I'm down to 249 lbs! Yay for me. It seems like I was hovering in the low 250s for forever. I ultimately want to end up under 240 and maybe even less.

Its progress.

It was announced tonight that the guy who sits behind me at work got another job and is moving on. He's only been here a few months. I am jealous.

I'm taking a class at the local community college; "How to Buy, Lease, & Manage Rental Houses for Profit." I've been interested in real estate for about a year now but haven't really done anything about it. I guess I'm an unmotivated cad or perhaps just scared. That's a lot of (my)money to play around with. So I'm taking this class finally and it is informative. So far the teacher(a local real estate pro who has many properties of his own) has talked about the history of the re market in the dwf, including recessions and bubbles, depreciation tax advantages, some scams that are currently going on in the area(as well as a past one), and he talked a while about the recession of 1987, why it happened, and how it just killed the real estate market nationwide for several years. That may all sound dry to some but I found it quite interesting. There are 3 more sessions to go(for a total of 4 sessions). $89 for the whole class. Not bad, eh?

The wife and I are pondering over where to go on vacation this summer. Of course we could LUUUUUUUUV to go back to Hawai'i again(we went last summer) but we don't have the requisite ff miles(which is what we used last year) and neither of us wants to drop the considerable coin that the trip would cost. My idea was to go to the east coast and take in the colonial/Revolutionary war sights. Philadelphia, Boston, etc. And that sounded fine until I found out that Philadelphia was 1500 miles away. Yikes. That's quite a drive. I don't mind flying but we're not that into spending a lot of money on the heels of our Hawai'i trip. We're thinking about going to Big Sur or another of the many parks in Texas and just camping for a week. Maybe rent a jetski. Another idea was to go to Florida and check out the beaches & sights. Something to think about.

Does anyone read this? I've been on the air for several months and still not a single comment.

Dennis Miller, The Rants(1996)

I really enjoy Dennis Miller. The way that he thinks everything out and then strings his ideas together while all the time making the whole situation seem absurd, just breaks me up. He is a very intelligent comic(although that seems an inadequate term for him) who has a unique spin on the country and a unique way of explaining it. I got this audio book last week and have already listened to it 2 1/2 times. I prefer this book in audio format because its even funnier when Dennis deliver the lines.

Warning: Miller has a bit of a potty mouth. He uses the 'f' word about two hundred times in the course of the thing(gross estimate). I still think that its funny and introspective but maybe its not for everybody because of this.

Excerpt:

"The media just claim that they are doing their job, feeding the news apetite of the American people. And I guess that its not really their fault that we happen to be bulemic in that area. The key thing we must all remember about the OJ trial is that it is trial by flurry. Lawyers on both sides bicker incessantly over matters that have precious little to do with discovering the truth. This thing is going slower than Jimmy Stewart reciting the mahabborada on the back of an arthritic tortise that is munching a quaalude on a humid Sunday afternoon in a hammick hung between two trees in the intensified gravity of the planet Jupiter. And despite the fact that our belief in the American legal system has been stretch thinner than Robert Shapiro's conscience, we are simply going to have to wait for the cheap gears of justice to grind a decision out of this fake wood peppermill. But I for one am through will this trial and I have been for a long time. He's guilty. You know it, I know it, we all know it. So wait for sweeps week, schedule the jury's decision after Seinfeld, announce that he's guilty and throw away the f***** key. You're a PUNK OJ, you're a bad guy. You go to hell.

Of course that just my opinion. I could be wrong."

The World's Longest Trailer Mounted BBQ Grill - 87 Feet

We sighted this one while we were visiting my parents in Magnolia, AR(population just under 11K). We were just out one day on the highway that runs along the east side of town:




I thought that the rocket look was a nice touch.


This is the kind of thing that causes you to crane your neck around after you've passed it(and hopefully not have a wreck in the process) which is exactly what I did. Later, I went back and took some photos. I met George Black, the gentleman who built it, and had a very nice conversation with him. He said that it was 87 feet long and the longest trail mounted grill in the world. Here's a webpage that explains it more fully.








Anyhow, I took some pictures of that one as well as some of the many others that he had built.






This one has a metal hogshead mounted on the front. It shoots steam out of its nostrils when a button is pushed inside(Mr. Black performs the task here).






It had never occured to me that someone could/would make grills in so many shapes and sizes.







This is one that he made out of a riding lawnmower