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.