Not since the siege of Jerkous has our house been in such an uproar. My eldest daughter is having her birthday party today which includes a slumber party. As you can guess I'm hiding in the corner.

On the upside, all my friends showed up today and we sat on the porch enjoying a few beers and BSing about everything. It was quite enjoyable. I so thoroughly enjoy the company of fine friends, and the ones I have here are some of the best people I've ever known. I ended up making a couple music CDs for people from my MP3 collection.

Tommorrow we plan to drive a couple hours south of here to attend a stunt school for my wife and daughter's cheerleading squad. It'll be nice to get away and take a trip. I'm really looking forward to it. This time of year I enjoy driving through the valley because of the smell of agriculture and irrigation. It remainds me of my youth growing up in the fields of Central California.

Finally, I realized today that I'm starting to snap out of my depression. Despite the fact that not much has changed, I think that just being in a better place than Mordor helps me to see hope for the future. I'm thinking about signing up for college next week.

I'm beginning to think that life is like a toilet bowl... and I'm a urine cake. Today our landlady called wanting to know why we haven't paid the rent. Yesterday we deposited the rent in her account because my disability check was severely delayed. She also asked us if we owned a dog, which we do not. Apparently, the handyman took a picture of the fence he just repaired and our cat was in the shot. She somehow thought our cat was a dog. I'm guessing that she was satisfied by our answers but it makes me very uptight when our landlord calls in a hostile manner. If we lost our house I don't know what we would do. The last time we were homeless it took us 6 months to find a place.

The time is coming closer for my Armenian friend to go to court. I'm hoping this will be the final hearing to determine if they are going to refile charges. He is totally stressed out and on edge about this whole thing. The Prosecutor has been digging around his history trying to find dirt on him. At this point I'd be willing to bet money that they do not refile charges. I hope I am right.

I got some stuff in the mail today about a local technical college I'm thinking about applying for. If I was to put in about two years I could get a degree in computer engineering and be on my way to a nice high paying job somewhere. At least I'd have a useful skill that way. Having only studied law enforcement, I'm uneasy about the possibility of moving somewhere and getting a job. Also, watching my friend go through his ordeal I'm conviced that law enforcement is way too political.

I hesitantly took another one of Momoka's personality tests today. Here's the result:


I am Gil Galad, the Last King of Noldor. During the Second Age, my human pal Elendil and I formed the Last Alliance of Elves and Men against Sauron but we both died in battle. Bummer, I say, but at least I got my picture on a poster somewhere. In the movie, I'm played by Mark Ferguson.
|| Which Lord of the Rings Elf are you? @ X.com ||

I say hesitantly because I despise elves.

Other than that not much has been going on. I've been fishing with my Armenian friend and trying to figure out what I'm going to do in the future. So far, no fish and no plans.

Well, here I sit.... Several glasses of wine later. I'm a glorified babysitter. The kids are getting ready to go to the pool. I've been spending time online today reading my past blogs. It's funny because I've seemed to go from a man happy with his new life to one that is broken and depressed. I'd say that's about right.

I haven't been drunk in quite some time. I get pretty bad hangovers. But, today I said what the Hell.

I don't understand people who drink hard alcohol. It tastes aweful and hammers you too hard. i prefer to drink wine that slowly gets you drunk and tastes pretty good. I've finished half a bottle so far.

My inlaws are a puzzle to me. Here I am an intelligent and gentle man who takes care of their grandchildren. I don't drink... Very often. I don't do drugs. I don't abuse anyone. Yet I'm just not good enough. Every time I talk to them it's this stiff and uncomfortable conversation. My wife and I have been together for 15 years. You'd think they'd try to just get to know me. Perhaps like my Father they just hope I die.

Alot of the time I look on my life and I wish I would have stayed in the Army. Thnigs woud be much easier if I was a killer in a foreign land. To strike out at my enemies would be easier than trying to cooperate and make everyone happy. The damned insurance company toys with me as well as my former employer. Then I have to drive around this town and see all the well to do bastards with their shiny cars and their expensive clothes. I'm left to wonder how they made their money. Perhaps I don't really want to know.

What really pisses me off is when people tell me I have such well behaved children. These jerks don't realize that I have no fear of giving the kids the belt if they act up. Yet their little ingrates run around acting up and disrespecting everyone. To hell with this social experiment laid out by the political correct crowd. Kids should be able to express themselves. But, not at the expense of everyone around them. Basically, we are all animals and need to be trained.

I've been thinking... If I was a milionaire I stil wouldn't invest in the stock market. First of all, I believe it's like a casino and rigged to allow the rich to win. Second, the damn thing fluctuates so much I couldn't see putting my hard earned money at risk. Sure, I bet the thing has made loads of people rich. But, I doubt if I have the patience to ride the thing out.

Well, I'm rambling as I'm sure you can see. Besides, the wine is really kicking in. As I wrote this I finished the bottle.

Later

Tonight I went by myself to the movies to see "K19 The Widowmaker". Great great great movie. If you like thrillers and great acting this is the one. I read the reviews beforehand and they did not do justice to this movie. Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson did some of their best work. One line in particular in this movie was in reference to a request by the Captain of the Sub to recognize 7 people who gave their lives to save the ship. The request was denied and Harrison Ford's line in response was "What good is recognition from a group such as this". I empathized so well with that line because of my recent dealings with the damned loan committee. I guess I feel like their criticism of my plan is unwarranted. I know better than them, despite what they may think, about how well this business would work here. To be given their approval would be no better than having a group of monkeys give their thumbs up.

In fact, I'm pretty much down on committees in general. It seems just about every government in this world uses them and they can't seem to get anything done. In reality, what makes us think that a group of people would be able to make a decision about a particular subject better than an individual. I think that a committee is better able to shrug off blame when a decision of theirs goes awry. But, they are no better at resisting potential corruption. Now, I'm not saying we should live under a dictatorship. Autocrates sould be accountable for their decisions. But, it just seems that tyranny is equally bad whether it comes from a corrupt council or a corrupt administrator.

I know I'm going to be on a high horse about this whole loan committee for quite some time. As I told my Armenian friend the other day... This whole mess has taken the wind out of my sails.

"Road to Perdition" is a good movie. If you get a chance go see it. I had a little trouble with Tom Hanks as a mob hitman but otherwise it was good.

I took the kids to the local fish hatchery yesterday for a kids fishing day. Everyone except the boy got to dip their poles in the water. My two oldest caught the only two fish of the day, one was pretty big. However, my second daughter actually snagged the largest fish in the pond. Unfortunately, her line broke and the bugger got away. Overall, the kids had a great time. But, I got a little overwhelmed by everyone vying for attention. I wish my wife could have been there.

Lately, I've been a little bit blue. I guess I'm still very disappointed that we didn't get the loan. To top it off, my dad came here on Friday and he started calling his friends on his cell phone asking if anyone wanted to buy a house. Apparently, his friend in a nearby town wants to sell his home for only $20,000 bucks. It frustrated me because he knows I want to buy a house. To top it off, he also called an old friend and talked to him about some money he loaned my sister to buy her house. It angered me because we asked my Dad a while back to see if that same friend would look at our business plan and consider funding our business. Of course, he said that his friend doesn't loan out money. HE LIED TO ME!!! It's nothing new. That's the way my Dad is. Of course, I could never tell him I'm upset about this because he would get a big kick out of it. He loves it when his kids fight for his attention. I guess I'll never understand my Dad. Sometimes I wish he never would have sired me.

To top it off my mother-in-law called a few days ago and started badgering my wife to get me to get a job and get off disability. She doesn't understand that I have to jump through these hoops before I can return to work in order to get reimbursed for my suffering, time, and loss wages due to this injury. I thought that I had a pretty good relationship with my in-laws. But, it seems that they still distrust me. I'm guessing that my father-in-law feels the same because he hasn't written in a while. It hurts alot. But, no one seems to understand.