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Beautiful day. I've had my best times in the toughest sections and I have stayed right behind the car that opens the race all the time even in the toughest stages...so I'm happy. This year has been a real piece of shit

I had some things to drop off at Goodwill, so I perused the $1.99 CD shelf...

For a summer, San Francisco was home to the most beautiful sound in the world

I'm cooking breakfast, with the sultry Bobbie Gentry singing in my ear.

I got the team hat logo designed and two prototypes of the hats made the other night. Pretty pleased with the results from the little laser. Maybe there will be d-_-b hats in the future.

Ready for this weekend!!!!

No more Olympics to watch so back to snake catching. The best I can tell it is just under a meter in length. I will take him for a one-way canyon ride tomorrow and toss him into the bush.

Prototype complete.

Thanks! It's a bit strange, because I'm used to being the guy that's 100% confident in his abilities on the job. But it's good to shake things up now and then. Also, there's a local carpenter named Jack that has done lots of work on Al's Fairfax house. In 2013 I worked with him on a bathroom remodel above the garage (Frank's old place). And he also saw me building some stuff for Al and Claire. Well on Friday he came into Fairfax Lumber, saw me working there and inquired about that. Augie (the president) started to introduce him to me, and Jack told him that we had worked together several years back. He also said that I could build anything and that I was the best carpenter he'd ever worked with. Not only did that make me feel great, it seemed to impress the boss even more. There's a guy who rents space from Fairfax Lumber who builds furniture on site. His name is Dean. Dean was also standing there, and told Augie to be careful or he'd steal me away from him. Just nice to be recognized for something I put decades of passion into.

What I haven't mentioned yet is the other big change in my life. That's a career change. The company that I've worked for the last 7 years has had less and less work for me. And the last job I did for them had 137 stair steps from the street to the job site. And there was rarely parking anywhere near the stairs leading to the job. On top of that, the homeowners insisted that we load our tools up daily, because they were afraid the tools would cause a break-in, which they were worried would lead to vandalism. So I was lugging many, many tools up and down those miserable stairs every day. Some tools quite large and heavy. I was having dizzy spells that I assumed at the time was related to the ascending climb as well as my ascending age. I've since discovered that my Hypertension meds needed to be adjusted, and I'm feeling better now. However, I've decided to try a career change. This old dog is trying to learn a new trick. I turned in my Resume to the local Fairfax Lumber store about a month ago, and was surprised when the cashier rushed myself and my resume back to the President of the company immediately. As it happened, they were looking for a new hand at the lumber desk. They needed someone to revive the tanking contractor sales. The President got a bit excited as he read my resume, then offered me the job on the spot. I accepted. I started a few days later, but on my first real day of work, I started having really bad dizzy spells after simply stocking shelves. I thought I was going to pass out, and my vision was getting blurry as well. It shook me up, and I had to tell the President that I couldn't complete the day. The good news was that the next day I went to see my Doctor, at the insistence of Al and Dorothy, for which I'm very grateful. The Dr. was pretty sure immediately that the issue was low blood pressure. That was caused by the 3 meds I was taking for Hypertension working too well. Partly due to an over 20 lb. recent weight loss. Anyway it was a relatively easy fix, except she told me that I needed to be as inactive as possible for two weeks while the deletion of one of the meds cleared my system. Not the best timing, with a brand new job and a big move happening. But I'm the guy that has the most incredible friends imaginable! Al, Dorothy, Dorothy's friend Gavin and Dorothy's Mom Rini moved my entire apartment to my new place. Cleaned my old apartment (no small feat), and insisted that I chill and do as little as possible. I can tend to freak out a bit when things come at me hard. Al has this incredible way of calming me down and making me see what's possible, instead of what's impossible. And I don't usually make that easy! After my session with Dr. Al, I went and talked to the President of Fairfax Lumber, explained my medical situation and the two weeks off that I needed. He agreed to give me that time and a bit more to complete the move. I just completed my first week on the job yesterday. It's going great! My experience as a carpenter is definitely crossing over. I've been able to solve customer's project questions, am learning my way around the myriad of goods that we sell and above all the boss is impressed. At closing yesterday he pulled me aside and told me how happy he was that my health issue has improved, and how happy he is with my knowledge and customer service. The last guy they hired in my position was there only a few weeks, then died of a heart attack. So I understand his relief. Well it seems I've created another marathon post, but just wanted to fill you in and express my gratitude for friendships I clearly don't deserve, but will do my utmost to repay!

And yet that seems too expensive.

Anyone get the same message for Ernest Saves Christmas? Free seems correct there.

So we finally made it home from Germany this morning. Brent must have had a huge biscuit this weekend. So we were supposed to fly out of Berlin to JFK on Saturday morning around 11 am Berlin time. Shortly before we were to board the flight was cancelled. It seems the plane we were to take to JFK arrived from Amsterdam the previous evening and sucked a bird into one of the engines on its landing. The plane landed fine but they needed to check the engine internals for damage. There are only two ways to do this. Tear the engine apart and then put it back together or use an endoscope designed for the task. Unfortunately the nearest endoscope was in Amsterdam and was set to arrive later that day. So the flight was cancelled and they put us up in a hotel until we could get another flight out. Unfortunately the Delta website and app was not operating very well and it took us most of the day to get a flight booked for Sunday. We finally boarded our flight and made it to JFK where we remarkably landed on time, which was 2:45 pm NY time. However we had to sit on the runway for over two hours since we did not have a gate as no planes were permitted to leave their gates because of thunderstorms. We finally got to our gate, got through customs and got to the Delta lounge where Karen had several beers and I had a Bloody Mary and two Martinis as well as some food. We had a fairly long layover as our flight to Burlington was not scheduled to leave until about 11:00 pm. At approximately, 9:30 pm Delta canceled our flight due to weather. At least this time they scheduled us for another flight to Burlington on Monday morning. At this point we had no confidence that Delta could actually get us home so Karen called her sister, who lives in Forest Hills, to see if we could borrow her Jeep Cherokee and drive home to Northfield. We took a taxi from JFK, picked up the Jeep and drove home arriving here around 2:00 am this morning. Delta was not finished with us, I actually canceled our flight this morning on the way driving back to Northfield. I received a boarding call for the flight on my app this morning. So I say, “Fuck you Delta Cunts” and again I blame Brent.