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Sorry it's been awhile. 0.02 update below: Daughter of golden is now 14 months and constantly keeping me busy. I switch to a new job as an analytics developer for a startup/thinktank firm (farm) on Monday. First big software gig for me, secured a nice salary and the ability to take a cut of the concierge coding services we offer to existing clients. Biggest news pertains to the thread title. Thus past year I've been sick; weird flu like symptoms, swollen glands, racing heart rate.... I think i might have posted back when i was hospitalized back in March. Well, fast forward to a week ago. My ENT had done a biopsy of a saliva gland and lymph node on my jaw. Nothing crazy showed cept some `giant` cells. So we had surgery to remove both last Thurs. Today I went in and pathology confirmed: adenocarcinoma. Specifically the cystic type that attacks saliva, lymph, and mucus glands in the head and neck. I'm off to a specialist in the next few weeks to see just how severe and potential treatments. I'll leave on a good note, here's some photos of me and my reason to kick cancers ass!

Good news of the week (the only good news of the week, apparently). On one hand, I have to deal with the completely dishonest and obstructive soon to be (but not soon enough) ex, RO's heart defect, and absolute crushing poverty. On the other hand, I have a tea story. So I know one of the owners of Harney & Sons tea. Well, I know him a little, met him a couple of times. First I met him at the factory/restaurant in Millerton, he was making the rounds and said some pleasant hellos, and he sat down for a bit with myself and the quarrelsome ex (maybe it was the current ex, I forget). I met him again this spring at their SoHo store (they were doing some free tastings of some new teas they were introducing), reintroduced myself and talked tea. I remarked about a tea they discontinued about 7 years prior that was just 'meh' hot, but absolutely sparkled when made iced. I told him I loved it, and when it was discontinued, I went out and bought all of it I could find in the NY stores, waxing poetic about it the whole time. He said it wasn't a big seller, and they never really planned to bring it back. Anyway, I had his email address, so I shot him a letter last week. I asked him in the nicest way possible for some hint of how I could recreate it on my own, so long as it didn't require divulging any proprietary or sensitive information. He sent me an email back and said "You know what? I am gonna just have them make a special batch for only you and send you a pound of it." It arrived today. Yay! How cool is that?

Yet, no wedding stories or pictures and we still don't know what he danced to with his beautiful daughter. @RalphWaldoMooseworth get with it!

In the current situation, I would probably suggest you get it yourself. In a similar situation, I would get very thirsty before my wife would bring me a drink.

Yeah, this is a sore point with me. jsharr just upgraded my Intel 8088 with a 486sx. Whenever I drop trou and the sexbots see what I am packing in the processor department I just get ready to hear the laughs. Only good thing is that my processor is so slow that I last a long time, if you know what I mean.

He's the guy no one in Mayberry talked about. Opie Oid was the product of one drunken, passion filled encounter between Aunt Bea and Floyd the barber. She sneaked off to Mount Pilot to have the kid and left him at an orphanage up there. Opie was bounced around a few foster families (including the Darlings) before ending up with a couple of junkies in a trailer park on the edge of town who were scamming the system. Like his guardians, he ended up on heroin and anything else he could manage to steal from the drugstore. He got clean twice while in prison, but eventually fell back into addiction and now cooks meth at an abandoned still site in the hills.

My inspection runs out on my Pilot at the end of the month. I took it in yesterday and they failed it. They said it needs a new back bumper. I didn’t even know it had a back bumper, all I saw was wall to wall plastic crap. I went and ordered a new bumper, it came in this morning. I watched a couple ewe toob videos last night and knew I was in for a nightmare of a job. Nobody actually showed their work, they just pointed to where some of the fasteners were after they had already removed the bumper cover or whatever you call that crap. I have been working on it all day until the storm. I finally got the plastic stuff off after removing the trailer hitch to get at the mystery bolts that nobody mentioned in their video. I got the new bumper on just as the storm hit. I’ll have to work on that plastic stuff tomorrow. This is the plastic bumper cover and this is the old bumper, I didn’t see why they wouldn’t pass it. It was solid. and here is the new bumper.

He fought several rounds of cancer, finally losing to brain cancer. He collapsed when he was here in AZ on a business trip. I visited him in the hospital and met his family before he was transferred home to the Salt Lake City area. About a year after he passed his wife contacted me because she wanted some advice on buying herself a bike. We took up a collection here on SW and bought her bike and helmet. I arranged it with a local shop up there. When she showed up at the shop to look at bikes, they gave it to her, along with a Visa gift card I got with the balance of what we collected. I still hear from her once in a while. She's still riding the bike in memory of Randy. I'll have to dig back in my archives and see if I can find the picture of her with the bike.

Sorry 46, not what you were thinking.. https://ca.yamaha.com/en/products/musical_instruments/drums/el_drums/drum_kits/dtx400_series/index.html

Fetch one and bring it to your wife!

I heard they even eat Indian food for breakfast there. That's whack.

It shouldn't take long. I'm thinking 5 minutes, tops. Couch

...don't listen to him @Airehead. Tonight you should make some popcorn and rewatch all the Building and Loan scenes from "It's a Wonderful Life".

Had the weather not been all lightning bolts through next Saturday (a week from this Sat!), we would have been camping just down the road from Gettysburg in Thurmont MD (by Camp David). I'm still debating the Civil War Century on Sept 8th, but this unpredictable weather this summer is really keeping me from making commitments to things outside Tom

I'm organizing the annual blood drive here at work on Thursday. Goal is 24 units, we have room for 42 plus walk-ins. We're up to 34 appointments. I'm hoping we break the 40 unit mark with walk ins.

The awning is too small.

She's now smarter than all of us. She wants two treats. Couch

I knew he would get more hats than he could ever wear so I sent him a “squid” hat. It was the most outrageous hat I could find.

So in a surprise meeting (but not out of the blue), my boss's boss's boss showed up to our meeting and informed us all that our department was being relocated over to Pune, India. I could see this coming for some time now but it's always a splash of cold water in the face when it happens. So they are going to reassign us (and I believe them) but I certainly have suddenly adopted "I don't give a fuck about this current project -- let India do it" approach. I've been with this place for over 7 years and have watched 2 buyouts and a lot of changes overhead. The reason I've stayed is because the folks I work with have been amazing. I consider myself lucky to have had such a good run. But truth is, I'm ready for a change.

So, I was waiting in the lobby of the vet today and she punched a puppy in the face from her carrier. It was extremely violent from such a little beast. She doesn't afraid of anything. I got a call from the vet. She's now fixed and can't slut around anymore. We pick up little Rocky Balboa tomorrow morning. Couch

I actually like getting up to get my own beer. Especially when the other choice is interrupting a woman at work.

Wetting the worm, laying pipe... Didn't know there were so many euphamisms for fishing. I suppose horizontal mambo is some new fangled lure????

My doctor is obsessed with Vitamin D. I take 2000 units a day, and it gives me shiny fur.

Been there, done that. Have you wiped the memory of June 9th from your mind. Getting wasted on two PBR's? Is it starting to come back to you? I'll be passing through on September 18th, but wont have time to stop. Please make sure traffic is good on my route.

I don't know how are you going to race that. No throttle, no brakes, no handle bars. But still pretty dam cool.

OK. While I enjoy your posts from time to time jsharr-d-harr-harr, this ^^^ was one of your better ones.

hatfish!

You buy milk them now?

We contracted with Indians a lot in the early days of Texas. We cheated like shit in that game. Now we just go to their casinos in Oklahoma. Payback is a bitch.

Good luck! How are you going to rig the line? We fished the shallows of Deep Creek Lake in Western Maryland last month in a pontoon boat and used mostly topwater lures that vibrate with no weights like the Whopper Plopper and Chatterbait. It was a matter of carefully casting around rocks, branches, etc. and quickly reeling the bait in. We did great each morning until about 10 am when the fish stopped biting. At that point I assumed the fish were looking for cooler or not so sunlit water a little deeper and tried putting a small weight to the end of the line with a 1' line attached to a rubber fluke about 1' from the weight. But my companions insisted on sticking with the shallows so I cast away from shore but I don't think we were deep enough and the current wasn't moving the fluke enough to attract attention.

FIFY #rednecks

NSFW

See, you should've planned a pad for the redneck instead of the Parrot. I could've at least loaded up the bobcat and started leveling (would take me awhile though with the one I currently have) or could've tried to talk my dad into letting me borrow his big bobcat and bulldozer and got shit done.

Do check in with us as you work through this challenge. Lots of people love you here!

I keep hearing about him in the news..

Didn't he grow up to be a famous movie director?

Paris!

Thank you guys. Making the appointment with the specialist today. I never knew there was a specific head/neck cancer dude.

Of course she's a good dog; she allows couch to live with her after all, where else could he go?

This is why you were supposed to hire Cheese as your project manager. All contracts for work from subs go through bank. Contractor knows money is available for release but not until inspected and passed by codes. Contractors that can't afford to begin work without a draw do not get the job. Did builder choose excavator or you? If builder chose him, his responsibility. Ylva is a tramp. Cheese

When the market crashed in 08, I watched a guy watch his holdings go from over a million to less than 100 grand in one night. It was painful for me, can't imagine what it was like for him. He had a lot of money in one stock, it had always done very well, then it didn't. Take your proffit

So thankful Florida did away with auto inspection decades ago. And yes there are auto accidents in Florida, but I don't recall any that were attributed to a defective vehicle. Rather, it is the defective driver.

DUDE! You need to put a WARNING before posting a comment like that!!!!!!! Tom

Yes, eventually it will. Could take years, I don't know. Make them count.