Greensboro I'm a coming

Well I hope that you all had a very good Christmas holiday. Mine was very good. Good times with my grandmother and her friends. Way too much food, as usual. She is very sad I am going to Greensboro. But she understands I need to do what I have to do.

So I fly up this afternoon, get my car and hotel and get an idea of the area. If I have time I am going to go by the store and visit them. If not today I will go there tomorrow morning. Since none of us have ever met each other it might be a good idea. One of the ladies who works there did work for Law Enforcement Supply when I was there, however she worked in the Panama City office so at least we know each other through talking on the phone. Once I get that out of the way I while begin looking at apartments. I have a list I am bringing with me. I hope the first place I look at turns out as decent as it seems from what I have seen on the web. If it is then I am going to take that place and be done with the whole thing. That way I can get the utilities and all set up and have the rest of the time to get my bearings around Greensboro. Since I am one of those people who am pretty damm good about directions and figuring streets out I should know where things are pretty quickly. It should leave me time to take some pictures of the area. So maybe I can sneak in a little roadtrip and see what my photography future has in store for me. This whole area is much more suited to my style of photography as you would expect.

I am going to run. Have some loose end to tie up this morning. Have a great week.

Merry Christmas Happy Christmas War is Over

Over the blacktop and through the tollgates to grama's house I go. The Gps knows the way I go today through no white drifted snow.

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas. Eat some good food, enjoy the time with family, friends and anyone else you chose. Hope you all receive some peace and harmony on Christmas day. The pagans would want it this way.

Maybe one day the leaders of the world will embrace this song as the rest of the world does. We can all hope and pray in our own way.

Goodbye dust collectors

Well I sold most of my "collectibles" and some furniture yesterday for $500.00. It was what I expected, but less than I hoped it would be. I never could have received that much at a yard sale unless I put many hours of work into getting it all ready and then doing all the right advertising to get as many people as possible. The guys will be here shortly to take all the stuff away. After all of that is gone then I can start to pack. First clean and then pack. Everything will getting a good cleaning, dusting and so on before it gets wrapped and pack. There will not be a whole bunch for the movers to take with them. Then I can start to use the "Florida" room as thee main room to store everything. I also sold $100 worth of some other items the other day and have sold about $350.00 worth of goods on Ebay. So at least I have a little bit of cash.

Gotta run for now the guys are here to clean out the goods.

Merry Christmas from the Family Robert Earl Keene

This is one of the best non traditional Christmas songs there is. In fact it may be my favorite. Hope you enjoy this. Robert is great and if you have not heard of him you need to check him out. You know there are many families out there that have a day just like this.

Turn the Page

Tammy, thanks for helping me figure out what to post today. This is great song. I love both versions. Bob's is classic of course and I love the gritty feel of the Metallica version.

So far my version of the GAN, Great American Novel, has been pretty cool.

I put the final touches on all the things I am going to sell. It will be very easy for the guy to look at it all and give me a price.

Yesterday I replanted my lemon balm into a much bigger pot. It now has room to explode with new growth. My friends from Fort Myers came up yesterday and we did some messing around in the afternoon. Then we went to Sam Seltzers Steakhouse for dinner.
We all ended up getting there bbq rib all you can eat special. I ended up getting all their ribs when we had seconds. I have lots of ribs in the fridge. Thank you.
When we came back here we sat outside and I stoked up a nice big fire in my chimnea.
We just sat around and bullshitted until they decided it was time to get back to their hotel. It was a good day.

Today I need to call and confirm everything with the estate guy and then I am free. I think I will take a little trip to Tarpon Springs one last time and then head down to the usual Sunday football bar for the last time. I also need to head to the post office and mail some Ebay items.

Have a great Sunday and get in the holiday spirit.

Sorting the junk

Well I have pretty much finished sorting out EVERYTHING I have. The only thing that is left is my clothing. I might as well go through that and get rid off what does not fit anymore. I usually do that on a regular basis anyway how. Its not like I shop for clothing a whole bunch anyhow.

There is a whole lot for the estate guy to buy. I hope I get something close to a decent price for it. After all that is gone then I am going to start packing. That will be fun. Actually that should go fairly quick. I hope.

I am taking the rest of the day off from the moving process except for doing laundry. I am going to wash all my blankets, sheets, towels and then move to the clothing I am taking. That way it is all clean and fresh when I move into my new place. It is all clean now. However since some of that sits in the closet for so long I might as well freshen it up before I move.

Have a customer from the old job stopping by today. He is actually a friend now. It ended up that we actually grew up in the same area of Ct. as kids. We are going to go have a few beers and maybe some wings at Hooters. Seems a good way to say goodbye until he gets a chance to come north for a visit.

Enjoy your day in your lovely weather.

Repent from having too much crap

Repent from owning too many things.

So I am into sorting all my "stuff" and all I have too say is #$%^$#. Too much. I found a guy yesterday who has a junk shop/thrift store who buys out estates. I talked with him for a bit and he is going to come over Monday and give me a price for all the items I am not going to take with me. I'll never get what it is worth and I will get more than I would at a yard sale. Believe me when I say that not much is going. I will still be more than enough for one person.

I have always dreaded this day. I knew at some point I would have to clean out. Oh well that is life.

Off to more purging.

Lookout Greensboro, The Pez is coming

For good or bad, better or worse, and all other things that apply in this situation I am making the plunge and moving to Greensboro, NC. The exact date is still to be determined but in the first or second week of January I will be living in North Carolina. It looks like I will head up on the 28th and head back on New Years eve. Those couple days will be spent getting a place to live. I hope that is enough time to accomplish everything. If that goes well I guess I will move up sometime the following week.

So that means I have a whole ton of things to do the next few weeks around here. I have plenty to pack and plenty to throw in the trash and what I do not trash or pack is going to get sold. There are a few places near my house that will come in and buy whatever you have that you are getting rid of. I doubt you get a whole bunch for those items but any cash will help at this point. The less I have to move the better off I am and I suspect it will also cost a little less.

This is going to be a massive change for me. I have lived in Tampa longer than I have lived in any other town in my life and the house I live in now is the second longest I have lived in any place outside of the house I grew up in. So it will all be a bit overwhelming for a few weeks.

One of the big advantages is I will moving closer to Bluefield, Asheville and Ken's house. :)
It will be good for my photography. This area is much more rich with the things that I like to photograph. It should be a little cheaper than Tampa. Not much, but any amount helps.

So I am happy, glad, scared, nervous, excited, and so on......................................

That is enough for this morning. My brain is swimming with chaos.

Rock n Roll Breakfast

Here are two of the greatest live performances of all time in my humble opinion.
Queen was such a killer band. They were so different than any thing else that was out there in the world of rock.

The Queen song was for the Live Aid performance in 1985. All you have to do is watch and you will know how damm good this is. Perfection.

The George Michael song where he is singing with Queen at the Freddie Mercury tribute is amazing. He does such a fantastic job here. I do not think there is anyone better would could sing and sound so much like Freddie.

Weekend Review

Saturday in an attempt to save money I did nothing except take pictures of items that I am going to put on Ebay today and tomorrow. I did however locate some very good friends on Facebook. When I was a kid a family from Vietnam moved into a house next to my grandparents, who lived the next street over from me. There were five kids all around the same age as myself. During junior high school and high school I practically lived at their house. Ahn, the middle son was the same age as me and we hung out all the time. Their house was like my second home. There many many crazy things that happened at that house and for the most part his parents let us get away with whatever we did. One time we caught a squirrel in a live trap and we brought the trap into the house. Well Ahn's youngest brother was checking it out and decided to open the cage. Naturally the squirrel bolted out of the cage and proceeded to tear around the house in total panic. Their Mom freaked at this scene. She was so afraid of this thing. She jumped up on the coffee table and frantically jumped around and screamed in a total panic. All us kids thought this was the funniest darn thing and fell on the floor laughing like a bunch of stoned fools. She was screaming Vietnamese so of course I had no clue to what she was actually saying. After several minutes we were able to get the squirrel out of the house and back into freedom much to its delight. Outside of yelling and screaming when the scene was over their Mom did nothing. This was all too typical. When all of us stoners, and there was a large number of us, started eating too much food their Dad put locks on the cabinets. Being the industrious stoners we were we would take the screws out of the hinges and get out munchies that way. Our primary source of munchies, ramen noodles. This was way before ramen noodles were a mass market thing like they are today. His parents would take roadtrips to NYC and do the massive shopping trips at an Asian market there. These events were so common that they did not seem out of the ordinary. So anyhow I located three of the five kids on Facebook this weekend. Reconnecting will be great. All the kids live in California now and I have not seen them in over 20 years.

Yesterday I went to my usual Sunday football hangout and watched the Bucs get hammered. I think this was one of the worst games I have ever seen them play. Totally pathetic. One odd thing yesterday was the sea fog. It was just right along the beach and very heavy. It did keep the temps down quite a bunch. After the game I went to the beach and took a few shots. A couple look like they may have come out quite well. If so those will be tomorrows posts.

I think I am going to go to the Webster flea market this morning. Then come home and do the EBay stuff and take some of the plants out of the starter pots and put them in the garden.

Have a good Monday my friends.

Bright Eyes

Last week at the opening for the Xmas art show they had a professional photog doing sittings for $10.00. Even though I hate getting my pictures taken I decided that for that price I would give it a shot and see what happened. Well these are the three that he sent me from all he took. I am going to give one of these to my parents as a Christmas present. I just need to decide which one.

I think for them the standing shot would be the best.

I am amazed at how bright my eyes are in the last shot in the series. I have been told by a few people that my eyes really stand out depending on what color shirt I am wearing. The thing is he showed me the shots right out of the camera and they were like this at that point so I know he did not Photoshop them to make them like this. I know my eyes can be green or blue depending on what I am wearing but never have I seen them like this.

And now for the week ending garden update. All is going quite well to this point. On Monday I started green beans, cucumbers, cilantro, bell peppers and sun flowers from seed. I put them in a seed started tray and them put them in the shed until today. Well the green beans and cucumbers have gone crazy. I should be able to plant the green beans in the garden on Monday and the cucumbers on Tuesday soon followed by the sunflowers. It seems the peppers and cilantro will take a bit longer. I take some pictures and post those this coming week,

Feeding Frenzy

Enough of the Tiger Woods feeding frenzy. I am not passing judgement one way or another on what he has done, that is between him and his wife. I also am not a huge Tiger fan or golf fan for that matter. However it sickens me that we continually build people up to such huge levels and are more than willing to dig in the dirt to find any faults so we can smack them down. I am sure that a large number of these moral perfectionists have plenty of dirt in their backgrounds that they would not want to have shown to the world yet they are willing to pass judgement on someone they have helped build up to unreasonable expectations. Maybe you should go out and do some real reporting.

I think I will buy myself a netbook this weekend. I has become time for this to happen. I have sold close to enough on Ebay that I can use that money to buy a netbook. Have been looking on the Web and I see one from Asus that gets good reviews. Not sure overall but $300.00 is all I am going to spend. We shall see.

Heading out for some pictures since it is sunny today. No more rain for a few days. Maybe I'll head toward the beach and see what I can find.

If you look at the vultures eyes and facial features he looks sad. He is also looking at me to make sure I was not going to steal his feast.

Eye on the Future

So I am trying to figure out where to live if I end up moving. Should I rent a house or deal with an apt. for a year and try to bank some cash. Saving cash sounds very good, however apt. living sucks for the most part. One thing that is certain is no matter where I go washer and dryer must be included. Some many have washer/dryer connections as a feature. No that is not a feature. Put the things in the apt. or home and that is a feature.
I like the space a house offers and at least you do not feel so boxed in. But you spend more cash.
Heck no matter how much I get rid of I still will more than will fit into a 1 bedroom apartment.
Decisions.

A dear friend of my grandmothers and someone I knew fairly well as kid passed away this week.
Joseph Bella or Jo Jo was 82 years old and in good health. He was home alone and was working on a ladder. He fell off the ladder and hit his head on the concrete floor. When Lill, his wife, came home he was in the bathroom cleaning up. Lill called 911 and by the time they arrived he was unconscious. He never regained consciousness and was declared brain dead at the hospital. The family decided to let him pass on instead of being kept alive by machines. Jo Jo and Lill were married for nearly 55 years. One of his great passions was his gardens. When you went by the house the yard was full of flowers. In the back were veggies, apple trees and blueberry bushes.
May he rest in peace.

Off to get a coffee maker for my grandmother as a Xmas present. She has little one that works well but now that she is part of the breakfast club with a couple others in the park she needs a bigger pot. Then I am going to the bookstore and look at some baseball card price guides. I forgot I this pack of cards that was given to me a few years ago. I did some research last night and found out these are from 1950 and were sold at the Baseball Hall of Fame and some baseball stadiums. It seems that some may be quite valuable. If I send these in to get graded then they have to the potential to worth a whole bunch more. My only reservation is the cost of getting cards graded is expensive. It may well be worth it so I will use the bookstore as a library.
I figure at the least the set is worth $200 dollars and at the most several thousand.

Time for research.

Good Times

This has to be one of the best uses of music in a movie. If you have not seem Almost Famous check it out. It is a pretty cool movie. Kate Hudson is great in her role as Penny Lane. I love the end of the clip when she says "You are home" and does her little hand gesture.

I hear them playing Reveille at the base. They play it at 6:20 every morning. Then at 4:20 they play the Star Bangled Banner and at 10:00 p.m. they play Taps. Its kinda cool. You can hear it every morning and when the wind is blowing this way you can hear it from all the speakers across the base. I like it.

Have to go over to Jim's this morning and give him some lessons on how to use Outlook. He has had AOL as his email for years and something happened that would not let him retrieve his AOL email. I could not even fix it. So last week I went over and set up his email through Road Runner and set it up through Outlook. He does not quite understand it. So I need to give him lessons.

Fell asleep last night at 8:30, woke up at 9:45 and decided to back to sleep on the couch. Got up at midnight and spent about an hour and a half watching Graham Norton clips on YouTube. If you have BBC America check this show out. It is on Saturdays nights at 10:00 p.m. It is a talk show/comedy show and totally irreverent and usually pretty damm funny.

If the weather is going to be nice tomorrow I think I am going to take a photo roadtrip someplace. Not sure where but I need to get some pictures and it has been a little bit since I has gone out for a bunch of shots.

Special Delivery

Well I got a phone call tonight from the gentleman who looks to be my new boss. It seems the deal he is working on to become president of the company is done. All paperwork for that is going to be signed in two weeks. If I take the job my salary will be the same as was it was when I left Law Enforcement Supply. It is also looking better that they would have me go to Greensboro, NC. If that is the case I have lots to get done. I will have to have a moving sale to get rid of lots junk I do not want or need anymore. Then there is the small matter of finding a place to live. I would want to rent a house, not an apt. Seems that with a little looking around I can find a place for less or at least no more than I am paying currently. Thankfully I have been getting rid of junk for some time. Now I really need to step it up. Massive Ebay sales will be coming up. Maybe take some things to antique shops and see what I can do.

Things may get crazy real soon.

Crappy weekend

Well this weekend sucked. I started getting sick of Friday with a sore throat and ended up spending all day Saturday and Sunday taking heavy does of assorted cold medicine to fight off this thing. Still feel crappy this morning. My sinuses are all screwed up and that is my biggest concern. I do not want to be come addicted to nasal spray again and afraid it may happen if this thing hangs around for a few days. Yippee. Hell on a good day my sinuses are not all that good.

Will take some pictures for Ebay today no matter what. Also plan on getting some flower seeds and veggie seeds started.

Footprints---The Midday update

Well I just got off the phone with my potential new employer and things are looking very good.
I suspect I will have a job within a few weeks. Some legal things need to get handled but all things are pointing up. It seems like it would be either Tampa or Greensboro, NC depending on a few things that need to get ironed out. Also same pay or a tad higher than I was making as LES.

The art show is tonite so I hope to sell my cars. Hopefully all of them.

Traded some very very old bookcases/display cases for a table at an antique shop today. I wanted on old beaten up table and I got one. The table was selling for $165.00. So I got rid of cases I did not like or want any more for a table I wanted. It is a round drop leaf table that i want to use as a table to work on photography stuff.

Woo Hoo all is good today.

Cause and Effects

There are causes and effects for everything we do in our daily lives and this picture is a perfect example of it. I took this picture Thanksgiving morning will walking on the beach across from Patrick's Air Force Base. I found three needles like this across a large area of the beach. I also found two other different types of needles.

Since this is an insulin needle it belonged to a diabetic at one time or maybe it was used on a diabetic at a hospital. Was the cause of the insulin use a poor diet? That is one of the major effects of the poor diet Americans eat today. How does medical waste get handled so poorly that it becomes trash on the beach. It seems that there are no Federal standards for this type of waste.

All I know is the effect of poor handling of this crap was it washed up on the beach. There is absolutely no excuse for this. Assholes I say.

I did pick up all the needles and put them in another piece of fucking trash, a Gatorade bottle.

Go figure that. I have the needles at home. Maybe I'll plant the bastards.

My broccoli plants are really thriving. They really enjoyed getting into the earth. They were not happy in those little pot at the nursery. I can not wait for the bounty.

Would you hire this guy?

Well here I am in all my bearded splendor. I have shaved in a month. The joys of not working can be quite pleasurable. I did get my hair cut yesterday. It was getting a little crazy.

It seems I may have a job soon actually. I talked with the person who hired me seven years ago to work at Law Enforcement Supply. He is going to be President of one of the companies who are Law Enforcement Supplies major competitors. If all goes as planned I would manage the Tampa store. There would be a chance I would could move. They do have stores in the Atlanta area, Greensboro, NC also Columbus, SC and Jacksonville and Miami. I told him yes to all except Miami and that Greensboro and Jacksonville would be my preferences. If it happens it would be sometime late this month I expect. Since jobs are few and I prefer not to go back into retail this may be my only choice. I know I would be treated very well and that is a major plus.

I have more things on Ebay with more going on today. First five things I list are free and all the rest listed today are half off the listing fee. I think I will take advantage of this.

Thats all for now. Heading over to Orlando today to mmet some people. Hopefully I get back home before we get the storms they say we are going to get. I sounds like we may get hammered.