update & dirt bowls

in beed's last post approximately three years ago he promised a photo of his flora in full bloom. those jobbers are really funny. in the late evening when the sun is dropping every one of them are leaning in that direction. they look like little bocas (mouths) pleading with the sol (sun)....just one more little drink of light......pleeeeeeease!

the ones below separate beed's lawn from his neighbor's lawn. we are both careful when we mow not to cut 'em. if you notice they are not pure yellow like the ones next to beed's fence. obviously somewhere along there family tree there was an interracial marriage with some orange folks. yes, there was definately an orange-man in the woodpile. and beed is sure people whispered about it at family gatherings. they're probably accepted these days. beed don't give a rats ass who they been knocking boots with, they just add some summer color to his ojos (eyes) when he's touring the estate.

do ya'll remember this photo? it was beed's piscina (pool) after he drained it. rough as a cob, huh?

check out what a little beed elbow grease......screw dat....about 971 megajoules of beed elbow grease can accomplish. viola.....don't even look like the same place does it.

yesterday was a chillin' day for beed. he took his son miguel (michael) and his cousin guillermo (william) down to watch some dirt bowl hoops at b.g. parks and rec. we fueled up at crack-donalds for some grub and made it there before 9 'o clock.

beed's old coaching buddy had put together a team of a bunch of 8th and 7th graders that we had coached when they were 8-11 years old. all of these boys had gone on to make their middle school teams. they had a tight game but their press wore the other team down and they eventually pulled out win at the end.

it was a good time and beed hugged a bunch of kids that he hadn't seen in a little bit. yes beed got much love and it almost made him want to get back into coaching.

stayed and watched some of the big boys plays. it was pretty high level ballin' goin' on. the boys were gettin' restless so we returned to the casa and chilled a couple hours. one of the parents on the warren county southern 11-12 year old all star team had called beed friday and invited him to watch them play.

beed had coached several of these kids when they were younger and they have quite a nice team. if they can get past owensboro southern (a machine) they could easily win state and maybe do some damage in the regional.

it was steamin' hot out there but beed and the boys took the game in. they run-ruled warren county north in 4 innings. north's defense was atrocious and led to so many of the south's runs. then it was chill time back at the casa.

hope everyone is havin' a great summer. beed needs to get off his ass cuz that lawn damn sure ain't gonna cut itself today. that reminds beed of one of the funniest quotes he's seen on a myspace. one of the h.h. college posters had his quote on myspace as "i wish my lawn were emo so it would cut itself"

now beed knows that's twisted as hell and cutting oneself is not to be scoffed at but owning a college aged kid himself beed can attest to the laziness of one of these creatures and that's one of the reasons that quote is so funny to beed.

beed's casa.......literally

there's a reason why the beedstah ain't been postin'. it's because he has been workin' his culo off on the casa. beed has a new digital camera and is gonna share some photos with ya. this first photo is of a bastard lily that ended up next to beed's fence that surrounds the pool.



why did beed call it a bastard lily? cuz beed has about 9 zillion of them around his fence but every one of them look like the yellow ones below. the red one is at the very end. beed don't know what transformation took place but it happened somehow. we didn't plant it. the yellow ones around the fence are in full bloom now and beed will add an updated photo of all of 'em later.

below is a recent project that beed undertook. in the corner of the beed estate the water company for whatever reason saw fit to put beed's and 3 neighbor's water meters. the only problem is 2 of 'em were completely covered with dirt.....this begs the querstion. how in the hell were those guys checkin' how much agua we been usin' with those things covered up?

anyhoo beed got out his trusty hoe (not his trusy ho', that's an entirely different post....j/k) and chopped all the grass and dirt and unearthed the two meters that had been buried alive. he then took some landscape timbers (from the sandbox that beed disassembled) and spiked them into the ground.

then he used some of that black netting that is supposed to keep any grass or weeds from growing. it looked like this.

he then took one indentured servant (miguelito) who looks like this.

and we spread river pebbles around it. it now looks like this.

beed has also been workin' his culo off on opening his pool. when he drained it it looked like the photo below. after much cleaning and scrubbing he painted it with two coats of rubber based pool paint. 65 freakin' dollars per gallon X 4 gallons thank you very much.

added a new diving board, the one in the photo was cracked. replaced all of those missing tiles and grouted the entire thing. beed will post a new photo of the finished project when he posts the new photo of the lilies.

this is a photo of his 20 year old japanese maple.....it's gorgeous. it was only about 2 feet tall when beed planted it.

here is a shot of the beed casa. notice the landscape timbers lining beed's po' white trash gravel driveway. also from the former sandbox. as you can see, beed is not just a hoops expert. he is a man of many talents. he wears many hats.

landscape timber technician, pool painter, plumber, carpenter and last but certainly not least.....female eye candy.

your buddy,

the busy one.

dahbeed.

pop ups and virus' beed hates 'em

some background. beed's old computer gave up the ghost around a year and a half ago. monitor was fine, printer was fine so beed got online at work and got on bestbuy.com.

found the computer he wanted and ordered it. it would arrive the next day at the local best buy. you walk in with your confirmation emails go to the service desk and you are out of there in less than 3 minutes. it's the only way to do it.

the new computer came with some very good pop-up blockers and anti-virus s.w. from norton. as the first year wuz coming to a close it would pop up a reminder that it was nearing expiration.

bein' the procrastinater that he is beed would always click on remind me later. it got down to the last couple days and beed finally sat down and paid 80 bucks for a 2 year renewal.

beed is no techno-dweeb but he's always been pretty good at loading software. not this time. it took beed's money and downloaded the software but after repeated attempts, beed could not get the software to activate.

having a short temper at times beed just said "f' it, i'll work on it later". or get dahbicito to work on it. he is a techno-dweeb.

a couple months passed and the computer was almost rendered unusable due to pop-ups and some faggoty-assed homepage jackin' virus. every time you would kill one webpage numerous more would pop up.

so last saturday beed rolled up his sleeves (you know that ain't true cuz beed always wears sleeveless shirts in the summer to better sport his tattoo) and went to work.

FINALLY.....FINALLY was able to activate the software. did a full system scan and it had 7 worms and thousands......yes, thousands, that's right THOUSANDS of virus's. 99 percent of them were in miguelito's folders. beed made him watch them all increment as his folder was being scanned.

at the end......norton had worked it's magic and beed's computer is disease free and workin' great.

beed tries not to hate anybody. it's just such a negative emotion. but there are times where beed hopes there is a special place in hell for certain folks. for example, child molesters .....halliburton cronies, enron folks.....there should be a place in hell for them where even the devil walks in with one of those oriental fans in his hand and says "damn boys, it sho is hot in herr!!!!!!"

the people that design virus's and worms and such and homepage jackers, beed hopes there is a special place for those folks too.

beed's computer surfin' these days is kinda like drivin' in one of kramer's luxury lanes. smooth and wide open. 80 bucks for two years protection......dot ain't nuttin'!!!!

your buddy,

virus free,

dahbeed

i am a free throw machine!

no, make that.....i am a free throw god!

the old basketball goal was in bad shape. the neighborhood boys and beed's sons been hoopin' it up since we opened the pool. the old backboard developed a crack in it and beed had to replace it monday.

beed hasn't shot any real hoops in a couple years so he started foolin' around shootin' some free throws after puttin' the goal up.

he hit 9 out of 10 one time but couldn't seal the deal on 10 for 10. yesterday afternoon beed wuz bustin' dahbicito's chops about shootin' freebies. we would shoot until we missed and then the other got to shoot.

beed hit 13 in a row at one point. final tally 42-50 free throws hit. 84%. not bad for a 46 year old white boy that ain't picked up a ball but a couple times in the last few years.

on the 50th attempt beed dribbled it 3 times, pulled the ball back and found the seam with his middle finger, bent his knees, cocked the ball back........looked at his son and closed his eyes and let it rip. booyah!!!!! nuttin' but net. all beed's boy could say wuz "you can be such a prick"

guilty as charged. beed don't know why he enjoys bein' "such a prick" at times but he just does. he's not that way all the time as many can attest. beed can be a very nice guy.

but it wuz fun talking trash to his 19 year old son. and it's always fun to shoot hoops even if it's on the backyard court.

congratulations graduates of 2006

warren county has an alternative high school named the lighthouse academy. this school is for kids that for whatever reason have been expelled from one of the 3 warren county high schools.

it began with humble beginnings in 2002. that first class only had 6 kids graduate. the growth of the school continues each year. below is the graduating classes for each year.

2002 – 6
2003 – 32
2004 – 64
2005 – 70
2006 – 98

each one of these kids would not have a high school diploma if not for the lighthouse academy. they would be high school dropouts.

a factoid......of the 172 previous graduates 33 are now attending college, 10 are in the military and over 100 sumpin’ of them are gainfully employed now. the fact that stands out the most is that 19% are in college.

i am very thankful that there are people out there making a difference in our community like the educators that take on these challenging students and help them to a better life.

in december of 2002 my best friend of 22 died from a heart attack at 39 years of age. he had a son that was one year younger than dahbicito. i received an invitation to his graduation from the lighthouse academy.

i knew that after his dad died that he had taken it pretty hard as they were as close as me and ‘cito. i also knew he had been in trouble at school some because ‘cito always kept me up to date on him. i didn’t know he had been booted from his own school.

i went to the graduation and knew around 5 or 6 more kids that were graduating. these kids should be proud of their accomplishments. i asked my friend’s son what he was going to do now and he told me that he was going to technical college to become an x-ray tech like his dad was. i truly hope he does.

let me preface this next part by saying i am humble as hell in most aspects as i grew up pretty damn poor and feel i have been blessed by having such a good job. i truly check myself for looking down at folks as i feel that God loves them as much as he loves me....that is a fact.

but..........

i’m sorry, that gym was the biggest collection of rednecks that i’ve been around in quite some time. it felt like i had been swept up in a tornado and dropped into a skynyrd concert from hell.

some observations.

spandex......on folks that shouldn’t be wearin it.
a toddler....two-ish.....wearing camo pants and a camo tee......his momma let him run buck wild on the floor.
more than one tee-shirt with rebel flags on it.
at least 20 babies that cried the whole two hours.
true to form.....a family member or friend saw fit to pull a fire alarm.....my first thought was “yup, your ass will be graduating from lighthouse next year.” real class move.

of course the administrator asked everyone to hold their applause until a full row had received their diplomas. out of 10 in each row 7 groups of parents would respect this advice.

what about the other 3? son, they wuz red as hell with their bellowed out wooooo-hoooooieeee’s!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i kept expectin’ one to holler out FREE BIRD!!!!

i kept thinking, can you spell recidivism? with families and friends who obviously have no self restraint, will i be seein’ you in an orange jumpsuit picking up trash on the side of the road?

i’m sorry, i hate to judge but red is red.

i truly hope this is the first step for the kids to become productive members of society. and from the past successes these kids are certainly better off with that diploma.

can you imagine filling out a job application and having to put down that you did not graduate high school?

go ahead, flay me for looking down my rather large proboscus at certain elements of last night’s crowd.

in warren county it’s easy to insulate yourself from red. b.g. does have some sophistication to it. it’s a college town. there are lots of good jobs here so there is money. but like i told my buddy that was there. “throw a rock in any direction and you’ll be able to find red, it’s out there whether you run in it or not”

your friend,

the elitist,

dahbeed.

ramblings.............what else does beed do?

man, da beedstah been doin' evahthin' but write on his blog and he also believes there will be an all points bulletin issued via h.h. investigating whether beed has been whisked away to the state mental hospital in hop angeles and is curled up on the floor in the fetal position babbling in ebonics and espanol.

no such luck kiddies. beed is alive and well......as well as a 46 year old man with a shaved head that has abused his body can be in. actually in bettah shape than some time. still workin' the barbells and growin' portabello mushroom sized biceps.

speakin' of portabello mushrooms. it's summer time and that means it's grillin' time and your grill is not just for ribeye steaks and burgers. here's the recipe. go to the store and buy some portabello mushrooms. you can get the big dogs or the baby bellas (beed's biceps ARE already bigger than the baby bellas).

get out your extra virgin olive oil and if you don't have some in your cabinet beed hereby dubs you as a hacker, a can't hang, a never was. anyone that enjoys fine dining damn sure bettah have some evoo in their kitchen.

pour some in your hand and start rubbing it into the mushroom cap. don't worry about it takin' so much to coat it. it sucks that oil in faster than a crack ho' hittin' the pipe for the first buzz of the day. flip it ovah and coat the stem also.

now use salt and GROUND PEPPER (if you didn't have the evoo, you ain't gonna have this so that's 2 strikes, don't make beed send your asses to the food network corner and stick your nose in it. speaking of that, and this is titled ramblings......beed can honest to God remember exactly what the cheap ass wallpaper in our houses growing up smelled like as lesser infractions that didn't deserve an ass-whippin, belt or switch style were dealt with by a sentance to go stand in the corner.....STICK YOUR DAMN NOSE IN IT BOY!!!)

after you've salted and peppered them they are ready for the grill. cook them on a medium heat for about ten minutes. if your grill has an upper shelf, cook them on that. just plop them on their cap. watch the underside of the cap. some of the oil will work it's way through the cap and when it does, they are done. that or the ten minute rule, either one works.

they are mother-f'in dee-licious. beed's two boys, who THOUGHT they hated mushrooms absolutely love papi's grilled portabellos.

beed spent two days in louieeee-ville this week for a big district meeting. they have these a couple times a year and beed has been to many of them. most of the presentations are as fun as having the family jewels put into a vise and having your most sadistic enemy in charge of crankin' it in. it was no different this time.

you do get a chance to network (italics for you know who) with the big muckety-mucks. beed got face time with the two biggest execs in our district and since they are both womans (vulnerable to beed's charisma and charm......oh, it's very real folks.....don't scoff and shake your doubting heads) beed left them with very favorable impressions of that man down in bowling green. at least that is what they told beed's plant manager.

we stayed at the brown hotel. beed tries to keep humble but like he told a friend, that damn hotel isn't made to help keep your ego in check. it may very well have been the best bed that beed has evah slept on. huge room. very old but very well done.

more ramblings. listening to some public radio this afternoon beed heard two performers whose voices he rates at the very top of the chart. first was patsy cline doing "sweet dreams of you". God beed loves patsy's voice. if beed had to pick one word to describe patsy cline's voice the word he would pick would be "sultry", you may disagree but beed don't give a shit cuz this is his blog and he gets to pick and choose the palabras he wants to use and you don't get to edit it out. one more time so there is no question "sultry".

the next song was "dream baby" by roy orbison. if beed had to pick one word to describe roy's voice it would be "soulful" beed remembers hearing one time that elvis presley said that roy had the greatest voice he had ever heard and he was the king's favorite singer. 'nuff said!

that's enough rambling for one blog. a recipe, a story on beed sucking up to powerful womans and some music knowledge you should file away and take to heart.

your friend,

still alive and kicking,

tha' motherf'in beedstah (beed tole ya'll a long time ago he likes to cuss, he warned ya')

p.s. beed forgot to add this first time around. he wuz surfin' the cable this morning and stopped on E! no, beed didn't stop for another whitney houston interview. there was a beautiful young blond on there doing stand up. she was flat out funny as hell!!!!!! her stand up was great but her skits were absolutely hilarious also.

few folks get beed to laugh out loud but this little hottie did it. beautiful and funny, who gives a shit if she can cook? beed don't. he fell in love for the 9 millionth time. if you get a chance to see her show on saturday mornings don't miss it. her name is chelsea handler and spare beed any criticism for not knowing who she was.....beed's a letterman man, not a leno man. beed did find out through googling her that she has worked on leno. enjoy!

ahhhh......music to my ears

as many dark evil things that man is capable of.......and we are capable of plenty from child molestation to strapping dynamite to ones chest and killing innocents, i am always reminded of the good we are capable of by the arts.

i love athletics. i loved playing them growing up, and still love to shoot a little hoop now and then. i love attending athletic events. but one of my truest of true loves has always been music.

i can’t play it for shit. i do own a very nice guitar that i bought around 27 years ago and learned how to play several different chords and learned to finger pick pretty good but i have no f’in rhythm. i believe people are born with different gifts. some folks have the gift of music.......i don’t.

i pretty much love all genres of music. the reason i bring up music is that miguelito, my 7th grader of a son is in the chorus at his middle school. tuesday night the drakes creek middle school music department put on their spring concert.

dahbicito, my college age son played snare drum when he was in middle school so i had been to a couple of these things before. the band teacher, mrs. smalling does a great job with her charges. the 7th grade band was a little rough but the 8th grade band was outstanding.

i love watching someone do something they love. i don’t give a shit if it’s someone digging a hole, if they love it, i enjoy watching. mrs. smalling LOVES her job. and it’s a better world for it.

i enjoyed how serious she was while conducting and the smile she kept the whole time. you could really see how proud she was of her kids. and i enjoy the thought of how hard these kids worked on their newfound craft and got to show it off for their parents and grandparents.

the place was packed too. parent involvement has never been a problem whether it was when we were at alvaton, cumberland trace or briarwood elementary schools nor at d.c.m.s. or greenwood high school.

onto miguelito’s part. he tried snare drum in the 5th grade but wouldn’t stick with it. but he loves to sing. and the music teacher at briarwood is simply outstanding. i was amazed at what she accomplished with children that young.

so miguelito joined chorus this year. i had already seen them perform when they performed at van meter auditorium at western. they were awesome in that setting. now a middle school gym doesn’t quite have the acoustics that van meter has but it was still great.

it does my heart good to see all those good looking young men and ladies in their fine looking black and red robes. if you follow the news all you hear about is how bad kids are cuz bad news sells. but there a ton of really good kids out there.

a unique thing about the d.c.m.s. choir is that their accompaniests are all students. mrs. lanham said they were probably the only middle school in kentucky where they don’t use adults on the piano.

the first boy has music in his genes as his father is the music director for one of the largest churches in b.g.

here’s some insight into how twisted dahbicito is (he gets it naturally, fo’ shizzle). after the first pianist finished a young asian boy sat down at the piano. dahbicito leans over to me and whispers “whyyyyyy does it have to be an asian?” not mean at all, just laughing at stereotypes.

to make it even better, when he got finished i leaned over to ‘cito and whispered “look who is replacing him” it was a pretty young asian girl. i love it when things line up like that. it means there is some order in this chaotic world. some.....things are as they should be.

to whomever reads this. there is not a racist or xenophobic bone in my body. i truly mean that from the depths of my heart. but i am damn sure not blind enough to not recognize that there is some basis for stereotypes. i know that is not the politcally correct thing to say but who gives a shit. there are only a few that read my blog and they all know my heart pretty well by now.

on the casa front. the dreaded gum maples are down. they’ve been cut and hauled off. i have leveled out the ground. i have sown grass seed. i have put down straw. i have started pressure washing every inch of my concrete. i drained the pool last night. i have ordered a new diving board for the pool. i have turned into a f’in home improvement machine. tim taylor can’t touch my f’in jockstrap. i mean business. and i ain’t kiddin’ neither (a line from tombstone for any tombstone afficianado).

your buddy,

the arts lover,

dahbeed.

a southern man to the bones.....beed

beed was born and spent his first five years in flarda.....that's how people down there used to say it.

so beed has always considered himself a southerner at heart. much more so than these kain-tuckians he's surrounded by. not that kain-tuckians are a bad thing. but in beed's humble o-pin-eeeon they are not truly southerners.

kain-tuckians are more moderate by nature. hell, we couldn't even make up our mind at all during the war of northern aggression.....hehe, that's what southerners called the civil war anyhoo.

beed's great grandma told him he had family members fight on both sides. she said some of our families had brothers fighting for different sides.

can you imagine that? you join one army and your brother is fighting for the other side. what the hell happens if by some strange twist of fate you both end up at the same battle? do you shoot at your brother? beed cannot imagine doing that no matter how impassioned he felt on an issue.

anyhoo, beed digresses. beed can cook the hell out of some southern food. growing up pretty po' means that we ate freakin' beans every single night. pinto beans....the poor man's meat. oh yeah, we ate the hell out of some yardwalker too. that's southern for chicken in case ya' didn't know.

yesterday beed fixed a large pot of pinto beans to which he added two packages of ham pieces. son, if beed hadn't fixed anything else that in itself was a meal. beed also taught miguelito how to cook mashed potatoes.

miguelito wanted to help peel the potatoes so beed tried to show him how. since beed cannot turn off his competitiveness he can turn potato peeling into bloodsport. miguel only peeled dos (2) taters to beed's diez (10) taters.

it was total annihilation. of course beed only has about 38 years of peelin' experience on miguel so the results should have been expected. then beed grilled out some center cut pork tenderloin.

you could almost cut that swine with a fork. let's see, ham pieces in the beans, pork tenderloin as the main course.....the honorable elijah mohammed would have been very disappointed in dahbeed yesterday.

the last thing beed cooked and it was because it cooks the fastest was a big old head of cabbage. and since beed fixed enough of everything to feed an army, we are set for supper again tonight.

man beed loves homemade mashed potaters. get those f'in flakes away from him. they can do in a pinch but there is no comparison. the only thing missin' was a big ole glass of sweet tea.

one of beed's litmus tests on bein' southern or not is on how you eat your grits. if you put cream and sugar on them like they are cream of wheat or oatmeal then in beed's book you are yankee by nature.

if you slather them with butter, salt and pepper and pour them over the top of your over easy eggs and chop them all up into one big mess, then by the power vested in beed you are a southerner.

beed ate that combination every morning of his childhood. and still loves to fix it that way on some saturday mornings. that shit will stick to your ribs all morning long.

on the casa front, the tree cuttin' down folks are supposed to come out to the casa today and cut down those 3 gum maples that beed hates. no more spikey little balls will be dropped on the beed front lawn. beed will be sowing some grass where those muthas used to be as soon as the stump grinder downer guy gets out to get rid of the stumps.

beed already sowed some seed in some bald spots of the lawn and covered it with straw so beed has been gussyin' up the joint. next major project to be done at the end of this mez (month) is to drain the pool, repaint it and get it ready for the summer season.

so much work to do and only one beed to do it. ouch!

your buddy,

the gussy upper,

dahbeed.

let the mexicans do it!

if you know beed at all you know he ain't no xenophobe. beed is a world traveller and has seen how blessed he is to live in the united states. as poor as central america is.....and it is. it can't hold a candle to the poverty beed saw in egypt and kenya.

beed has often wondered why he was LUCKY enough to be born in this country. beed grew up very poor but not to the level of poor that he has witnessed. beed had a good brain housing group and was able to use the marine corps to receive electronics training that led to a great, well paid job.

how many kids all over the world have a good brain housing group but don't have the opportunities to improve their lot in life due to the corruption of their government or the lack of opportunity to climb out of their poverty?

anyhoo, yesterday, beed took a half day off and went home to work in the yard. there is a 10' by 12' area that used to be the boy's sandbox. there was a tower with a slide but that stuff is long gone.

beed loves homegrown tomatoes but has never grown any himself. he has always relied on his neighbors to keep him in fresh tomatoes. so beed says he's gonna grow some this year in that former sandbox.

the problem is that is was overgrown with grasses and weeds. beed has no tiller so he got his hoe, his mattock (pick-axe to some), his rake and shovel and went to work. choppin' and diggin' and pullin' by hand.

now beed has been working out lately and is in the best shape he has been in, in years. it still kicked his pansy ass. that is why beed titled this "let the mexicans do it!" beed thought about all the mexicans and central americans his age using a damn hoe all day.

all these people posturing and saying the immigrants are taking jobs that we would do are full of SHIT. they ain't taking a job that beed would want to do. would beed do it if that is what it took to feed his family? yes, but that is the only way.

beed ain't no puss, but given the choice to do what he does for a living or working in a field all day......it's a no brainer.

back on task. beed got about 70% done yesterday and will finish up today or tomorrow. and those freakin' tomatoes better turn out damn good. beed plans on planting some plants in weekly intervals for the next 3 weeks so they don't all come in at the same time.

miguelito is wanting one row for him to grow some watermelons. that's cool. we'll see how beed's first garden turns out.

later,

your friend the farmer,

dahbeed appleseed.

things you can do....at 2:10 a.m.

clean out your freezer. i mean reeeeaaaaalllllyyyyyy clean it out.

the eyeballs popped open zombie style at 2:00 this morning. i tried to go back to sleep but after 10 minutes of flopping gave up the ghost and got the hell up.

went downstairs, opened the freezer to get some ice for a glass of coke and realized there were not any cubes. just a frozen mass in the bottom of the icemaker. this has happened before and i am always the one that cleans it.

so i get a big knife and start chopping. i finally broke enough out to be able to pull the whole assembly out and run hot water over it.

i look at the rest of the freezer and it looks like a post nuclear war frozen tundra. it's a nice kenmore side by side. so i proceed to pull everything out and clean it up.

down at the bottom there is a frozen mass under a drawer. i finally break the drawer loose and get it out. the big knife does wonders. i start running hot water over the frozen mass that i have put into the sink.

there were all kinds of goodies in there. it was kind of a food version of encino man but there was no brendan fraser shaped bag of nuts at the bottom. after melting every bit of ice i found i used a towel to dry everything off and re-inserted 90% of the items back in the freezer.

the other 10% went into the shitcan.

i wrote a really long blog on friday and was ready to post it and then i stupidly thought, i'll add a picture to the post. and dumbass me did not copy and paste the post to word before i went down that suicidal lane of add photo. bad idea.....f'in lockup time. i really gave it forever to right the ship but blogger was having no part of it.

had a pretty good weekend and got much done around the house.

left for work this morning right before 5:00 and it was literally raining hell outside. mi gato, smokey had wanted out a little earlier and when i left, his ass was wet as hell and he wanted back into the casa. i unlocked the door and laughed at him and let him back in as a wet cat is fo' damn sho' a funny sight.

there was actually some very small hail hitting the ground whilst i drove to work. thank god for the new rubber on my whip. the new kumhos were scoffing at the rain piled across cemetery road. they made short work of it and i arrived safely at my place of employ.

i know this is boring as shit, who gives a shit what dahbeed does at 2:10 in the a.m. i just thought i'd drop a line and say hola.

talked to a honduran friend the other night and he might be hookin' me and my bud that wanted to go to buenos aires up with a cheap flight to the island of roatan. it would be the end of this month.

the water off roatan is second to none in the world. the folks are laid back and you can eat lobster very cheaply every single night as they have a ton of lobster boats there. i'm 50/50 on it right now. if i go, i will have some good stories as i always have a good time in central america.

your buddy,

the defroster,

dahbeed.

fock.......another gut shot.

i was dialed into our district telecon this morning getting ready to participate with all the other plants. we do this every morning at 7:30. the maintenance manager was in my office as he has to participate in it also.

there was a page for him to pick up a call. since my phone was tied up he went to the office next door to pick up the call.

he came back to my office and said "that was ken xxxxxx's wife, she said he had a siezure last night so they rushed him to the medical center. they've done a mri and there is some kind of mass on his brain".

i actually felt like i had been punched in the stomach. i used to work with this man when i was in maintenance. i see him every day on the floor. and he's one of the finest people i've ever met. not only is he one of our best employees in the building he's a great guy.

he's very witty and never passes you without coming up with something just funny as hell. i truly hope and pray that this is not something serious but all i could think of was, not again, not f'in again.

back when i was still in maintenance i had a friend named mark. he was one of our building equipment mechanics. just like ken, a truly all around great, funny, witty guy. one day his wife called us and told us the same thing, he had a siezure and in his case they found an inoperable brain tumor.

to our maintenance manager and plant manager's credit, even when mark got to the point where he could no longer drive, they would let me bring him to work and then let him chill all day so they could keep a paycheck coming in until it got to the point that it was too dangerous for him to be here.

it hurt when we lost him. i think of him often. we were the same age and both had grown up with very similar life experiences. so often when someone passes on people will say, "he was a great guy" even if he was the biggest asshole you ever met. in mark's case it was true. he was a great guy.

the same goes for ken. he is a great guy and i hope and pray that he will come out of this okay. i don't know what else to say. i am gonna stop up at the medical center on my way home today and check in on him. don't really know what to say when i get there except i hope everything will turn out okay.

when my brother was dying of cancer he told me "david, grandpa used to tell me, if you have your health, you have everything. i never really understood what he meant until now" no truer words have ever been spoken.

no matter how crappy you think your life is, if you have good health, you should dance a little jig every day.

your buddy,

dahbeed.

long days indeed

it's around 3:15 and i've been here since 4:30 so i think it's okay for me to head out.

had a load of dense grade gravel dropped off today. a poor mans driveway. i get to go home and spread it. i'm goin' hog-wild on this manual labor shit and have the blisters to prove it.

between that and pumping my dumbells every time i want some toooooo-bacccooooo my biceps are turning into miniature little guns. just little cap pistols for right now. you rember cap pistols? the little red rolls of caps that you would use a rock to blow them up when the cap pistol wouldn't work anymore.

so let's call them pistolitas. beed's pistolitas.

i'm headin' to krrrrrrrooooooggggeeeeeerrrrrs to get some italian sausages to grill out when i get done with the gravel work. i might even do some pressure washing of my concrete up front when i finish the gravel.

so much work to do. but then again, i might just go home and pour a big glass of pinot grigio and settle in for some vegging on the couch. condray my brutha, you should see my dreams when i drink pinot grigio. they is wild as hell homie. the only thing that keeps me from becoming a pinot grigio wino.

i did get my new kumhos mounted on my whip yesterday and the maxima just glides now. it's like i'm driving in luxury lanes jerry........luxury lanes!

seeya.

el idiota del pueblo,

dahbeed pistolitas.

craftsmen.......beed could watch 'em work all day

beed loves to watch anyone that is good at their craft. back in the day when beed did honest work for a living as an electronics technician, he was very good at his craft.

he had spent most of his adult life working on electronics and mail sorting machines. in reality, electronics fail rarely. they do fail but it is usually the mechanical things that break. and beed was good. he could just as easily change out bearings, rebuild a feed section or pull out an oscilloscope and perform an alignment on a greyscale camera.

he does miss the old troubleshooting days at times. it was always a feeling of satisfaction when night shift would write up a work order on a piece of equipment that was acting hinky during the run shift and beed would go out there with his schematics and flowcharts and find out what was causing a problem.

we had a problem on a machine that lifts the image of a mailpiece. beed had aligned the camera and tried everything he could to fix it. it was occasionally stretching and bending an image. it didn't happen all the time. those are the toughest ones to fix. if it would just break it would be much easier to find.

we had a helpdesk we could escalate a problem we could not solve to. they would get some super-et to call you back and he would suggest you look at this board or that board or this power supply or that power supply. beed would never call until he had exhausted everything.

on this particular problem the super-et kept axing beed if he had checked out this. "yup" did you check out that? "yup". after about 30 minutes of this the super-et told beed "hell, man, you've tried everything i would have done, if you find out what is causing it, make sure you call me back and tell me what it was, so i can file it away for the future".

beed is competitive as hell and hates for any machine to whip his ass. so he was driving down lovers lane and was still trying to figure out what in the hell could be causing only occasional images to bend. all of our machines have a bunch of digital tachometers on them so the machine can keep track of where a mailpiece is at all times.

beed had hooked up an o'scope to every tach on the machine and every single one of them were shooting out a beautiful 5 volt square wave. but driving down lovers lane beed knew it had to be one of the tachs acting up. the next morning beed went straight out to the machine and went to the tach associated with the camera.

the tachs are coupled to a roller above by a small rubber tube that looks like lawn mower gas line. beed put a good light on the coupling and turned the roller by hand. sure enough, the tube had dry rotted and had developed a small diagonal crack in it that would occasionally open up when being spinned. that would jack the square wave up momentarily and cause the image to bend. beed was elated. he changed out the coupling and it fixed the machine.

enough about beed. he wants to talk about a craftsman he met yesterday. beed needed new gutters for his casa. he called two in the phone book and the first one was out of business and the second one said we don't do gutters anymore. so beed looked in services offered in the want ad section of the daily news and found someone that would come out and shoot beed an estimate.

this kid looked to be in his late twenties and told beed he could do them for 2.50 a running foot (as opposed to a walking foot?). beed said, "do it homie". he promised beed he would be out his casa around 5 on monday evening.

homie didn't make it until around 5:45 but got right to work after beed showed him where he wanted the downspouts. beed watched the kid work as beed was still doing some yardwork himself. he watched just how meticulous that this kid was.

beed knew that there was no way in hell he could finish the job up last night. the boy was starting to lose his light and beed watched to see if he was gonna get in a hurry and try to cram at the end and finish up. but he didn't. he stayed meticulous as hell.....measuring it once, measuring it twice and installing it with care and precision.

this impressed the shit out of beed as so many contractors these days are just there to make the quick buck and move on to the next job. not this kid. he finally knocked on the front door and said "i'm sorry but i'm going to have to come back to finish these last two. it's just too dark and i don't want them to be hung poorly".

he only had a little bit left so beed said "well go ahead and give me the total and i'll go ahead a pay you now, i trust you to come back, i've watched your work and i know you'll do right".

he would have none of it. "no sir, i won't take anything until i have the job finished right". so beed thanked him for what he had done and axed him if he had any cards so beed could put 'em on the bulletin boards at work. he was all to happy to oblige as a lot of these guys get a lot of their business by word of mouth and reccomendations.

so if you need some gutter work done around b.g. you just axe beed and he will put you on to a kid that really does a good job.

your friend,

the tradesman (formerly),

dahbeed.

grand moff beed.....the big kahuna

the big cheese. numero uno. el presidente. whatever you call the guy who is ballin' and shot callin'.

beed was talking to his plant manager last week and was sure he told beed that he would be in d.c. for some training beginning may 1st.

so beed woke up early again today and was at work by 4:30. one of the night shift guys stops in beed's office and says so it's bta this week huh? bta is an acronym we made up when beed worked as an electronics technician.

whenever our supervisor was off for a day we called it bta...short for better than annual (leave). all the advantages of a vacation day without having to use any of your vacation time up. it eventually jumped from the maintenance department to become part of the floor lexicon. now everyone knows what bta is.

back to the question. beed said what do you mean? him "the boss is in d.c. this week, you're in charge". beed "unh unh, that's next week" him "are you sure, that's not what the email said".

beed "forward it to me" here is what was in the email and beed did not change the format at all. this is a copy and paste. "NEXT WEEK WHILE I AM IN POTOMAC, MD OSS DAVID CARTER WILL BE IN CHARGE OF THIS FACILITY UNTIL MONDAY MAY 1, 2006. ANY INQUIRES SHOULD BE DIRECTED TOWARDS HIM IN MY ABSENCE."

don't know why he shouted it but he does that for effect sometimes. good thing that beed was wide awake and ready to take the helm. beed knows that he will now be hit up several times with "hey, can i waive my lunch and work a straight 8?". they always do it when the plant manager is gone cuz they know that numma 2 is more lenient than numma 1.

anyhoo, it is mellower when beedster is in charge. and he don't mind doing it for short stretches but does not want to do it all summer. my boy told me he has 4 weeks he'll be gone in the next couple months so beed will have to be here for all of them.

hey, if ya'll see beed comin' you might wanna step aside. he's carryin' the big stick with him this week.

your new boss,

dahbeed ewing.

andy dick is funny as hell

i've liked this idiot all the way back to his news radio days which was an excellent show with phil hartman and joe rogan among others. way under rated in my humble opinion.

anyhoo, someone sent me an email with a funny site and i found this video by andy dick and it is hilarious. click aqui ---> make me laugh andy

the miraculous human body

yes, we know beed has a miraculous bod but that is not the reason for the title.

as beed has alluded to in an earlier post he has been trying to change some bad habits. one was tobacco, nuff said. beed has battled that addiction since he was 13 years old and has beat it back many times for years at a time only to return to his old friend when under too much stress.

he is using the gum to get off it once more. he has been off of big tobacco for over a week now. beed will eventually taper off the gum. here is his mad method of getting off the gum. taper down to where he only uses it after meals.....a typical time for tobacco. then when he gets an urge he lifts these 20 pound dumbells he keeps in his office and at home.

just a couple sets of curls and overhead presses and lunges until the urge goes away. and it does if you lift enough to fight it away. the side benefit of that is that you start to get in better physical conditioning also.

the other habit he is fighting and he pretty much has it beat as it is the 2 week mark on that one is a prescription he has been taking for 4 years for his knees and elbow. it is a nsaid (non-steroidal anti inflammatory drug). doesn't give you a buzz but works miracles on bad knees.

back when beed's doc prescribed it for him he was hoopin' for two different teams. one in church league and one in industrial league. beed also worked out on the floor in a job where he was on his feet pretty much all day with a lot of bending and squatting and whatnot.

right now he is doing neither of them. not hooping, and since he is in management now the only muscle he stresses is his ass or his scroll finger from his computer mouse. so beed says, hell, i'll just stop taking them. after two sleepless nights of thrashing about beed googles the drug name and adds withdrawals to the search.

holy shit batman!!! the web articles beed read says that the withdrawal symptoms mirror and are as extreme as opiate withdrawals. says beed should have spoke to his doc about it and tapered down. too late for that. beed wasn't about to see his doc and start tapering down after he already had 2 days under his belt.

needless to say, if you've been reading beed lately, he has been waking up around 2:30 to 3:00 every morning zombie style and been unable to return to sleep. so he has just been going in to work early and knocking out mad amounts of tasks since at 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning beed is the only person there in the front hallway. it's amazing how much work you can get done when uninterrupted.

today beed actually slept until 4:00 so maybe his body is adjusting itself. and that brings us back to why beed used the title above. even after years of abuse, his body is bouncing back quickly with this new regimen.

you already know beed has been doing a hanz and franz mini workout to fight his urges. he has also been doing a lot of manual labor at the casa. several years ago beed built this huge sandbox so he could install a slide for his boys. beed built it out of landscape timbers and used these ridiculously long pole barn nails to hold it together.

there is no longer a need for it so beed decided to disassemble it and use the timbers in another project. trust the beedster on this one. there is NO easy f'in way to pull those jobbers apart when you have driven the spikes that beed used.

here is how you do it. you take a straight claw hammer and use another hammer (of course beed has two hammers, he practically built his own house) to drive the strait claw in between two timbers. that lifts the top timber just enough for you to drive a crowbar under the end of the timber.

no easy way to do the next part. just good old back-breaking labor yanking on that crowbar to lift the top timber a bit more, say an inch off the bottom one. then you pull the crowbar out and jam this big spud bar up in there. it's the simple laws of leverage being employed. the spud bar is much longer than the crowbar so you get more bang for you buck, or in this case for your back.

beed even gave his spud bar an affectionate nickname since it was helping beed kick so much landscape timber ass. beed bestowed "big papi" on the spud bar. it took beed two full afternoons to fully disassemble said sandbox. there were timbers strown all ovah the back yard.

since beed woke up at 3:00 saturday morning when 7:00 rolled around he was primed for more manual labor. he put on his work clothes and boots and headed out to the back yard for more grunt work. he truly hopes his neighbors ain't too mad at him for all the racket he was making with his hammers.

those pole barn nails (spikes in reality) are too long to try to pull from the timbers so what beed did was drive them flush then he would turn the timber over to break the spike off flush on the other side. you use a pair of vise grips for this job. latching in on the spike about a quarter inch above the timber and then just bending the spike back and forth until it breaks. sometimes it's 4 times, sometimes 20.

after de-spikefying all of the timbers beed laid them all out on his basketball court. time to bring out one of the favorite implements beed has ever purchased......the pressure washer. beed has a 6.5 horsepower pressure washer that kicks ass. beed will soon use it to clean every square inch of concrete that beed owns (it's a bunch). but saturday it was called upon to clean up the timbers. and it did an awesome job.

todays project is to use those timbers to line his driveway. it's just a gravel driveway. one of these years beed will get it paved but not yet. beed is gonna dig a trench where the timbers have a little over half exposed. then one day next week beed will have a load of dense grade gravel delivered to the beed casa and beed will rake it smooth and bring it flush to the timbers.

sure, it will be just one more thing that beed has to weed eat against but it should look better than the setup that beed has now.

and this morning beed is sore as hell. all over his body sore. but it is a damn good feeling sore too. it's a sore that lets you know that you are still alive and getting in better shape as the soreness subsides. between the lifting of weights and all of the manual labor beed has been doing his body is getting in the best shape it has been in some time. and it feels good.

it was beed's new years resolution to get off of big tobacco and quit taking his nsaids. would late april still count as a successful new years resolution? some of us are just slower than others at getting things done.

but beed feels good about it and good about himself. but then again, when has beed not felt good about himself? it's one of the reasons you guys love him. everybody loves a confident person and beed has usually had that in spades. hopefully by the time hoops season rolls around and you see the beedstah again he will be in much better physical condition than he was this last year.

no promises but right now that's the plan.

your friend,

the mexican general

manuel dahbeed lahbor.

wtf.....someone splain this to beed

the photo you see above is the 225/50WR17 Kumho ECSTA ASX. now beed researches the internet before he buys anything. and he did some surfing on some maxima sites where many folks said these kumhos are great replacement tires for the bridgestone potenzas that came on the car.

supposedly much quieter than the potenzas and just as good in the performance department. anyhoo, beed's potenzas are about as bald as his head. bald on beed's head looks good, bald on beed's tires don't look good at all. it actually looks pretty scary when there's a storm brewing on the horizon.

so beed breaks down and goes to sears. he knows a guy there and always uses him so he can get the points or whatever sears uses that they don't call a commission even tho' that's what it is.

beed axes "how much to put me in a set of kumhos?" him: clacking away on his keyboard, and isn't clacking one of those words that sounds like what it is? "umm, with road hazard $1,139.03, each tire is 214 dollars" beed: "screw me with a red hot poker next time, i don't believe i can commit to this right now" him: "we'll be here" beed: in his mind "hell yeah but not with any of beed's cheddah"

so beed goes home and gets on the internet. he had found this place before where their prices can't be beat. it's a place called tire rack dot com. beed clacks in the pertinent info such as make and model and year and it spits out all kinds of tires beed can outfit his pimp ass whip with. most importantly it spits out the kumho ecstas. dare you guess what they wanted for them. beed want you to close your eyes and pick out a number between one and one googol. after you have the number look at the next paragraph.

eighty-eight frickin' dollars apiece. with 44 dollars shipping added on the grand total is 396.12. then beed has to pay kentucky tire exchange to mount and balance them. that will hit around a hundred bucks but beed's maxima will soon be wearin' new sneaks and for 600 dollars less than sears wanted.

these are the exact same tires too. not factory seconds or blemished. the same frickin tire and one place wants 214 and another place wants 99 when you include shipping. thank God for the internet.

beed's eyes are still popping open zombie style at 2:30 every morning no matter what time he goes to bed. he put it to good use this morning. went in to work early and am leaving early today.

your buddy,

dahbeed andretti.

painful as hell.

if you read beed's earlier post you would know that he had to attend a funeral today of a 16 year old kid that took his own life at the end of a rifle.

you also know that beed knows this family. we arrived at the church a little before 12 but they were already letting people in. we got in the line to talk to the family. what in the hell do you say to someone that just lost their son, brother at his own hands?

you just hug them and say "i'm sorry, i can't imagine" and you choke back the sobs so you won't add to their pain.

since we got there so early we had a two hour wait before the funeral started. beed is a people watcher if anything and saw so many things play out that he wouldn't dream of sharing on something like this.

the non stop line of other kids, high school kids who were his classmates and a bunch of kids that were his brother's friends just made beed's heart break.

for many of these kids, this is the first person that they have lost. beed was blessed when he was young as he didn't lose any family members until his great grandfather passed when beed was 15. but that wasn't like one of my friends taking his own life. he was 92.

the two pastors that did the funeral said that the boy, his brother and their father were all baptized on Christmas day 2005. what a treat that was. they showed video of it.

there was much crying and weeping today but what do you expect when we lose one this young? it's been a long day....beed has been up since 2:30 and it is now 8:38. very tired and hoping his eyes won't zombie on him at 2:30 tomorrow.

beed has spoke to dahbicito several times today and noticed that at the end of every call he said "i love you". he usually never adds that to a phone call in front of his friends even though papi always closes a phone call with "i love you". this really affected dahbicito. that poor little fella has lost more than one mentor and friend in his short 19 years.

it felt good to hug the family members today and hope that the healing touch of human interaction would work it's magic. as human beings we crave human touch. it reassures us so.

i promise i am not trying to be morbid. i am sharing an experience that made me feel as raw as an open cut. again, if you pray......say one for this family for if there is a family in bowling green tonight that needs it, it is them.

your friend,

david.

beed is back!

beed is alive and kicking. he has not been holed up in an opium den in bangkok thailand.....as tempting as that sounds.

last week beed spent each day mentoring a young man from london kentucky. beed actually chaired the selection committee that put this young man in his job. he's a.j. squared away. he's gonna be a good one. he cares about doing a good job and he's smart so he'll pick up things fast.

beed has one manager under him and we split the duties that are required of our section. we also back each other's job up when one is off. the man from london, let's call him toby, will be required to do both of our jobs so he was back and forth in our offices trying to learn as much as possible in one week.

beed really came to like him in his week here in b.g. he's definitely gonna be an asset to our organization and it's going to be fun to watch him learn.

it's funny, beed and greg got their jobs 2 and 1/2 years ago. there were two ladies we had on speed dial and whenever we ran into something we were lost on we would call them up. now we are the ones that other people call. the sme's (subject matter experts). and both of us are very happy to help the new guys out as we both experienced the angst of not knowing what the hell we were doing.

another reason beed hasn't written is he's kind of hit a writing wall. plus beed has beed trying to break a couple of bad habits. and his body is taking it kind of hard. no matter if beed goes to bed at 9 or 11, around 2:55 beed's eyeballs pop open like a zombie in a cheap black and white b movie. it's no use to even try and lay there and get back to sleep.

so beed just takes a long hot shower or long hot bath and then goes into work. beed tried to watch t.v. how many times can you watch infomercials hawking something you would never dream of buying. beed has to admit the girls gone wild video informercials do stir him a bit but there ain't shit on tv at 3:00 am.

onto something completely different. and tragic.

yesterday dahbicito called me at work and said one of his friends younger brother was missing and everyone was worried about him as he had made some very scary statements.

i've known this friend of david since he was 9 years old and had him on my baseball team when he was 10. i had drafted him because he was david's friend.

saturday me and my boys were doing yardwork and michael asked if we could have a campfire. i told him sure. david asked if his friends could come out. i told him of course.

my sons have pitiful fire building skillzzzz and i have great ones so i took their puny fire and built it into a damn fine one. david's friend and i sat in a couple of lawn chairs next to the fire and just bullshitted like two guys will do. it's funny to watch the kids you coached as little boys turn into young men.

anyway, david called me back and said they had found the boy and he had taken his own life with a gun. the boy that i sat with saturday night found his brother before anyone else did. i still cry when i think of a 16 year old that would take his own life leaving behind a family and friends crushed by his decision.

i cry for his brother that will have that image forever stamped in his brain.

visitation is at hillvue heights church from 12:00 to 2:00 today with the funeral following immediately. my whole family will be going. i did take this opportunity to emphasize with both of my sons that no matter how bad you think things are there is never a reason to take your own life. it is too precious and every second should be treasured.

i look out the window and it is raining and it looks like the tears of God coming down to lament this loss. they match my own tears as i type this.

if you pray at all, say a prayer for this family.

your friend,

david.

another reason i love western.

most of you know the reason i love western so much is because of the athletics teams that western has fielded over the years. they have given me much joy, plenty of pain, but they have always been MY TEAM.

but they are by no means the only reason i love western. last night miguelito stuck a consent form in my face so he could take a field trip to a massage parlor and see what really goes on at the “osaka oriental spa”.

actually that’s where i just got back from and i feel so relaxed now. and for some damn reason i have a urge for a smoke.

the consent form was so drakes creek middle school could transport him and a whole herd of other pubescent teenagers to van meter auditorium for a choral competition.

so i get to work this morning and i get a call on my cellio from a number i don’t recognize. normally i won’t answer a number i don’t recognize. i feel if it’s important they will leave a voice mail. that way i can screen whoever i want to talk to. don’t come down on me for that, you guys do it too, dahbeed is just the only person stupid enough to admit to doing shit like that.

but this time i answer it with a tepid “hello”. it’s miguelito....”ummm dad, umm mrs. l needs to talk to you. i’m already thinkin’ “what in the hell kind of trouble can you already be in at 7:15”. she informs me that miguelito can’t seem to locate his consent form and if i’ll give her a verbal yes over the phone she can take him. she says she’s sure when things settle down he’ll prolly find it. i told her “not unless you are gonna run him by the casa cuz i bet it’s right on the sofa where i saw it this morning”

she chuckles and says he’s such a good boy. let me tell you folks. it never gets old being told that you have a good kid. and i have been told that numerous times by so many different folks about both of my sons. lookout folks, beed has just added two more productive citizens to us workforce. not right this minute but beed has raised both of his boys to the best of his ability. jerkin’ that knot when it needs jerkin’. doling out the love when that is needed.

she ends her call inviting me to come to the show. i tell her i probably won’t be able to make it. i’m basically numma two up in this joint. that comes with privilege. if i want to take off for a couple hours to go see my son’s chorus then i can. trust beed on this one. he will make it up on the tail end. that’s just the way it works out as a manager in this organization.

but remember, numma two is still under numma one. so i stroll down the hallway and axe numma one “hey man, you mind if i run up to the hill to catch miguelito’s presentation?” him, “of course not, if i didn’t have this conference call coming up i’d go with you”

so beed dives into the gridlock that is scottsville road every morning. turn right on cumberland trace and then take cemetery road into b.g. i park on the gravel parking lot between kentucky and adams street.

i peer up to van meter and think i can see it through the clouds up that high. so i then hump from ky. street to van meter auditorium. i promise you this, i will bitch slap the next mutha-f’er that ever axes me “what’s a hilltopper”

i walk in just as they are getting ready to perform their first selection. i am one of only around 4 parents or grandparents in there. miguelito spies me and gets a big smile and gives me a little nod that lets me know he’s seen me.

on the way in i saw a bunch of schoolkids in khakis and blue polo shirts. drakes on the other hand has these pimp tight black robes. all of the boys are wearing black pants and white shirts and ties. miguelito used my red wku tie. they also have this red thing across their shoulders and it goes down the front of the robe. looks like a big long tie and it just drapes them. i have no idea what it is called but it was big pimpin’ too.

if looks is part of the criteria they crushed the little school outside. and then they sang. just two songs but they were beautiful. their teacher must be really good. as i sat in van meter i thought about how much western means to this community. yes van meter has some years on it but the acoustics in there were phenomenal for something like this. just one little hour out of my day but my day was made better for having western in this town.

as i walked back down the hill speaking to passers by i looked down the hill. the birds were singing. the sun was shining beautifully and another wonderful day on the hill was unfolding. i seriously was doing a little playa hatin’ on dahbicito thinkin’ about how good he has it. i hope he realizes, and i think he does what a wonderful experience the western experience is.

and miguelito had no idear his papi was coming to listen. i could tell that one little thing made his day. it’s just part of bein’ a good papi. giving them support in their endeavours.

your buddy,

el maestro,
dahbeed.

summer sanders.......you can swim in my pool

first off.....beed apologizes for not writin' shit for the last week. fact of the matter is he has been very busy at work and since he does a lot of his bloggin' at work (gettin' paid to jack around....does it get any better?) it doesn't take a genius to understand why beed ain't stepped up to the plate.

that said beed don't believe anything calamitous happened just because he didn't scribble for a week. life moved on. the sun came up in the east and set in the west. idiot drivers talked on cell phones while driving like inebriated monkeys and made beed say bunches of cuss words. people at work complained about the slightest things proving that they are the big pussies that they are. sorry, beed sounds like a hard ass but if you are getting paid around 20 dollars an hour to sort f'in mail in a climate controlled environment please don't complain to beed about any f'in thing. remember this, beed has talked to the folks in central america who make 4 bucks a day swingin' a f'in machete in a cane field so he ain't gonna be too empathetic with you.

ouch, chill out beed. you dropped 3 f-bombs in one paragraph. it don't matter that you didn't spell the whole word out. whatever poor soul reads your idiocy will inevitably sound out the whole word while they are reading it. at least beed would....but then again he LOVES to cuss. and beed ain't one of those people that it has been said use profanity because they lack the vocabulary to not use it. beed just likes cusswords. he learned to cuss from day one as his padre and tios (father and uncles) were some all american cussers so it's no surprise that some of beed's first spoken words were profane.

and then beed joined the marine corps following high school. talk about a finishing school for cussing. between his fellow marines and the squids he ran into on the ships he learned to really be able to string together a bunch of expletives.

then beed learned a new language.....spanish. a vast new arena of cusswords. of course they didn't teach them at western. but what do you think were some of the first questions beed axed friends he made in central america. como se dice fuck...chinga....como se dice shit...mierda......como se dice whore....puta. como se dice means how does one say? sorry if that makes beed come off in a bad light but he has always tried to be open and honest on this blog.

back to the title. if there is anything beed loves more than cussing it is women. beed has an awesome office with two huge windows. if ya'll are ever at the postal facility on scottsville road stop in and axe for beed and he will show you how pimp his office is. anyhoo, back to the windows. beed's desk faces them and he watches beautiful women pull up and get out of their vehicles and head inside for god only knows whatever type of postal business they need to take care of. it truly makes his day to know there are that many good looking women in his fine city.

beed is off work today. well actually he is going into work at 3 o clock and then driving to the postal facility in hopkinsville to work there the next two days. beed doesn't really want to do this but his boss told him he had to. he said he hated makin' beed do it but it was sumpin' he had to do. that's why beed has time to type his usual collection of bullshit up.

so beed's body wakes up around 5:45 every single day, alarm clock or no alarm clock. stumble out of bed, put on the short pants you've been wearing for a week and a half. hell, they're comfortable so don't dog beed about that. stumble down the stairs and pop the top on your first crystal geyser water of the day. beed goes through around 5 to 6 crystal geyser waters per day. that's one of the reasons beed is so damn skinny. he gave up cokes around 3 years ago. beed still treats himself to an occasional coke but ain't addicted to 'em like he used to be.

then turn the tube on to espn or something related to sports. this morning beed turned it to one of the fox stations and watched a show called "the sports list". today's list was the top 10 intimidating pitchers of all time. the show is hosted by summer sanders. beed finds her smokin' f'in hot. today she was wearing some low cut jeans with a cute white beaded belt. her top was almost a tank top. of course it was just a bit too small so there was a slight gap between her jeans and top showing just about an inch of skin.

you guys have no idea just how sexy that little bit of skin is. bullshit! you do know how sexy it is and that's why you dress like that. tho' summer does have some pretty big shoulders for a gal (she was an olympic swimmer) they are actually very athletic looking. not sammy sosa looking. lithe and long, not huge. beed finds female athletes verrrrrry hot. as long as they don't look like they could whip him.....lisa lang comes to mind.

summer also has a very cute face. and beed has watched how good she has become in front of a camera. beed will admit to watching her all the way back to her nickelodean days. there's something inherently wrong with having lustful desires while watching nickelodeon even if summer sanders is the host. would ya'll mind pitching in to put beed through some psychotherapy sessions?

her ease in front of the camera makes her even sexier to dahbeed. when she was talking about the reds "nasty boys" she started doing a little janet jackson dance imitation and it was sexy as hell.

okay, beed is opening up even further here. ya'll know he's a goober for long elegant necks on the womans. here's another achilles heel for beed. hands and feet. there he said it. beed always checks out a woman for pretty hands and feet. let's just say if there are two pretty equal good looking women beed ain't gonna go with man-hands. it's just that pretty hands and feet are the finishing touch on a fine looking woman.

and summer has both. pretty hands and gorgeous feet. yep, beed knows ya'll are about ready to have him committed by now but he is just being honest about how pretty women rock his world. beed ain't the only one with this affliction. his boss loves pretty hands and feet too. we were discussing a woman that has pretty hands just yesterday. we can't speak on her feet as we've not seen them.

well, beed figures he has wasted enough of your time. that is if anyone is even coming back to this website after he hasn't posted shit in one whole week. don't know if beed will have the opportunity to post anything for the next couple days since he will be in hoptown. hey, since beed will be in hoptown for two days, maybe he can take a little day trip to western state hospital. maybe they can hook him up with a cure. beed kinda doubts it as he has been this way for 46 years.

here is a link to an espn page 2 interview with summer. you can tell from it that she is a pretty confident person. ooh la la summer
your idiot friend,

the hand whisperer,

dahbeed.

ctrl/c....ctrl/v.....ctrl/x....ctrl/k.....old school beed

when it comes to using different applications beed is as old school as you can get. he doesn't know why he is this way but he just is.

beed would stick an icepick in his eyeballs before he would right click or click on edit and use the pulldown command for copy or paste or insert hyperlink or cut.

beed's boss told him that he wanted beed and his das (directory analysis specialist) to make some new sortplans for our flat sorter. first off, a flat sorter is a very large machine that is used for sorting what we call flats and what you would call magazines or catalogues or large envelopes. it was made by lockheed-martin but was originally designed by some sadistic german engineers. why sadistic? cuz it is a mother-f'er to work on. fortunately for beed he no longer works on them, just makes sortplans for them.

a sortplan is a software download to a machine that tells the machine which bin to put the mailpiece in. beed had not made one for this piece of equipment in quite some time and was gonna let his das do them. but then beed's boss came in his office and said, you better get to work on those sortplans surf-boy (of course beed was jacking around on the net). beed countered that greg usually does the ones on the fsm. he told beed he better not put it all off on greg.

it was good too since it made beed work on that particular type again and let him remember how to build one. what we do though is lay it out on an excel spreadsheet first and then we use that printout to go in and construct the sortplan in the sortplan building software.

greg had laid his out in a spreadsheet but he wanted to know if beed could clean it all up for him. bein' an excel geek, beed got right to work on it. it basically involved moving a bunch of cells down and filling up all the open cells with the data from the cells above. and there were enough gaps that you couldn't just highlight the range of cells and drag them all down.

so bein' old school, with his mouse beed would click on the cell he was moving. with his left pinkie finger he held down the control key and with his left index finger he would strike the x or v alternately. ctrl/x for cut and ctrl/v for paste. in a matter of a couple minutes beed had the spreadsheet exactly like greg needed it.

you would not believe how quick beed can copy and paste or cut and paste using the ctrl key and whatever combination he needs. but it drives some of beed's friends nuts. they see him do this and they say, "why don't you just right click on your mouse and use the commands?"

beed always replies the same way miguelito used to when we told him he had his shoes on the wrong feet "because i like 'em like that". actually beed says "i like using the combinations, why don't you learn to do it that way".

they always tell beed "because the right click is easier". so solly, not for a twisted mofo like dahbeed. same thing with autocad. beed never uses the icon or the pulldown. beed types the shortcut command and hits enter.

beed is gonna run. there is more painting and trimwork to do at the casa and it's rare when beed is motivated enough to do work on the house. gotta strike while the iron is hot.

btw, is anyone else as quirky as beed when it comes to these types of things? is beed alone in his lunacy? that f'in beed, he's got more tics that a timex watch.

your buddy,

the obsessive/compulsive-anal retentive,

dahbeed.

fresh paint....how sweet it is!

beed's idiot son whilst throwing a fit slammed his shoulder into the wall coming from the basement to the upstairs. it made a pretty big depression into the wall and gave beed many opportunities to play the guilt card on his son.

so the last couple of weeks beed has been a spacklin' fool. he finally got it to the point that the wall wuz ready for paint. so yesterday beed stopped off at the pittsburgh paints store and bought some new white paint fo' the basement.

beed has found out that items to work on the house are not items you can scrimp money on. advice to beed's friends. spend the extra money on things for the casa. quality definitely rules over quantity in that situation.

so the past two days beed has been doing some painting in the basement. holy shiznit! fresh paint makes such a big difference it ain't funny. plus it smells so good at the end of the day. it takes longer to tape everything off than it does to actually paint it.

beed has been a non-contributor on his casa for the last few years. he has always felt that he will have forever to work on the casa but will only have one chance to spend with his two boys. and beed is right on that one. but beed is no longer coaching so he needs to get off his ass and start fixin' shit around the house that need to be fixed.

and the painting and spackling of the basement family room is just the start. beed is feelin' a powerful urge to start fixin' stuff in the casa that needs it.

of course beed's esposa has no idear that there are many men that can't do all that the beedster can do to work on a casa. she definitely takes it for granted. but beed don't give a shyatt. if he can do sumpin' without payin' some other mug to do it he will hold out and do it himself.

damn, that paint smells......and looks good. beed is so proud of himself. after you finish a job like that it is hard to not keep going back and looking at how good it looks.

your buddy,

the casa fixer,

dahbeed.

Proof that God exists. Basketball style.

there are actually a few folks that beed suspects read his inanity and insanity that don't read hilltopper haven. he bases it on the fact of where they come from. so beed is going to copy and paste some of his idiocy that he posted on hilltopper haven today.

Proof That God Exists

Bradley Joseph: The Washington Post

Monday, March 27, 2006

Scholars have debated for centuries if there in fact is a God. Benedictine monks say that events that took place this weekend prove that there is in fact some type of deity in charge of all of mans moves. “At least we believe he is a basketball fan, obvious by events that took place concerning the final four” says Father William George MacCloskey.

“Father Van Eaton and I have this debate every year” adds MacCloskey. “As in all aspects of our lives college basketball ultimately is another example of Good versus Evil. In this years tournament, we feel that perhaps some supernatural events unfolded that can only be explained by a greater being such as God”

The fact that no number one seeds, in the roles of Evil, made the final four and an upstart George Mason, in the role of Good did make it seems to support at least anecdotally that there is a higher power.

“We like to believe that we are in control of our own destinies, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth” noted behavioral scientist David Kirkwood stated. “Look at all of the advantages that the BCS schools had in this tourney. They got higher seeds, they are fawned over by the media, they are allowed to blatantly cheat and complain about where a game is being played. But when the dust settled from this weekend, not one of the basketball equivalent of the axis of evil, the University of Kentucky, the University of Connecticut nor Duke made the final four” adds Kirkwood.

Fans interviewed in The Verizon Center following the game said it has been a long time coming. Trace Carter, a George Mason Patriots fan said “With all of the superstars jumping to the NBA over the last several years it has allowed us smaller schools to put together some teams that are not that far off in talent from the BCS schools” Carter also noted that the reason why everyone views these games as upsets is because the BCS schools never play the smaller schools away from home.

“The BCS schools have the money to play all of their out of conference games at home. This gives them a feeling of invincibility that is shattered when they have to play on even a neutral floor” Carter added that statement while being escorted from the Verizon Center by District of Columbia police. After initially running onto the floor and celebrating with other Patriot fans Mr. Carter was observed chasing CBS Analyst Billy Packer. When Mr. Carter caught Mr. Packer, he allegedly shoved a CBS microphone up Mr. Packer’s rectum.

Strangely enough, Mr. Packer refused to press charges claiming “I just want Mr. Carter’s phone number, can anyone get me his number?” Co-host Jim Nantz supposedly was overheard saying “Me next, me next!!” while jumping up and down and clapping his hands like a trained seal.

Events this weekend also destroyed many office basketball pools. At a Bethesda Maryland doctor’s office there was only one person in the pool that had all 4 teams of the final four picked correctly. “Everyone else used fancy indicators like the RPI and Sagarin Ratings but that is not how I picked them” shares proctologist, Dr. Tommy Hogan while pulling on some latex gloves. “I have a pet monkey named Ryan, when he gets excited he does one of two things, he either services himself or he flings poo. I thought what the heck so I put a large bracket on the wall of his bedroom and everytime he would fling his poo on the bracket I would write that team down as the winner”

Though not a scientific method, it has Dr. Hogan in the lead to win the office pool. “I deserve this” says Dr. Hogan while spreading lubricant on his latex gloves. “Just think about what I do all day for a living? I mean REALLY think about it. Who wants my job? Right now I have to get ready to meet a new patient that has somehow managed to insert a microphone into his rectum” “I see some strange things in this job but that is a first for me”