I was never feelin’ the way the bedroom was since the day I moved in here, and thanks to some suggestions I decided to completely rearrange the furniture, hang up a few pictures, change the curtains, etc.  It’s really starting to look like a completely different room now, and that’s exactly what it needed. 

It’s almost done, but I had to run into town today to get a few more things to complete the task.  My pillows have seen better days, so I went ahead and got four new cheap ones from Rose’s.  I also bought a box of push-pins so I can hang some sheer curtains behind the normal ones that I’ve got hanging.

I don’t think I’ve had the need to use a push-pin since back when I was in school, but they will work well for how I need to hang this stuff.    Sure, it’s not how you are supposed to hang curtains, but form is more important than function in this instance, and nobody will see the pins unless they are nibshitting around where they don’t need to be.

I’ve already got Gen’s big ol’ keyboard in there, so I decided to order a $15 stand for the bass guitar that I won from Blackout Superstar and keep somewhat of a musical theme in the room.    I’ve already concluded that the bass is beyond my current playing ability (at least for the moment) but I am starting to learn some new stuff on that sweet keyboard.  That bass will definitely look nice on top of the little stand between my two closets though.

Gettin’ there… 

I’m sure some people will think it is weird that I’ll sit at my kitchen window to watch and record the critters, but other people will completely understand.  That second group is my kind of people.  

Note to self:  Don’t open the front door again. 

Luckily the house stays nice and cool due to the central air, so it can be deceiving how hot and miserable it actually is outside.  The bird baths were empty though, so I had to go outside and fill them up so the birds have a place to catch a break and get a drink or even a quick splash.

Today is a good day for race fans though.  I watched the Indy 500 earlier, but not being a huge fan of pointy-car racing it was only mildly entertaining…  but tonight we’ll get to watch the Coke 600.  I get the idea of having an extra 100 miles to make it a little more of an endurance race, but I hope that it doesn’t get too boring during the middle.  But yeah - lots of racing to watch today. 

I’ve been kinda worried about the baby birds in my kitchen window, since they have no way of escaping the heat today, but hopefully the mom and dad birds know what to do to keep them cool.  Those babies sure are ugly though.    I’ll be throwing another video of them up here in a bit.

I woke up at 8am this morning for some reason, after only a few hours of sleep, then I took my pain meds and fell asleep from about 3 until 6…   heh…  so I’m most likely screwed and will probably be up all night tonight. 

That’s okay though, since there’s stuff that needs done around here and I won’t have a good excuse not to do it now.    I do still have to return the DVDs that I rented yesterday though.  (Thor, Captain America, Woman in Black)  I’d been wanting to see those Marvel flicks for a while now, since I needed to get caught up on the series before going to see The Avengers.

At the auction the other night, I may have ended up with replacement chairs for the two “unique” looking ones that are in my living room right now.  I wasn’t able to take them that night, so I’ve gotta go back in a few days and 1) hope they are still there, and 2) hope that they’ll easily fit in my vehicle.

I ran into my friend John there too, and he told me that he was prepping to have a big yard sale this weekend.  I actually helped him price a lot of the game stuff that he had in his sale, so he cut me a good deal and I got a couple Atari 2600s, a SNES with controllers, and a couple of SNES games for $10. 

But really there hasn’t been anything too exciting going on.  I feel like I’ve been doing so much in the past few weeks that I’m trying to take it easy for a little while, since there’s a whole new batch of “stuff to do” coming up on my schedule here soon.  Some fun, some not so much…

2nd batch of babies so far this summer… 

Good commercial for critter lovers. 

It’s been a week since I got my tattoo, and I’m really happy with the way it is looking.  It didn’t bleed much, even when I was getting it done, and I’m glad to say that I’ve had very little flaky skin or scabbing since then.  Of course since it was my first one, I was absolutely careful to follow every precaution that I could to keep it looking good…  a practice that will apparently have less importance with each new tattoo that I get, if my cousins are any sign. 

The thing that I am the most pleased with is how the shading around the outside of the “wound” has faded.  And it’s not even that the ink has faded, it’s just that for the first couple of days my skin was just red and irritated, making it look brighter and bolder than it’s actually gonna end up.

Yesterday was a slow day.  Had to go to the bank, dig around in my safety deposit box, made some calls to my doctors, and stopped by the thrift store.  I’m glad I did, because I got a nearly new looking pair of darker jeans for three bucks, an old (but unfortunately broken) Magnus electronic organ for two bucks, a big bag full of toys (including two big Transformers) for five bucks, and 20 squirt guns for five bucks as well.    I should be able to get those guns to Jim, to give away to his fans, before he goes to a concert as Squirtman soon.

My meds got the best of me in the evening though, and I ended up falling asleep on the couch around 8pm.  I then woke up just before 11pm and have been awake since then.    It’s about 5am right now.  I’m getting ready to watch the last episode of House while I get caught up on the bills, but I have a feeling that I won’t be going back to sleep tonight.  Well, this morning.

EDIT:  I was wrong.  Fell back to sleep at 8a, up at noon…  heh

My aunt came over for a while this afternoon and we went through a bunch of the old slides that have been stored in the basement.   It’s amazing how much the inside of this house hasn’t changed in about 30 years. 

Even more amazing is how much the outside of the house has changed.  Judging from the slides we looked at, it looked like each season they did something different and ridiculously amazing with the flowers, landscaping, bushes, decorations, etc.    She said that people would even stop their cars on the road and take pictures of the place, and I believe it.  How they ever found the motivation and energy to do all that I’ll never know.

We only went through about 1/4 of what’s down there, so I’m sure sometime soon we’ll be looking through more of them - but in the mean time, it definitely made me want to get a slide scanner to get those old slides converted over to digital.  If / when I do that, I’m gonna try to take “then and now” pictures…  trying to duplicate the shots from the slides, only about 30-40 years later. 

I’ve slacked on even getting my regular 35mm prints scanned into the computer though, so this slide scanning thing might have to wait for a while.  But since it is fresh on my mind I’m gonna try to scan my second album of prints and maybe get some of them uploaded to my Flickr tonight or tomorrow.

EDIT:  Just bought a slide scanner on eBay.    Forty bux, shipped.

Living out in the country can definitely be relaxing, if you just take the time to stop and look at everything that is going on around you…    

Hamvention was good this year.  A little warm, but with not a cloud in the sky and no chance of rain…  nobody could really complain.    There was a surprising lack of really goofy looking people this year though.   You know, people with all kinds of weird or bright colors on, with antennas mounted to their head and shooting off of their bodies in all different directions.  Maybe it is because I went on Friday. 

I managed to come home with a handful of items this year, but as it has been in the past years, there just wasn’t anything big that I felt like I had to buy there.  But half of the fun of going to Hamvention, at least for me, is just the possibility that there is going to be something kewl there…  something you didn’t even realize that you needed or wanted until it jumped out at you.

Dad wasn’t feeling up to going this year, but the stuff he’d probably be interested in is stuff he can just as easily get on eBay, shipped to his door, and probably cheaper than what he could find it for at Hamvention.  But like me, he also enjoys the thrill of the hunt, but since we shop for different types of things I’m not even able to report back if he missed something “good” or not.    At least with the hamfest, we always know that there’s next year…

I feel like there should be more to report on, but if you have been there you know how it is…   pretty much the same each year, sometimes in slightly shifted locations, but at lot of the old familiar vendors, probably some of the exact same stuff for sale in the flea market section, etc.  But yeah, even at $25 a head, it’s probably something I’ll continue to do for many years.  

Look a couple entries down for links to pix.

The second teaser for the upcoming Squirtman documentary. 

Click HERE for my Flickr set, or HERE for the full-screen slideshow. 

(I’m still whupped from all the walking…  blog entry will come later.)

Here’s a short tour of the remodeled suite at the Rising Star casino.  The video looked fine on my iPhone, but YouTube said it was shaky and offered to correct that for me.    Now it’s almost like it’s in slow motion or underwater or something.    Oh well, you can still tell what’s up.  That suite is ridiculous.

(I think I figured out how to undo their “fixing” of my video…  it might even be back to its shaky original self by time you click to view it.)

The little birds love my new feeder.  The bigger ones seem to have a little trouble negotiating their landing though. 

( Click HERE for all of the pix in my Flickr stream from today. )

I was joking with Matt and Joe about how I’ve been talking about getting a tattoo for at least the last three years…  each time I’d go with them or Toni to Decorative Injections in Athens.  Well, today I finally did it. 

I wish Toni could have been there as well, but she just couldn’t swing it with her current work schedule.   But after I was done with this tattoo, I was already batting around ideas in my head of what I might consider for my next one…  so hopefully she’ll be able to go with us for that trip.

It didn’t hurt nearly as bad as I expected.  Don’t get me wrong though…  there were a few times when Jimmy did a long line in one swoop, and I was about to make some involuntary noises (heh) but then that line would be done.    And as weird as it might sound, especially when he was working on my collar bone area, it was actually a “good pain” because it totally took my mind off of my gimpy shoulder which is almost always hurting.

Oh yeah, for those of you that are unaware, the reason I ended up going with this design idea is because of my work injury and the disability it left me with in my shoulder.  I know that lots of people have been getting these “see-thru” designs lately…  but at least mine definitely has meaning.

The disability and pain is something that I’ve dealt with for years now, and will likely have to deal with for the rest of my life…  so I guess I was getting tired of looking normal when most of the time it definitely doesn’t feel normal in that area of my body.  That’s the problem with internal injuries…  since you look fine on the outside, people often don’t understand or believe how much it can really be hurting and affecting your life. 

So if you can’t make it out from the images, what I got was a see-thru design which shows strained and torn muscles underneath my skin, along with a nice crack in my collar bone for added measure.    Granted, it doesn’t replicate the actual injury that I have - but it definitely replicates the look of the pain that I have on any given day.

But really, I’m the only one that needs to be happy with my choice, and I definitely am.  Glad I finally decided to “man up” and get this done.