Last weekend, Kayla (my son’s girlfriend) asked if she could remove the mats from our cat, Bondi.

Bondi is a special case. He’s pure white with blue eyes and completely deaf. He’s also about the most un-hygenic cat I’ve ever seen. Dirt in his fur, mats, and more likely than not, a big turd stuck to his butt.

But we love him.

So… Kayla and my son took him into the bathroom with the electric clippers (he can’t hear the clippers so they didn’t freak him out too bad). What followed was pure comedy genious:

Looks normal enough from this angle… but wait…

OMG!! Removing a couple of mats does NOT mean shave his whole back!

Bondi is less than happy with his new “do”.

And that’s the last time I let the kids take care of the cat.

Sure… they got the mats out… but bejesus… the cat’s gonna have a complex for sure! 🙂

On the way back from lunch, we passed the usual bunch of beggars on the I-90 / Sullivan Road interchange.

I’m not insensitive to the homeless or to the plight they have, but the crew who work this chunk of road are scammers. They work shifts as a team. One will be on each corner of where the interstate dumps out to the Valley mall. They rotate every so often so that it appears that someone new is there.

When they’re done with a hard day of work, they get into nice cars (parked a few blocks off) and drive home. I’ve yet to follow one home, but I have seen the cars. Way nicer than I have, to be sure.

Usually, they just stand there with a sign. “Disabled Vet”, “Need money to get to Seattle for job”, etc. Sometimes they have props. A dog is a favorite “Need food for my dog” (why the fuck do you have a dog if you cant feed it? That’s crule!). BDU’s are a standard (fatigues… to give the illusion that they are vets).

Who falls for that? I was in the Army… you don’t see me walking around in my old uniform. I don’t even have it any more (I sold it at a garage sale). One of these fuckers is probobly walking around in MY uniform (and making more money, per month, begging than I ever did when I was in the army).

Anyway, today… one of them was doing something new. He was juggling… and doing a damn good job at it.

I almost expected the next guy down the road to have this sign:

My life is normally pretty boring. Get up. Go to work. Come home. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.

But today… that’s all changed…. because…

I’M A WINNER!!!

I twisted the cap on my Vanilla Coke, and sure enough, I won a 1 liter bottle! It said so inside my cap!

My life is going to change now… I can feel it! Things are going to come my way because I’M A WINNER!!!

My glorious week of vacation is over.

We applied paint vigorously to the upper back side of the house last week. I had to replace all the facia on the south side because water had gotten into the boards and ruined them (T1-11 made in the early 90’s wasn’t exactly good). We did, however, install rain gutters this time… so that should take care of the problem in the future.

a photo taken fairly early in the project – I only fell off this thing once

Now to paint the lower section of the back, inside the deck area, the floor of the deck itself, the sides (replacing fascia on the west side), installing gutters on both the east and west sides, painting the east, west, and north sides, and gutters on the front.

I expect to be done sometime in 2006.

We did have a massive thunderstorm on Tuesday. I had to stop everything and run inside, as we experienced 77 mph (124 kph) winds. Unfortunately, they ripped the shingles lose on the top 4′ (1.2 meters) of the south side of the roof. After things calmed down, I collected my shingles from the street and neighbor’s yards, climbed up there, and put them back on (I’m missing one). I’ll be calling today to find a roofer to re-do the entire roof (there goes the hot tub fund!).

I’ve taken the week off from work (my first week off that didn’t involve a surgery since 2001).

I’ve collected a bit of vacation time (230 hours to be exact) and have more coming. Where I work, any vacation time over 240 hours at the end of the year is lost… gone… done. So, it seemed like the thing to do.

I’m spending my time painting the house. It’s needed it for a few years now, but with my back being what it is, I was lucky just to make it out of bed each day. Standing on a ladder wasn’t on my list of things to do.

We’ve set up a “scaffold” on the back of the house. It’s not really a scaffold, but rather, a set of giant friggin’ shelves from a warehouse (the kind you stack pallets on). It’s scary as hell, but actually very stable (and a lot bigger than a normal scaffold). It’s also heavy beyond belief and takes about an hour to tear down and put back together.

As it’s currently 92 degrees (33.3 Celsius) and climbing… I’m done for the moment. We’re going to take the afternoon off and take our youngest to a movie.

And speaking of my youngest…. he turned 13 on Sunday. We had a little party for him and a nice dinner (grilled steaks). He made quite the haul and everyone had a good time.

I also got to see my friend, Mike, who moved away a number of hears ago. 🙂

I’ll take some pics of the house and the scaffold (aka: Death Ride 2005) and post them later.