HNT #58 - The Boys & the Bird

Hello! These are the Christmas 2009 fotos of my sons and me at my Tampa Bay MH Park. FINALLY, THEY BOTH CAME DOWN to visit! Over a 4-year absence for Ken and only the 2nd visit in 2 years for Rik. Of course, their mother didn't interfere this time by having her October ashes taken back by them to Texas over Xmas like last year for burial.


Above, on the left are Rich & Rik in front of Rik's "new" 100th Anniversary of Harley-Davidson Commemorative Ford F-150 Pickup (2003)! Beautiful pickup truck with all the trimmings! Now that he's got a decent job with the State of Florida (eligible due to completing his Bachelor's Degree in 2005), he can afford all the trimmings for the first time in his life as an adult on his own. It took awhile because State jobs don't come open often in Tallahassee -- but if he hadn't finished his BS degree, he'd NEVER have gotten an interview!



Imagine a Florida Gator who partied too much in Gainesville his freshman year so that he had to finish his education all on his own elsewhere (paying back government loans now) AND EVENTUALLY GRADUATE FROM FSU!! Still, on that one day a year when Gators & Noles battle in the football stadium, his primitive, reptilian sports-team brain comes to life & reverts him back to being a Gator. He's lucky cuz "MY school" (FSU) is rebuilding and UF has been winning this bitter state football rivalry, lately. He has won our "dinner-out" bet 2 or 3 years in a row.


On the right, Rich and Ken, the younger son of the same 2 parents, are standing behind Rik's truck just before Sunday goodbyes after Christmas. Ken was heading back to Orlando (only 2 hours away compared to 5 1/2 from "Tally" to continue HIS post-secondary school experience: the Motorcycle Mechanics Institute where he is having good success due to hard work and focus due to his enthusiasm and interest in this field of work! Only 13 months to go!



Ken has MORE tats than I do & here's a pic of us showing off our tats at WingHouse with my favorite "serving wench!" This was a special hug from her & I love it! MUAH, Girl!

A couple of weeks ago, my 1959 Ford Thunderbird original "Survivor" was in my car guy, Ted's, shop with him starting the restoration with the few safety items most essential for driving.
















The BRAKES were the most important to fix, and he replaced all components in the system including all new steel lines to each wheel as well as the engine compartment master cylinder. All engine hoses were replaced and the silver valve covers above were replaced with sand-blasted originals he found stored in the T-Bird's trunk. He repainted them blue as the voltage regulator above is to restore their original color, and I think it is an interesting note that the T-Bird's colors when restored are planned to be red, white, and blue (with an understated patriotic feeling.) Ted thought that would certainly be appropriate considering my father's and my full military careers in service to our country (and, I might add, considering my sons' & my Eagle Scout or near-Eagle Scout backgrounds.)

Ted has already done countless other things like completely hand-repacking new wheel bearings with new grease; also, like checking the engine's compression before he ever tried to start it to be sure the pressure indicated the piston chambers were still well lubricated, and it would not endanger the engine to start it up. Countless other little things I do not remember now, he listed having done as we discussed progress over the last 3 weeks. His previously unspecified charge for labor was very reasonable and generous when he finally determined what it was after encountering the work itself and finally knew the difficulty & length of time it took.

Of course, I am in no hurry to have this finished so Ted finds it convenient & to his advantage in restoring the T-Bird along with the major renovation of a country estate property he purchased recently and is completing by himself and the help of friends. That unspecified labor charge was the one thing I was leery of until now -- not wanting to have "bought a pig in a poke" in advance. His statement afterwards rang true that a regular auto shop would have charged 3 or 4 times as much for labor in such a restoration job. We have much more work to do but I am feeling much better about his labor charges, now. After he installs a new Lo-Jack anti-theft system, I could stop anytime for any reason because he has already put the car in a safe, operational condition. He is dying to get me to re-title it ASAP & get Florida tags so we can show it off even NOW at a weekly meeting of classic car owners in St. Petersburg!

HNT #57 - Girlie Tat mostly done now!

News #1. Latest Ink: Her legs, watch arm and pink border. She seemed like so much a part of me that we made "cuts" in my armpit where she appears to be coming out of my body! The little trail of white plasma bubbles behind her neck have disappeared now.

It's been awhile since this tat got started back in September-October. I've had 3 sessions getting ink added to my Gangsta Girlie and I want some clarification before further adjustments that may have been unclear during the last session! I really want the pink aura to be wider by 1/4 - 3/8 ". My artist is getting ready to do a big back piece of the Virgin of Guadalupe on someone else & I think he was inspired by those thoughts to put MY pink ink streaming out like in the Virgin piece. However, I want NOTHING on my body to remind me of my Tex-Mex-ex- with whom I drove through Mexico to visit the original Mexico City shrine to the Virgen de Guadalupe. So this will have to change, and a wider "aura" would do the job nicely.

News #2. Drastic new development in the life of my younger son whom I raised for 7 years all alone (ages 8 - 15) until his testosterone-fueled ADHD had him bail out on ME and go to his mommy's place so he could be spoiled rotten and show unwarranted disrespect for me with great defiance & rudeness. Be careful what you ask God for: I had thought my prayers were answered when I got him back to live with me so I could raise him well. Wonderful at first, but when ex- moved to town after 6 years, and he reached age-15, this son became the thankless , willful minion of one crazy she-Devil-consort of Satan. She's dead now but the damage she caused still lingers in all our lives in MY family! If I were to tell you what I call her in daily outrage at her uncalled-for BS, you would automatically take HER side thinking she couldn't have been THAT bad! HA! Easy for YOU to say!

That's the Bad & the Ugly -- Let me tell you about the GOOD development! Unbeknownst to me, this younger son re-examined an excellent Motorcycle Mechanics Institute program in Orlando and enrolled in classes beginning a 14-month course of study which will lead to his certification as a Harley-Davidson trained specialist (maybe more specialties if he extends his studies.) He has moved his living place from Tallahassee to Orlando in a very nice, upscale lodging facility which provides some maid care. He is studying as a fulltime student successfully at the only major campus east of the Mississippi in this field and is doing well fairly easily for the first time in his academic life!

I KNEW it would be just right for him 5 years ago because it is a subject he LOVES learning about, can relate to his own Harley-Davidson moto, and realizes this is his last chance at post-H.S. study which will actually enable him to support himself with well-paid work the rest of his life! He finally GETS it and his brain's nerve endings seem to have matured enough that he is able to focus and resist impulses now that he would not or could not at 15! Florida will always have good motorcycles to work on because it usually has good motorcycle weather! This is all not only GOOD news, this is GREAT news!!!

Now, everything important in my life would be happy if I could just find out the cell phone number of my real-life Gangsta-Girlie. We trade plenty of eMail, but sometimes I need to make text message contact with timely info important to HER & it ain't happening. This is either gonna get a whole lot better or a whole lot worse! LOL

News #3. SO... here are pics of a little silver jewelry that a friend loves to play with at our bar and I love to see another female friend borrow and make nicely erect (Freudian wish fulfillment for the former counselor in me). The same lady friend recommended I see the popular 2009

movie "Spread" with Ashton Kutcher & Anne Heche.

My reply to her asking if I liked it: "Yes... and NO! I must say that I understood the whole thing in 'SPREAD' totally -- being all a bunch of fucking gameplaying and you must know what I meant about NOT liking all the fucking, phony, manipulative, bullshit games they play in the movie with each other. I have NEVER BEEN ONE OF THOSE KINDS OF GUYS THO like Ashton Kutcher played, and I hate how when women get USED, they turn around and start USING GUYS with the same sort of BS games! It is both the result of and cause of mental problems!!

And it confirms what I've recognized for a longtime -- that BC (birth control) technology has turned American girls into a bunch of fuck-fiends as bad as guys ALWAYS WERE reported to have been. You may prefer to say 'hedonists' rather than 'fuck-fiends.' But as for me, I could easily have become an honest Catholic priest 'cuz I have upheld the celibacy rule a helluva lot better than the bad 5% of all priests who caused 99.9% of the recent scandal in the Church. Take it for what it's worth, these attitudes and behaviors cause big problems in today's world. And interesting & seductive as they are, the movies that glorify this also perpetuate it! Thankfully, this flick also exposes what Bullshit it really is and how it leaves phony lives very hollow afterwards. But for a parting shot, I leave you with this little idea, "It pays to advertise!" ~Bon appetit!