My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

My lady friend is an online shopping addict. She says it feels good to add to cart. Heard of Groupon? She gets a random deep discount offer once a day. She bought us a trip to an indoor skydiving joint. Weird huh?
It’s a giant fan that blows 160 miles an hour and you bounce around inside a tube. But first you lay down on a backless chair and an instructor tells you the proper body position. Then you put on a helmet, goggles, ear plugs and a flight jacket and step into the wind tunnel.

In unrelated news I’m finally able to blog from my phone and upload pictures in portrait format like the good old days. I had to download a wordpress app and that was that.
The inconsistency of posting lately shows how much I rely on this phone to get it done.

This home is around the corner from the PG&E gas explosion. When I turned the corner on an otherwise normal neighborhood all I could see were brick chimneys footed in burnt timber. Trees with limbs scorched off looked like bonfire remnants. Cars parked by the sidewalk were burnt down to gray metal. The news reported four deaths but many more people must have been badly burned. A whole block is gone.

Mike has only a few months left until he walks down the shampoo aisle at Walgreen’s. Due to budget cuts, that’s where this year’s graduation ceremony takes place.

I’m pretty darn happy with life lately. Working a lot, getting repeat customers and lots of referrals. Everything’s word of mouth. I’m seeing the world a little bit differently too. When you work the trades you never escape the father/son role. That’s how the trades survive. Pass the knowledge from father to son. Here’s how you lay brick until a church emerges. Here’s how you bend wood to make a barrel.

Everyone else goes to college and it’s whoever can remember anything monday morning after blacking out friday and saturday. Each man for himself. No continuity. I am the missing link. I care about people even if they aren’t blood. I look at a man and I wonder, “Can I help him get to the next level?” I don’t have sons, I have bandmates. And friends.

There have been some, like Collin, who reminded me of myself so much I couldn’t handle it. How many first time father’s get dealt a cripple? Not many. 100 years ago Collin and I would have been thrown in a small bucket of water. Problem solved. Humans didn’t have thirty years to figure it out. I’m one of the first generations to be so indulged. Now that I’m almost 40, I can finally do some things right. People see me as someone who can get things done.

I can’t do it alone of course. I hire people to help. Hiring your friends can be tough, because they are your friends and don’t want to be in a father/son dysfunctional educational experience with you. They want to hang out and do some work and have some laughs.

It’s amazing how much the years change us. Collin is making his own way through the haze of youth and I’m cheering him on. I’ve gone from inexperienced muscles that didn’t know how to hold a wrench tight enough to turn a bolt to having guys come up to me at the coffee shop and ask me for work. Because I’m always working, always needing help. I’m also seeing that I need to learn to be a better mentor. To take the Dad role more seriously, to understand how much my words can hurt someone who is just starting out.

I’m not dreaming of happiness anymore. I’m dreaming about what truck to buy next. The happiness is here.

The title of the blog comes from a poem called The Lady Hou, by Emperor Yang of Sui written about 615 AD.

If you get bed bugs, do wrap your mattress in plastic so as you drag it through the apartment complex you don’t spill the critters everywhere. However, ditching it on the sidewalk along with bags of junk on the curb doesn’t help stop the problem. It only spreads it out.

Mr. Sunshine turned 75 today! Congratulations old timer.

Found a new place that buys all kinds of paper. It’s just dreamy.

There’s only two options when you’re desperate for cool, singing the, “I got the, I got the blues, blues.” All or nothing is another way of dying. Everything or less is the healthy start.

Here’s one idea. Stew gets drunk and pukes up his dinner. Sloan loves Thai food.

J Stew came by and so did Old MacDonald. The plan was to draw up some comics about Chompy, a hamburger that didn’t taste good and was thrown out the window. He whistles when he’s sad because he doesn’t know whistling means happiness. One day a bottle of Sweet Tea Vodka someone used as a piss jug is thrown out and lands alongside Chompy in the woods. They become friends and have adventures.

A test audience consisting of my two roommates revealed our idea to be too similar to Aqua Teen Hunger Force. So we decided to do a comic about Stew-bag’s toilet. The one he keeps throwing cigarettes into as he tries to quit. His toilet has now become addicted itself, and hangs out smoking and musing on life. His name is Sloan, like the valve company that plumbs urinals. He’s a gruff but sensitive old school toilet that uses 3 gallons a flush.
No one’s sure what comes next, but if you got any hilarious toilet situations, leave a comment below!

There’s a Greek cultural festival down by Sean’s house. Food, music, culture, and a bouncy castle for the kids. Only it’s not a castle, it’s a ruin. A bouncy ruin, like the Parthenon.

Was an interesting day but too tired to write about it. Quickly though, the Honduran I’ve been working with, he tells me his girlfriend calls him an elbow when he doesn’t spend money. Never heard that idiom. Then he told me stories about riding box cars up through Mexico. Bandits unbolt part of the track at night and the train has sensors that alert it and the train stops. Bandits kidnap any illegal they can grab and ransom you back to your family for 6 to ten thousand dollars, depending on what country and where in that country you’re from. But if you’re lucky, they tell you to strip nude and they tear open your clothes and just steal your money.

It was me and the Honduran, Noah. We were hanging white boards in an office downtown.