More Pug shenanigans and sad news

Hello all!!! I know it has been a while since I last posted anything, but life has been very hectic and I have been very busy. Working weird shifts and chasing five kids around takes up far more of my time than I ever imagined. I figured I would post a few pics of the pugs, Yin, Yang, Chi, and Zen. We got Chi and Zen about a month ago, they are littermates and the best of friends. They love to play with Yin and Yang, as the following pics show:



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Occasionally they go to Puppy Prison:





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The favorite sleeping place, we call it Pile-o-Pugs:





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Zen chilling on Tiffany after a long day of play:



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Zen begging to come in:



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Unfortunately, Chi got an eye infection that evolved into glaucoma. We were devastated to learn last weekend that she had to have surgery to remove her damaged eye. Here she is this week:





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I hate that she is only 14 weeks old and has been through something like this already. She is a feisty little Pug and is not letting this get her down. She amazed me how quickly she bounced back from this, a human would have moped around for weeks about losing an eye.



Anyway, that is what is going on around here. The kids are doing great, and are doing awesome in school. Have a great Sunday!!!

an intervention was required......

It was pointed out to me by Tiffany last night that I am addicted to my phone, and that I cannot go 15 minutes without checking it for messages or emails. I thought long and hard, checked a few emails and sent a text or two to Lauren, and discovered that she was right. I am addicted to my effing CrackBerry, errr, BlackBerry. I am constantly trying to be more efficient, and in the process, my life has been consumed by this evil device:



I am really going to try to curb my usage of said device here at home before this happens:



That would really suck, wouldn’t it? I am going to probably have to do a twelve step program or something for this addiction. Any ideas on how to accomplish my goal?

It has also been brought to my attention that I have a road rage issue, similar to this one:



I mean, what the Hell? Don’t I have the right as a driver to get mad at idiots that annoy me in traffic? Seriously???? Is there a twelve step for that too?

Today was the last day of school for the kids, and Adam received the President’s Award for Academic Achievement. Yay Adam!!! Have a great weekend, friends!!

Pic blog from my Salt Lake City trip in February

**This is a repost from my Myspace blog @ www.myspace.com/bigbravesfan4evr




Greetings Friends!! I made it back home in one piece, but brought home a bad case of bronchitis with me. I cannot recall being this sick in a long time. I am on a round of Cipro, hopefully it will nip this in the arse before pneumonia rears its ugly head. I have had pneumonia a few times now, so I guess I will always be susceptible to it. Growing up around all that secondhand smoke might not have been such a good thing after all, huh?

Here are some pictures of the mountains and the snow in Utah and Colorado. All of these are from about 30,000 feet yesterday afternoon, it was a beautiful day to fly. I hope you enjoy them.























The following four pics are from the approach into Denver late yesterday afternoon. Pretty, eh? Notice the housing enclaves on the mountaintops...









I saw the following in a store in Salt Lake City, and could not resist taking a picture of it. The president of the Mormon Church passed away on Sunday, so it was definitely a zoo around there with the visitation and funeral.



And last but definitely not least....... limited edition mirror self portrait @ 32k feet somewhere over Kansas.



Have a great weekend, friends!! I am going to go back into seclusion with my humidifier and some Nyquil.

travel wish list

I was sitting here this morning, and I was thinking about all the places I might like to go visit in the near future. I really need a vacation, especially given the way life has changed for me in the last couple of years. I have reached a point in my life where the realization that 40 is right around the corner, and not this 40 either:

The first place on my list is to go to Martinique, and island in the Caribbean. Those of you that saw The Thomas Crown Affair will remember Pierce Brosnan and Renee Russo frolicking around on this beautiful island paradise. I will make it there one day too, with a beautiful lady on my arm I hope.





Another place I want to go is the United Kingdom. I am largely of Irish/Scottish heritage, and the images I have seen of these beautiful places makes me want to go there and see what my ancestors walked away from to flee the Potato Famine generations ago.







Although the political and religious climate is pretty dangerous in the Middle East right now, it has always been my dream to go to Egypt. The pyramids and tombs intrigue me, and I would love to see them firsthand. I am working on two tattoo designs I will add soon that will be utilizing heiroglyphics and writing from ancient Egypt. Imagine being in this beautiful country viewing these giant architectural masterpieces that the ancient Egyptions left for us to be in awe of.






Germany is somewhere else that I want to visit one day, and not only for the opportunity to legally drive at speeds I have previously driven at illegally. The scenery I have seen in photographs and documentaries is amazing, and I want to see in person the beautiful castles in the mountains there.





I want to go to Moscow one day ( having already been to Moscow, TN many times ) and see the awesome architecture of the buildings in Red Square. My friend Gaz Reynolds goes there regularly and has told me many stories about this beautiful city, and the gorgeous women to be found there.




One cannot go to Eastern Europe without going to Prague, although the political climate is a little uneasy right now as well. I am an architecture buff, and the pictures I have seen of the gargoyles on buildings in this city are ones I want to see in person.



There are many other places I want to visit, so there will be a part 2 to this blog at some point. I hope that ya'll enjoyed the pictures.

another short story

She counted to three and closed her eyes, wishing that she knew what path her life was going to take now that she had actually left. So many times she had threatened to walk out on him, tired of his abusive ways. She had a full tank of gas, his debit card, 40 bucks in her pocket, and all of her clothes packed in trash bags. She did not have much, but she had her freedom. Freedom was worth the sacrifices she was making, she had to tell herself that over and over. All she had were her hopes and dreams, which were evolving by the moment as she counted the telephone pole separating her from the miserable life she ran away from.

Meanwhile, he had come home from work early to discover that she was gone. He was mad as Hell that she dared defy him, and that she had walked out on him. He went into their room, reaching into the nightstand next to the bed they had shared for 23 years. He grabbed the .45 and box of bullets out of the drawer and slapped the picture of them to the floor, shattering the glass from the frame. He turned and ran out of the room, his mind erupting with fury over what she had done to him. He jumped into his truck, and the tires threw gravel all over the side of the house as he spun out of the driveway. He would find her, and make her pay with her life.

Many miles away, she stopped to get someting to eat at a roadside diner. It was amusing to her that it was one of the old time diners, much like the one that she told him 23 years before that she was pregnant with his baby. She remembered those days when she was blindly in love, long before he destroyed her self esteem by years of abuse. The last of their three children were gone from the house now, her precious baby girl now resting in a cold grave because of a drunk driver. The death of her only daughter had set the wheels in motion for her to run away from the evil. He could not be bothered to comfort her when she needed him most, he was too busy blaming her for letting their daughter go out on a Saturday night with that Jennings boy. He told her that it should have been her that got crushed in a head-on wreck with the drunk teenager. As she stared at her chipped coffee cup, she wondered where she would spend the night.

He drove the route he expected her to take, the one that would eventually lead to Tulsa. A thousand thoughts rushed through his mind, wondering why that bitch walked out on the best thing that ever happened to her. He had given her everything she could have wanted, and she showed her appreciation by being an ungrateful little whore. He would find her if it took the rest of his life...... but wait, there is her car ahead!!! He could not believe she was stupid enough to stop! He pulled into the lot and got out of his truck, tucking his pistol into his waistband and pulling his jacket down over it. He had her right where he wanted her.

She looked up, and saw him walking into the front door. He walked across the diner to the last table where she sat, and yelled at her wanting to know what the Hell was her problem walking out on him. She looked down at her coffee, seeing her hazel eyes in the reflection. As he reached for his gun, she brought her hand up from under the table. She fired the .357 six times at him, hitting him in the chest with the first five shots, the last bullet hitting him next to his nose. The hollowpoints really did their damage swiftly, as he fell to the floor getting one shot off, which slammed into the framed print of "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" on the wall. She laid the gun on the table, and waited for the police to come for her. She was finally free from him, and was in another small town where his family did not run the political machine. Her new life of hopes and dreams began at that moment, the moment she liberated herself.

The police arrived within minutes,the smell of gunfire still in the air. They questioned her about what happened, and as was their practice, she was arrested and taken downtown to get to the bottom of things. In reality, they felt that she would be safer in jail given her recently deceased husband's family. She knew this was going to happen, and had chosen the town she stopped in as a result. She knew she would get fair treatment there, and that justice would prevail.

Meanwhile, word got back to their hometown about what happened. Her two sons left and drove to see her in jail to see what happened. They drove the miles in silence, wondering what finally caused her to snap. There were so many questions they had, but they knew that it was likely they would never know the entire story. Both of them knew there had been years of abuse as both of them had been handled very rough by their father too. But he was their father, and they loved him.

She explained that she took the gun into the diner because she was afraid of him finding her. The detective asked why she just did not go to the authorities if she was so scared for her life. She told him of all the years that his family had run politics in their small town, and that nothing ever went forward when she filed charges. His family always managed to grease the right palms and the complaints would always get dismissed. She felt that there was no other way to be free from him unless she walked away and started over anew.

His brother had been elected Mayor the year before, and their cousin was the Sheriff. They got together with a bottle of single malt, and conspired with how to get that bitch for what she did to their kin. Nobody spilled the blood of their family without paying the consequences. With the pinko liberal lawyers out there, they were convinced she was going to walk away scott free. There was no way she would live to see another day when she walked out of that courtroom a free woman, they had to have vengeance.

Her sons arrived at the jail to see their mom. She hugged them tightly, and apologized for taking the life of their father. They both told her that they knew it was self defense, but they wanted to know why she left without telling them goodbye. What if she had gotten away, would they ever have seen her again? Would she have vanished into thin air and left them and her grandchild behind? They had already lost their sister, there was no way they were going to lose their mom too.

The plan was finalized back home, and the contract was given to a man referred to them by a distant relative in Kansas City. The mood was somber as they discussed the method that was to be used, and the money was gathered to pay for the job. They found out her hearing with the magistrate was the next morning, and she would walk out a free woman on bond. They worked out the details, and the man left Kansas City to scout the courthouse in Oklahoma. Would they be successful in getting her when she left court? Time would tell if it was on their side or not.


She talked to her sons for a while and told them there was something they needed to get immediately from a lockbox at the bank next door to the building they were sitting in. She had worked as a bookkeeper for years for the family businesses, and apparently had some evidence stored away that would put the political machine into the ground. She wanted his family to know that she had enough to put them all away for the rest of their lives. She hoped it would be enough to keep her alive when she was released.

The hired gun arrived from Kansas City and set up a stillwatch on the courthouse from an abandoned building across the street. He sat in the silent dark room and watched the courthouse, waiting for the clear shot he needed. He unpacked his H&K PSG-1 sniper rifle, and checked the sights and loaded it with the deadly .308 Winchester ammunition. He set up his tripod, and waited for the moment that would grow his bank account by one hundred thousand dollars.

Her sons went to their uncle to discuss the evidence that would damage the machine. He listened to them tell him what there was, and that copies of it were in the hands of the trusted in case she turned up dead. He sat in silence, his rage building that his own flesh and blood were blackmailing him. He asked them why he should spare her life after killing their father. They told him that they were willing to do whatever it took to save her. He picked up the phone, and called his brother and cousin to come to have an emergency meeting.

She went with the deputies to the courthouse through a tunnel from the jail, a safety measure that had been installed years earlier after the Oklahoma City bombing. She sat in the courtroom, praying that her sons had made her in-laws see that she needed to live. She came before the magistrate, and testified to her intent to return if and when asked. The magistrate, having recieved a few threats about the situation from the neighboring county, called for a recess to consider her being released.

Meanwhile, back in her hometown her sons sat in silence outside the conference room where the meeting was taking place. They heard shouting and cussing coming from the room, and prayed that the decision would be made to save her life. Time seemed to stand still, and they wondered if they had made it in time before she was released from cusody. They waited with baited breath for a decision, and prayed that it was the right one. They had lost their father and sister, and loved their mother far too much to lose her this way.

The judge came back into the courtroom, and sat down to give his decision. He determined that she did not seem to be a flight risk, and okayed her release. The sheriff informed her that her car was parked outside of the courthouse, and he handed her her belongings. She thanked him for his courtesy, and walked out of the front door of the courthouse amongst the crowds of people and reporters. She walked down the steps, breaking away from the crowd as she headed towards her car.

Across the street, from a dark window several stories above the ground, he raised the rifle and looked through the scope. If only he could get a clear shot, why the hell were the people crowded around her like that? He tracked her through the scope, his finger on the trigger of the German precision killing machine. There she was, the crosshairs perfectly framing her beautiful face, a pity this kill would be, but he had a job to do. His cell phone began to ring, but he could not stop now, the timing was perfect as she broke away from the crowd. He shifted his weight to prepare for the recoil, and he started to squeeze the trigger.

The recoil from the rifle was expected, but still startled the hired assassin. He threw the rifle down and ran down the stairs of the building. He bolted out of the side entrance and jumped into a waiting car with an associate. He hoped that the bullet had found its mark, and that he just added some more money to his savings. He was tired of this job, too many emotions starting to seep into the killing field. This was his last job for the Kansas City mob, he hoped they would let him retire.

The window of her car shattered, and she dropped to the ground and tried to roll under it for protection. The crowd of reporters following her dived for cover too from the unseen gunman. They all laid on the ground waiting for more gunfire to ring out. After a few minutes, everybody started getting up and moving around. They were certain that the gunman was gone, and they ran towards the car where she still laid on the ground motionless.

Back in her hometown, they finally got through to the hired gun. He told them it was too late, that the deed was already done. He had ended her life just as he had been instructed to, and the money had better be wired to his account. If not, there would be some more killings, and these would be for free. He was asked if he was positive that she was dead, and he said that he had seen the window behind her shatter. He knew the bullet had found its mark, and had obliterated her vital organs. He had not gone for a head shot with her because he had not been able to bring himself to ruin her beautiful face for her family to pay their last respects. A head shot would have meant a closed casket, and she was too pretty for that.

Her sons listened to their uncle as he spoke on the phone and were horrified to hear the stress in his voice. They were afraid that his phone call had been too late to save her life. They wondered what their next move would be, and if their lives were safe now. They had pushed the envelope all the way with their relatives, they wondered if the threat of exposure was enough to keep them alive for another day. The hope that they had for their mother was shattered, and they were now all alone without any family since their parents and sister were all dead.

There was blood everywhere, and she wasn't moving at all as the crowd got closer to her car. Somebody called 911 to get help for her, but knew that it was probably too late to save her. The chances of survival from a sniper were slim indeed, and the reporter had seen far too much of this when he covered the war last year. They were afraid to pull her motionless body from under the car, afraid that if she was alive they would make things worse. They did the right thing and waited for help to arrive. A siren wailed in the distance, the ambulance and help they felt she didn't really need getting closer......................................

My new HEMI

I finally got my Treo to email pictures, so here are a few pics from today of my "new" Durango I bought last month. Sorry it took a while to get the pics up, better late than never.





Yes, I have had it all the way to the right side of the speedometer........................... I was by myself, no kids in the truck at the time!!



Nice two-tone gray leather interior. The seats are comfortable and heated for those cold mornings.







340 horses prancing under my right foot........................................














Shiny,huh? These are only 17"s though...... I should get 22" rims next.......



My favorite option.......................



Big Cat Daddy driving his HEMI



This is the view of the country roads through the open sunroof.



The only drawback to having a HEMI engine........................



I don't look at this much while I am driving around with the sunroof open. I really do love driving my Durango, and am blessed to have it.



One of my high school buddies came by to go to lunch today in this 1966 Mustang. His father bought it brand new, and Michael has owned it since his 16th birthday in 1986. Sweet ride, huh? We go out to lunch a few times a year and we always drive in it.


I want to get FlowMasters put on it, click the video below for how I want it to sound.............................




Happy Thursday!!!!

when dogs grow old.....a short story

Once upon a time lived an old Mastiff dog. He had lived a long and eventful life, but began to grow old and senile. One long summer day, he slowly forgot everyone who had anything to do with his life. He saw pictures on the wall of "STRANGERS" and the pictures made him very angry. How dare those "STRANGERS" stare down at him in his home. He knocked the frames off of the wall and pulled the pictures from among the shards of glass. He ripped them to shreds, venting his anger at thier intrusion into his life. All the activity tired King out, he went to lay down on the big bed in his room.

As King slept, a man pulled into the garage in a large SUV. He parked the large vehicle and closed the garage door, noticing how large the Suburban looked in the garage. He never parked it in there, but did today because his wife was gone for the day. His visit home for lunch was unplanned, but his mind was troubled about his wife and the affair he suspected. He put the key in the door, turned the knob and stepped inside. His eyes got accustomed to the light, and he was puzzled by the piles of broken glass in the hallway as well as the shredded pictures. Who had come into his home and destroyed them?

The dog woke up to the sound of the door opening, and jumped from the bed. Who dared enter his domain? The hair stood up on his massive neck as he crept down the hall towards the stairs. He saw a STRANGER climbing the stairs, and this intrusion made him angrier than he ever remembered being. He leapt at the man, barking furiously, and they fell to the bottom of the stairs in a writhing pile. King went for the throat of the STRANGER, ripping it out as he felt the struggle end underneath him. He stepped away panting, the coppery taste of blood still fresh in his mouth. His instincts told him that he should eat now that he had killed his prey. He settled in to feast on his bounty.

The man's wife and her lover were driving down the street in her car, the danger of making love in her own bed worth the high. As she drove into the cove, she realized that her garage remote was not working. She parked in the driveway, and leaned over for a passionate kiss. They got out of the car and made their way to the door, looking around nervously as they walked. She put her key in the door, and opened it, gasping as she saw the bloody scene at the bottom of the stairs. King turned towards her, baring his bloody teeth as he leapt towards her.................................