Refreshed

Well it has been a week since I have posted anything as I was away on holiday.

Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. Mine was just fine even though it turned out different than planned. Spent Tuesday through Friday morning with my grandmother. It was good to spend some time with her. I know she enjoys it quite a bit. She's 87 and still going strong for the most part. She has a broken wrist and that is not something she likes at all. It makes things much more difficult for her. But she still manages. She cooks all her meals everyday. She has more darn food in her fridge and freezer than I do. It makes laugh because she has so much.

Spent Friday afternoon through late Sunday morning with Mike and Tammy. We had a good time just kicking back and relaxing all weekend. We spent Black Friday shopping, at a flea market and then we hit an army navy store and to top it off when went to a few pawn shops.
It was a hell of a lot more fun than going to a stupid mall or MallWart. Then we ended the evening sitting around a fire drinking gin and tonics. Saturday was another flea market then off to get plants for our gardens. I ended up getting six broccoli plants, two spinach, two dill, cilantro, habanero pepper and a super chili pepper plant. These only cost me 10 and change.
Seems very inexpensive to me. I was delighted at the price. Tammy gave me a lemon balm plant. Those damm things smell so darn wonderful. Heck I wonder if I could make ice tea with it. Has to be one of my favorite smelling plants.

As always meal time was very good. It is a treat for me since for the most part I do not like to spend a bunch of time in the kitchen.

Well I have done pretty darn well on Ebay since I put up my first auctions two weeks ago.
At this point I have done $160.75 in sales and my expenses on these items were very small for the most part. Some of the things I have owned for years so selling them off this way is great.
I have been thinking about opening an Ebay store and really start dumping things on there.
I may go the route of marking things a couple dollars higher and charge all customers in the U.S. $1.00 shipping. It is a gimmick that works. I have tested low or no shipping fees and the results from those tests are good.

Garden is planted from this weekends goods. Will plant seeds tomorrow, get my haircut, get the oil changed and ship some Ebay winner their goods.

Peace my friends.

Going to Grandmas

Today I am heading to my grandmothers for the Thanksgiving holiday. I have spent somewhere around 15 of the last 20 Thanksgivings with my grandparents. I enjoy it although my grandmother thinks I get bored and would rather be elsewhere. She is wrong. I enjoy spending time with her. At 87 I know those holidays and other visits will not be going on for too many more years. Plus she has made me a batch of pumpkin cookies with chocolate chips. They are very good.

On Friday I am heading to Tammy and Mikes for the holiday weekend. More holiday fun with friends, really family. Tammy will have to give me gardening tips. I'll need some. Maybe Mike and I can go for a spin in his new car. Of course we will eat and eat well. Tammy cooks very well, so does Mike. Nothing like eating well cooked and tasty food. Maybe we will go to the St. Augustine flea market and the Farmers market. It will be a good holiday week.

I sold six of the thirteen items I had on Ebay last week. Three of the items are going out of country. One to Canada, one to England and one to Australia. It is somewhat of a pain in the ass to ship out of country. Trying to figure out the shipping charges can be a pain in the ass. I relisted what did not sell and listed a whole bunch of books.

This picture was taken when I was camping in St. Marys, Georgia. This is the St. Marys river.
I was standing on the street in front of my campsite and was looking the whole place over and saw the top of a vehicle going down the river. Of course I said "What the hell is that?". I grabbed my camera and went running to the cliff and caught this. Kind of cool.

Hope each and everyone of you and your family have a Happy Thanksgiving.

See you Sunday.

No picture today

Very busy day today. Primered the post and plant hangers that are going on the corners of the garden. Then I burned all pictures and edited pictures I have taken over the last year to cd.
50 cd's worth of pictures. Outside of the fact I need to do this I have a fan in the computer that needs te replaced. I thought it was the main fan and replaced that at a cost of $40. Come to find out it was a fan I could not see because the one I replaced was hiding it. The fan that need to get replaced keeps the video board from over heating. That will be $10 or $15 to replace.

UUgghh. Thankfully I will be going way for a few days. Then come back and get refocused.

More purging of items and finish painting and get the carpets cleaned. I have not done that this year. Yippee. By the time I am done it will be a new house.

Drats my house is out to get me

This is another picture from by blanket. I was supposed to have a Flickr meetup there tomorrow with three of my contacts. Since the weather is now looking iffy and three of us are driving a couple hours to meet we have decided to postpone it for a couple weeks. Also one of the people I was to meet fell down last night and messed up his shoulder.

Now for my house being out to get me, well yes it is. Remember early on this week I crashed into one of the poles for the carport. Well today Jim and I were fixing it. Well he had started while I was out this morning and when I arrived home he asked to help him hold a board in place. When I stepped onto the lawn there was a board there with a nail sticking up. Yep a nail through my shoe and into my foot. I hurt like hell right now. WTF is next. My confidence is a little shaken today.

Yes Mr Politician this means YOU

I guess our esteemed leader in the do not get the meaning of this t-shirt I saw at a book fair a few weeks ago. As you may know some of our Democratic gutless wonders in the House caved into pressure from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to put the abortion prohibition in the healthcare package. There are minor alterations in the Senate plan. The fact that you caved into the Bishops clearly shows you have no idea of the separation of church and state. The Catholic bishops do not speak for the majority of Americans. How you justify your decision?

All healthcare issues should be covered. There only needs to be one plan for all Americans. You can roll Medicare and Medicaid into the national healthcare plan.

Please read the healthcare plan put forward by Dennis Kucinich and see what you think.
At this time this is the best plan put forward. At least He has the guts to put forward a plan that will be a benefit to all Americans.

www.kucinich.us.

Enough of me

So enough of me for the moment. A little politics for today.

So Sarah Palin is upset that Newsweek put a picture of her in her running outfit on the cover this week. You should have not posed for that picture if you did not want something of that nature to be brought to the public at large. However I suspect that you are actually glad it is on the cover. Now you can go out and say it is degrading to you, you did pose, and generate some level of unwarranted sympathy. Only fools will fall for this trick. There are many fools.

I see that Howard Berman D-California and the House Foreign committee Chairman has said that the United State has no right to restrict us from traveling to Cuba. Cuba is the only country that we can not travel too. It is about time that somebody gets the ball rolling here. We should have been able to travel there years ago. The embargo NEVER worked. It is amazing that we have been held hostage by the older Cuban community in Miami. Do you think those folks would move back to Cuba today if they had the chance? Not a chance in hell. It would snow in Miami before they would move back. No matter what the Cuban gov't says in public you know they want Americans coming to Cuba. The United States will be the driving force behind getting Cuba back on its feet. The Miami Cuban community needs to get their collective heads out of the rear ends and look at the facts. Time for bitterness is over folks.

Now for tonight's dinner. Last Friday I went to the Friday Market in downtown Tampa. I ended up buying some pasta. There was a booth selling tons of different styles and flavors of pasta.
I ended up getting one called fanciful fruit blend. It is lemon, lime, tangerine and raspberry.
Hope it is good.

My house is invaded by freakin ants again. Bastards won't go away. Time to nuke the whole darn house.

Picture is from Tampa.

How F***ing Dumb

Here is how my day started. Oh yeah, just freakin great. How did this happen you ask.

When Jim, aka the landlord, showed up this morning so we could dump more dirt into the garden. I had to move my truck from under the carport and onto the lawn. When I was backing up I swung the truck hard so I could get onto the lawn. Out of nowhere I here this awful sound. I say "What the fuck was that?". I look out the windshield and see one of the supports for the carport all busted up. I say "This is not good". Then I get out and look at the front left of my truck and say "@#$%%$%%#@$*" or "This is not good. While this happened Jim was sitting in his truck at the end of the driveway. Yippee for me. Can I start the day any better than this?
Well Jim is more worried about my truck and I am more concerned about the house. Go figure.

Thankfully the wood was just window dressing around the real support beam so no real foul.

As for the truck it is ok. Some of the plastic for the housing is broken. However I was able to snap it back into place for now. No way am I spending cash on a replacement at this time.

I think some rubbing compound and buffer will take the paint off the truck. There is a minor dent. However because of its location it really does not show.

Good way to start the day. Now this goes along with the fact I spilt paint on the rug while painting the hall the other night. I got 90% recovered. When I showed Jim he said what paint on the rug. I can see better than him. Then for the topper when we were getting one of the loads of topsoil today when somebody backed into the front of his truck. No real damage. Just lots of paint exchanging between vehicles.

Can you do better for today?

Cleaning the Junk

So after looking for jobs this morning, finding nothing in this area or Asheville except retail jobs,
I decided I would clean out the laundry room and the shed. Since the laundry room is outside off the porch it is like a shed and full of junk, aka crap. I went through both of these storage areas and tossed a bunch in the garbage and then put a bunch by the side of the road. It did not take long before the junkers came by and hauled off a bunch of the items for scrap metal and whatever else they were going to do with it. All that is left is a bookshelf and a perfectly good Dell monitor.

I just looked at my Ebay auctions and see that one book has a bid and four others have people watching the auction. Seems like a good sign.

Photo is from Tarpon Springs.

Sleepless in Tampa

So here are a couple images I want to use for my Christmas cards at the next art show. I have another black and white image of a church that looks like a spanish style church that I want to use. I will need to go through my cd's and find the darn picture. That will be a chore, since my cd's really are very poorly labeled, Ugh, my payback for being lazy. I'll post that picture and one other that I want to use and see what use think. I am going to use Shutterfly to print these so they should look pretty nice. I think I will sell them individually and in a packs. If they do not sell I will use them myself. Hell it will be cheaper than getting cards at the store.

Fell asleep around 9;30 last night. Woke up at 3:00 and could not get back to sleep. So I got up and did dishes, vacuumed, folded a load of laundry and have now put a load in the dryer and the last load in the wash.

Now I am going to get my camera and upload the pictures to the computer. Then crop the pictures of the books I am going to put on Ebay this morning. If you want to see what I am selling my Ebay user name is 7e29. Follow the auctions for some never ending excitement.

Oh yeah, you can bid also and put food on my table.

The Other Side

Well I have been out of work for a week and at this point I have to state that I have not not been this happy in a long time. It is amazing what stress can do to ones mental health. Wow is all I have too say.

I have not shaved since I lost my job and I like having a beard coming in. It is crazy how much gray is in my beard. Not much gray on top, the beard is making up for that. It may be a few weeks before I shave. Depends if the thing starts to itch a whole bunch. We shall see.

The art show next month is a Christmas theme. You can enter ornaments or cards. I think I may put some cards in the show. If you look at my Flickr stream I have a set called Got Jesus. I think I'll pick out a couple pictures from that series and have Christmas cards made from those for the show.

My next post will be 5 pictures that I want to use for the cards. Opinions please.

Not sure what I am doing today. Think I will go to some yard sale this morning and see what Ebay items I can find. One never knows.

My grass is always greener, on the other side.

Things

Well my landlord, Jim, and I put up some shelves on the backside of the shed today. We are going to put in a garden. It is going to be 12 x 16. So it will be decent size garden. Veggies and flowers. I also have put up a couple bird feeders. They have yet to attract birds. However I have thrown some food and I have seen finches eating in the lawn. At least I think they finches. not really up on my bird knowledge. I know I have a very good bird book that I need to dig out and get up to speed on my birds. As long as I see some cardinals around I will be happy.

Tomorrow morning I am going to head out and do some picture taking as long as it is not cloudy like this morning. Then head downtown in the afternoon and check out the Friday downtown market. I want to see if I can sell some photos without a business license. Hopefully I can.
Then tomorrow night some of the folks I worked with want to take me out to dinner.

This picture was taken near downtown Tampa. For many years there was a store called Hyde Park Hemp and this was painted on the pole in front of the store. They went out of business earlier this year. times got too tough for them.

Torn

We are becoming a nation of hardened hearts, splintered factions and people who are unwilling to compromise with those who have a different view of how we need to grow and advance as a nation. Is this what the lasting legacy is going to be for those who have decided to become members of our armed services? For those who paid the price of their lives is this how we are going to pay respect to them?

We have leaders inside and outside of politics who completely refuse to listen to views from people with differing views. The soldiers who have given their lives are being desecrated by these actions. Those soldiers are just like the rest of America. They have different views from one another on all aspects of American life yet they decided to join the armed services and work towards a common goal of a better America.

While you can agree or disagree with the merits of war you need to respect the sacrifice of those who have joined our armed services. We owe them that.

Today as we celebrate Veterans Day please think of those of have served this country, are serving this country and those who have given their lives. We owe them much and give them very little back.

We are torn.

Get your Produce. $1.00

So today I filed for unemployment online, at 6:00 a.m. Wanted to be ahead of the curve.
Then I decided I wanted to up to Webster and visit the super huge flea market. It is actually two really big flea markets. One part is 99% antiques, collectibles and such. The other side is a mix of old, new and some complete crap. They do have one main area that has tons of produce, cheap.
I bought fresh green beans, corn, red creamer potato's, broccoli, 7 bananas and a three pound bag of tangerines for a dollar each. A pineapple for 2 dollars. All good deals and all fresh. These farmers are mostly from Florida. Some come down from Georgia. Oh yeah I also bought two nice sized mint plants for a dollar each. They smell yummy.

Low temp today, but very very humid and windy. All from Ida buzzing by.

Tomorrows blog may not be as nice. I feel I need to bitch about some things I have seen lately.

Damm I think I already used this picture on this blog. Well who cares cause I like it. This is from the LAAFF Festival in Asheville. This is actually one of my faves from that vacation.

Good news Sunday

Now for some good news. I went to Publix this morning to see how much my blood pressure medicine would cost now that I have no insurance. It cost me $20 a month with insurance and it is going to cost me $23 with no insurance. Cool. I was concerned about that. The next thing I found out about is also insurance related. When you get terminated like I did you will have the option of picking up your insurance through Cobra. This is not always affordable to many people in situations such as mine. I found out that there is a provision in the stimulus plan that will pay for 65% of your Cobra charge. So as long as the Cobra is a decent price I will be able to have insurance and pay only 35% of the cost. Thanks Mr. President.

I plan on looking at whatever other options for food assistance, rent assistance or whatever other programs are out there. Time for me to get my end of the public dole.

The Bucs won today. What else do I need.

Out to Pasture

Well just like this truck I have been put out to pasture by the corporate paymasters. I was fired, terminated, downsized or whatever term one chooses to use when you lose your job.

Outside of the fact I am now jobless I actually feel pretty free at the moment. It is time to take stock in my situation in life and figure out what I need to do to make some changes in the direction things have been heading. So I will be looking at many possibilities and see if I can move in a new direction and find some meaning in what I do next.

So the options are great even in these times. I am taking this as a blessing and will look forward to the next chapter in my life. Onward and upward my friends. Do not fret or worry about Mark.
If things are going poorly you will read about it here first. If things are going great listen for the cheer from the top of the mountain. If a loud cheer comes to your ears in the middle of the day you will know that something good has happened for me and you can sit back with a smile and know I am moving on to the greatness I was meant to achieve.

Peace my friends. Thanks for listening and enjoy your weekend. I will be enjoying mine as a free man.

Paralyzed

Ok so I am not going to post anything of substance. If I post all the turmoil I have going on in my head I think I will have a fucking mental breakdown. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFuck.

I feel like I need a shit storm to kick my ass and make me do something with life. For me it is painful to do anything these days. I just wallow in my own self pity and it really sucks.

Ok I am going to watch Dexter. A great Showtime series. It gets addicting. Well written.

I have been listening to WNCW from Asheville tonight. It is a great radio station out of Asheville. The music helps soothe me.

I have been listening to it since I got back from vacation. Not some short lived love of a radio station you hear while away from home. It is good.

Well I have the art show tomorrow tonight. It will be interesting to listen to what people have to say about my picture. I know not all will like it, that is the way of art. Anyhow I just need one to like it enough to take her home. Hell I may have to buy some art while I am there. Pottery perhaps?

Off to the couch. Thanks for listening and hope you understand.

Photo from Tammy's garden.

The Old Road

Traveling the back roads through yesterdays towns

No super highways with droning sounds

The small towns welcome us with open arms

Local foods and locals smiles a welcome sight

Mom and Pop inns, we spend the night

Dreams of tomorrow run through the youths mind

We are today's tourist trade, hope you don't mind,

The old road is gone

Tourist trade has passed us by

The Mom and Pop Inn shuttered and dusty

Old signs weathered and rusty,

We have forgotten the small towns

Its where we all live

Come back to us America, we will forgive.

Now what to do...............

So last Thursday I got my prints back from Shutterfly, who do an excellent job, and got them mounted and matted. The picture above is the other one I will submit for the Gallery if the first one sells. I bought frames for them and I have dropped the black and white chair picture off at the gallery. But now I have a problem, a good one. I had the picture above matted in about the same color as the palm cross. When I had this printed I had it done glossy. Now I like this one more than the other and think I should put this in at the opening. I have it framed in a light tan frame and it speaks to me more than the other picture. I think I should go with this picture first. My gut tells me this is better for many reasons. Subject, color, appeal and so on. This is more like my photo hero Eggleston than the other picture.

What do you think?