New Shoes!

RAIN! OH NOES!

Rain just means I get to wash again!

Summer Shoes!

Spring Break at Six Flags Over Texas

Well, the boys and I invaded enemy territory by crossing the Red River. The goal of our mission was to take over a vast section of Arlington for our own. After paying our bounty we planted an Oklahoma Flag, sang "Boomer Sooner" and renamed Six Flags Over Texas to Seven Flags Over Texas.

Below are a few quick pics from the trip.

KISS plays live!! (tribute)

My Rockstar/Guitar Hero kids were unimpressed.

Waiting for the Choo-Choo

Gonna get wet!

The Roaring Rapids turned out to be the favorite of the boys. Since it wasn't too hot (60-70 degrees) the three days we were at the park the lines were non-existent on the water rides. The boys ranked them in this order: Roaring Rapids, followed by Aquaman, and then the two different log flume rides. They rode this one about 20 times in three days. We rode the log ride about 10 times also. Aquaman was 3 or 4 times (only once for me because it completely soaked us).

Day 2 begins

Third Ride of the 1st Day

Tester Road Trip

Just to see how the boys did on-the-road I took them on a jaunt up to the Jenks Aquarium then back down Route 66 for an all day road-trip. We ended up at Pop's66 which is a really cool landmark/restaurant/gas station that has 1000's of different bottled sodas.

JT = 60

"The press want something that'll sell copy. They pick up on the mental hospital, family stuff, try to invent some category of rock that I belong to, or perhaps they pick up on my drug problem. But it gets to the point sooner or later when you start to think about your kids: "What does your daddy do for a living?" "He plays the guitar and he talks about his drug problems." It's embarrassing to read the drivel that comes out of your mouth sometimes. So I guess maybe the question is, why am I doing this in the first place? And honestly, I suppose I'm doing it because I'd like to promote my record. "-1979 .

James Taylor is sixty today.

HornBlasters

HornBlasters.com reminds me of the horn in my parents old 88 Park Ave. (though it was nowhere as loud as this)

Summer Tires and Rims (one more month!)

Power Plant

FW: 2.0T GTI Goodness!

OOOOHHHHHHMMMM (MANTRA)

The Cutest Pirate

AAARRRGGGHHH!!1

Bloody Chicken Planks

AAARRRGGHH!

Got Tint?

Got the ride tinted (for about 3 bones inc. tip) with 18% Llumar Axcess. This stuff is supposed to be the best tint out there right now. New carbon-based non-metallic tint is supposed to be the enemy of UV (98% block), but RF-friendly so as not to interfere with bluetooth, AM/FM antenna, etc. Once it was installed I put the GPS in the hatch window and it synched up easily with 6 SATs. The signal strength indicator did not change visibly when I moved it in and out of the car. The FM and AM signals are fine. No Tire Pressure Monitor or Keyless entry issues. Either I bought in on hype, or this stuff is for real. Regular tint would have cost about 1/2 the price of this. Gah!

2007 - Worst Year of My Life

---SNIP--U--BLINK--U--MISS--IT---

I stumbled across the following info today. I seem to have experienced 6 of the 8 "Top Stress Occurrences" described further below - all 6 in the span of one lousy year. All I can say is: "It's 2008, and I'm still here mf".

The following is from divorceinfo.com

Divorce Sucks:
There's just no getting around it; divorce is a cruddy process. It takes the person who at least at one time in your life was your lover, perhaps your best friend, and turns that same person into your opponent.

I originally called this page "Divorce s_cks," but I had to change the name because it was getting blocked by obscenity filters. This is probably fitting, because in many ways it is obscene what our adversarial divorce system forces good men and women to do to each other when they need to end their marriage.

There are all kinds of things both of you can do to keep from going to war, and Divorceinfo.com is all about the options you have. But even if you choose not to go to war, you do have different interests, and you just have to face that.

Every now and then, the news media will report a new study on the levels of stress caused by various occurrences in our lives, and divorce is always near the top of the list. Here are a few of the events and the levels of stress they produce, according to one such study:

Event	Stress
Death of Spouse	100
Divorce X	73
Marital Separation X	65
Death of close family member X	63
Jail term (I narrowly avoided this when illegally, but forcibly evicted)	63
Personal injury or illness X	53
Marriage Problems X	50
Fired at work X (wife quit without notice)	47

To put it another way, divorce causes more stress than getting fired and more stress than a jail term. In fact, it causes more stress than any other single event except the death of a spouse. And one of the many frustrations about divorce is that your spouse is still out there walking around, and in most cases, still dealing with you. The pain just keeps coming.

But if you really want to delve into this, reflect on what happens after your spouse dies. You can check out Death after Divorce for a quick summary. It's not pretty.

What makes divorce so awful? Start with the disadvantages of divorce. And it's no surprise to you that divorce hurts. It almost always produces crushing loneliness, and it also costs money.

The risk of suicide is three times greater for divorcing people than for married people. You're also more vulnerable to psychiatric illness, homicide, depression, anxiety, motor vehicle accidents, and even physical illness.

Trying to keep divorce from happening? Then check out the alternatives to divorce. If you know you're heading for divorce, you've got two choices. You can either sit around and think about how awful this is, or you can get to work.

When you're ready for the latter, jump to Cutting Through the Crud, and let's get started.