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My Big Red Couch

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Wife Blog

Jamieq

So this is how it all got started. This Evil, Evil woman told me to start blogging, ney, she ORDERED me to start blogging so I am blogging her. Ha! That will teach her not to cuss me out for not buying her an REI nalgene bottle while I was shopping for my thermos (not an ordinary thermos, by the way). She spends an awful lot of time calling me a F#$^er. Actually, she spends an awful lot of time calling the little dog that too. Hmmmmm.

Yo! Yo! Yo! That's some hot coffee

I bought a thermos yesterday.  I went to Walmart to get a thermos but they didn't have one I liked so I went to REI and bought a thermos.  It is silver and fits in my backpack (whenever I say the word backpack Dora the Explorer's backpack song sings in my head).  I found a great new place for coffee, the Tesoro to Go Mart on Lake Otis at 68th.  Free refills.  That beats the $3.00 breve's Jamie has me tricked into.  Of course they're not low carb but what the hell, it's free coffee.
 
"The Thermos Song" by Navin R. Johnson from the major motion picture The Jerk
 
I'm picking out a thermos for you.  Not an ordinary thermos for you.  But the extra best thermos that you can buy,  With vinyl and stripes and a cup built right in!
I'm picking out a thermos for you, And maybe a barometer too,  And what else can I buy so on me you'll rely, A rear end thermometer too.
 
So, I'm learning ghetto speak.  Actually, I'm not, but it's fun to say that I am.  Actually, it's just fun to say "Yo!", yo!  www.ighetto.com has some crazy stuff on it, yo!  Ghettogram your friends or just look at all the crazy flash videos on there.  It's more fun than, um, something really, really ghetto.  Oh yeah, there's a jive translator too.  As white as I am I really need that.  Maybe I can grow up to be just like Ice (www.vanillaice.com) :-D
 


Coffee mug in a ziploc or thermos? Pretty much a no brainer when I ended up with a baggie full of coffee. Posted by Hello

Sunday, July 18, 2004

Nothing to do on a Sunday Evening?

Ok, so I do have plenty to do this Sunday evening but I digress.  Often.  Homestar Runner is stupid fun; a guilty pleasure if you will.  If I ever figure out how to post pictures to this thing you will see the BeardedJonHairstyle Runner.  Until then follow this link for the general idea:  Hairstyle Runner!


Me, in virtual real-time! Posted by Hello

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Fresh Roasted Sole

Memorial Day weekend is a big motorcycle weekend for our family. Pretty much every year for the last 5 or 6 years we have headed North to Grizzly Bear Cabins at Denali Park to meet with the Fairbanks HOG Chapter, hang out and drink a lot of booze.

This year we headed North on Friday after work, I was on my modified 2000 Harley-Davidson Softail Deuce and Jamie was in the minivan with our daughters and their baby sitter Katie. We ride with Katie's dad, Tom, and her mom didn't want her riding the 210 miles to Grizzly Bear on the back of Tom's Softail so she went with us.

The big ride to Denali is on Saturday but we cut the trip up in half by going to Trapper Creek and staying at North Country Bed and Breakfast, home of our friends Mike and Cheryl. North Country is on a several acre lake and the view of Mt. McKinley (aka Deanli) is spectacular. It's always peaceful there and I am thankful to be able to stay there on an annual basis.

Rested and ready we all awoke fairly early on Saturday. I switched to my two-up seat and offered Kaite a ride, at least to the McKinley view at mile 140 where we planned to take a family picture and beyond if she was up to it and if it wasn't too cold.

We fuelled up at Trapper Creek and headed up the highway. The State of Alaska, in their infinite wisdom, had begun work on a new McKinley view turnout, an actual parking lot removed from the highway rather than the extra lane that currently served as the McKinley view, but in the interum the tore out the asphalt at the old McKinley view. There were orange cones everywhere and no asphalt to pull over onto so I continued up the highway. At Byers Lake I pulled into the rest area. Actually, I turned at the wrong spot and headed into the camp ground rather than towards the rest are and Vietnam Veterans Memoral. I stopped at the self-pay station and Jamie pulled up next to me in the minivan. She asked me why I stopped there and I told her I wanted to know if she still wanted to stop somewhere for a picture. McKinley was clouded up at the top so and there wasn't really any other place to stop for a picture so we decided to give up on that idea.

I was going to ask Katie how she was doing on the back, I was barely aware of her presence back there because she is so small, when Jamie commented on my bike's performance. "I know you just got your bike serviced and switched to synthetic oil but every time you go over a bump there is a puff of white smoke. You had better take a look at your bike before we keep going," she said. As the words were coming out of her mouth I could smell rubber. My first thought was the belt, my second the tires. Katie stayed on and I hopped off.

The source of the rubber smell was immediately obvious. Katie was wearing super chunky boots with about a 6 inch heel and a 4 or 5 inch sole. Somewhere along the road she took her right foot off of the passenger foot peg and put it on my exhaust pipes. The soles were so thick that she hadn't even noticed. It was a good thing that we stopped where we did, the pipe had melted through the sole of her boot all the way to the leather.

One fresh roasted sole is the cost of a good road story.


And she never felt a thing! Posted by Hello

Day 1 - Into the Bloggosphere

My wife has a blog. She asked me "is it geeky to have a blog?" I did not have a blog so I had no answer. This is an exploration of that question and a place to post miscelaneous writings which I have been collecting for years.

My Big Red Couch is in my garage. Currently it is the home of all of my camping gear. I am not the original owner of My Big Red Couch and I can only trace it's geneology back two people from me so I suppose Kevin Bacon could have owned it 6 degrees ago but that is highly unlikely.

When I was getting divorced My Big Red Couch wasn't mine, it was my buddy Doug's. I spent some quality nights on My Big Red Couch at his house while I was homeless during the separation before the divorce.

When Doug moved into a new house he sold me My Big Red Couch for $50. It was a bargain at twice the price. It spent about a year in my family room then my wife bought a fancy sectional with recliners and My Big Red Couch was manhandled into the corner of the garage where it is right now. The camping gear is the latest in a few years worth of miscelanea that has been heaped atop it. It is my own personal dog house and I am thankful to say that I have not been "sent to the couch" in quite a long time.

My Big Red Couch is warm and inviting. It's stuffing has been beaten down from use and it pretty much sucks you in when you walk by. My Big Red Couch has it's own gravity.

My Big Red Couch is a place of solace. It is comfortable for a nap or a think or just a time out. It doesn't mind having beer spilled on it and it has never complained about me running motorcycles in the garage or any of the heavy chemical smells or sawdust that happen from time to time.

Oftentimes I make sacrificial change offerings between the cushions. This me be the college savings plan of my children. We shall see how much money collects in there over time. I think couches create small change.


My Big Red Couch - Camping storage with riding gear Posted by Hello


 
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