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of separation after close to 30 years of marriage. Opened bank accounts in my name today. Told Martha we need to start untangling our joint lives and moving on. I think we will end up selling the house. I have been here too long. It is scary and lonely to think of starting over this late in life. Not sure what that will look like. The coming months will be hard, but they will be better than being trapped in a lifeless, loveless marriage. I know that at some point the emotional dam I have built will break and lots of ugly stuff will come spilling out. This makes me feel scared and alone My biggest concern is how do I tell this to my boys and my mother. I don't want the anger and the hurt to turn me into something I am not. I do not want to say hurtful things no matter how badly I hurt. The numbness is beginning to fade and the pain and hurt grow, but I realize this is part of the process I have to go through. And I have come to the realization that I cannot do this alone. I know I need to find someone to talk too, someone who knows about this, because I have no idea what to do next. This makes me feel lost. I was naïve enough to believe those words I said about til death do us part. That is what is hardest. I am a man of my word and this is one promise I will not be able to keep. This makes me feel broken The End

Driving home from an awesome week in St. Petersburg, I stopped at a grocery store to pick up dinner supplies including a few bottles of wine. Put the grocery box on top of my suitcase for the short drive home. Opened the rear door of my suv and the box started to fall. One wine bottle Brooke just as I grabbed the box. My SIL went into full panic mode running around freaking out. In a few short seconds I realized I needed a tourniquet so I pulled of my belt and synched it around my arm. Then we drove to Hospital one, where I sat 4 .5 hours and the triage nurse would come give me a new wad of gauze every once in a while. She then said it would probably be 5 more hours of waiting and. suggested another hospital. By. then, my SIL went home as my daughter came home from work. She drove me to the suggested hospital, the triage nurse didn't even look at the wound. Sent us to a waiting room absolutely full of psych and drug induced zombies. It was like going to a war zone full of crackheads including one dedicating in a corner on the floor. Left there and went to a third hospital, where I was properly triaged, and sent to a surgical suite. The doctor looked at it and said he had a plastic surgeon coming in to fix it. That took 3 hours and the photo was 45 minutes after the dressing was changed for the fifth time. When the surgeon arrived, he crapped on everyone and started barking out all the crap he needed and said this was a real mess. Anyway, he reconnected a tendon and artery and 26 stitches and 11 1/2 hours after the incident, I was sent home. Tylenol 3 is the order of the day.

G’s new pad.

A new GRAVEL BIKE. (My first non road bike) A Giant Revolt Advanced. My commuter bike that I ride in the rain all winter has been on It's last legs for a while this winter, and is in need a major overhaul. My Rocky Mountain has been my rain bike since 2009. It was a great bike and I did my first,( and my fastest ) century on that bike. My wife and I were talking this weekend as we are going away for a week for our Anniversary in June and she suggested taking our non-road bikes to ride some of the trails. I told her my bike would need a major overhaul after the winter because right now it is shot and she said "It's 15 years old, and you have put 30,000km on it, it doesn't owe you anything. Let's go look at new bikes." (I love that woman) so I said "I'm in!" I put fenders on it for the rain but they come off easy. We have lots of back roads around here so I may do a couple gravel road rides too

A friend asked me to check in on my mom. I call her every week or every other week or when we have time. We both pour a Manhattan and share stories. Someone said they called and she didn't answer so I should check in. I figured they called her her cell and it wasn't on and things were good. Sure enough, she said she plugged in her cell and noticed a bunch of missed calls. She said people get pissed at her for not having it on all the time. They said what if something happened to me, how would she know? Her reply was, what could I do? He is thousands of miles away, I couldn't do anything. Does it matter if I find out immediately or tomorrow? We agreed this was the best approach. Take care of yourself and if something goes wrong, oh well. She's 80. Still delivers Meals on Wheels even though she could be receiving them. There are two organizations that provide the service. She thinks one is doing it wrong and she has ideas how to fix it. I happen to agree, but I'll let her deal with fixing it. I told her I was shopping for a van to live in so I could work remotely, visit her more often, and help deliver meals on wheels. She said I was nuts. My mom knows how to figure shit out. She's thinking about taking a college course on short stories. I told her to enroll. She'll be late to class, not read the story, and still know more than anyone in the room.

One of the guys I have been doing wheel building and repairs for the last number of years is moving up from his mobile repair business to a brick and mortar shop in Toronto. He hasn’t fully opened yet, the front door is locked and the windows are covered in paper, but the service department is operating and he has a dedicated and loyal clientele that keeps him busy. He asked if I could come in for a few hours a couple of days a week to help out so I said sure. Mostly high end road stuff which is great to work on. Plus he is a great guy and an awesome mechanic so a good opportunity to learn stuff.

Morning One on One with my direct supervisor had a surprise guest. HR! Seems my position is slated to move overseas in their cost savings initiatives. As soon as the meeting ended my computer was remote wiped and all credentials revoked. I had about 5 minutes to email myself some contacts and that's it. I'm now no longer slowly looking for a new role, I am for REAL looking for a job. I did get paid out till the end of the month and then my severance will last for 7 more weeks. I knew I wasn't happy with the changes and was looking for a new role, but it sucks when the transition isn't your choosing.

Walking with her friend Peony. Notice how they are kindred spirits with the coat coloring.

troop 1001 cleaned up at Camporee. We won many of the events and we won best troop overall out of 37 patrols from 22 troops from five districts.

In a chair next to my next listening to nature’s music played by frogs and insects under a starlit sky.

The lovely Sara with an H & I took her nephew out for his birthday. It is usually about 3-4 hours including toy shopping, lunch & back home. Did I mention he is turning 6? So we go over & pick him up. We didn't have an entire plan dialed in yet. We found a toy store & go in. We find a BIG box of Brio train stuff & a metal locomotive (not Brio). Fair enough start. We have to run by our house & pick up some stuff...it's about a half hour oot. As we are pulling in the alley there is a big ol pile of toys with a big sign....FREE TOYS. There are 2 kids there loading up stuff. We ask if we can have some...they say you can have 1 box. So we take one and they are struggling with how to get the rest of the pile home. So we load it in the car & haul it over about a block. Tell the dad & he is cool with it. On the way to the French Bakery he sees a sign for a commuter train that terminates in our town. He LOVES trains. They aren't running today but we still had fun on the platform& looking at the cars. We made a promise to go for a train run with him. And off we go to the French Bakery. I get a day old cupcake & he gets something Off to bowling at the event center that has video games, Lazer tag, go carts etc. We bowl for an hour ( I beat him by 1 pin) We decide t play put put golf. We play the front nine. It's a little stacked up but he is running around talking to folks & makes a new friend right ahead of us. (I'll say I had 2 hole in ones) Then we head to the go carts. It's a bit of a wait but we get in & terrorize the crowd. Right next to it is the zip line. So we stand in that line. We are about half way in & Sarah takes him back to the go carts while I wait. It takes a bit and they come back. She & he hop on & do the ride. Then the back nine of the putt putt has a castle. So we have to do that. We are both beat & want to leave. As we are going through the arcade he HAS to play a frogger type game. We play for about 15 minutes & the card times out (we had 3 hours on the card) Then we go to the restaurant...spaghettiti. It must be a dance or something at the local High School as lots of HS age women are dressed in pretty dresses. Front desk says 30 minutes....but you can wait in the bar. We find a seat in the bar and lickety split we get told....no kids in the bar. Shortly after we exit we get a table. Soon enough he is crashing hard after we order. We get a go box as he chokes down a spumoni ice cream & take him home. We tell the 'rents we are exhausted. Dad says....all day every day....LOL

the above is G’s hunting dog the bottom pic is when Em fed a dorito to G’s cat

Driving home from work yesterday I stopped at the grocery store to pick up some food. I like to park near the side entrance as it’s not as busy as the main entrances. Also they have a few self checkout spots near that door so it’s a win win. A lady was pushing one of those enormous carts made for toddler entertainment with a toddler and some bags. She goes right to the two empty spots I was shooting for and blocks one. I park in the other and get out. By then her groceries are in the car and she’s getting ready to unload junior. I say, if you’re finished with your cart I can take it in. She was overwhelmed by the offer, like, nobody asked this before? She said thanks so much I’ve been up since 2:30 and a little frazzled now. No worries, I doesn’t cost me anything to return the cart for you, have a good day. Little dude gave me a fist bump. The world is a better place when we look out for each other.

I was accepted and my work is placed front and center of the entrance.

Painting is finished but there is still electrical work to be done. Ceiling fans, recessed lights, and trim work for around doors and fireplace. Son of Parsnip’s bedroom.

…but she too has figured out what the beeping of the waffle iron means…

Do you remember those? I saw one on this morning’s commute. It was in very good shape for the age. No visible rust but at 6:00 am there wasn’t enough light for a better look. Pennsylvania tags. I wonder what his story was. Looked similar to this:

Stanley….geez I don’t even know where to start… His real name is Ron, but he and George used to call each other “Stanley” as kind of an insult because there was a guy who also worked there named Stanley and he was a complete idiot.(He once used a ball-peen hammer to chip ice off his windshield. It left little starbursts all over. They bought him a can of deicer and left it for him with a note that said “Next time, use deicer, not de hammer”). …but I digress… The name kind of stuck to Ron. Stanley is a really nice, smart guy and a helluva toolmaker - his personal hygiene can be sketchy at times and he’s rather an oddball, but I don’t think he has a mean bone in his body. It’s kind of fitting that he has two names because he always talks to himself and because his hearing is shit, when he does, it’s quite loud, so it’s almost like there’s two people wherever he goes. On occasion when my former supervisor was headed over to talk to Stanley, he’d ask me which one was there that day - Stanley or Ron. I said: “I think they’re both here, but it doesn’t sound like they’re getting along….” Because his hearing was so poor, he didn’t realize everyone could hear him when he talked to himself . I used to like to answer him. He’d be looking at something and say “to himself” “Now how the hell am I going to do that…?” “I don’t know Stanley, how are you going to do that?” When he realized I’d heard him, I’d get a sheepish “….well I dunno…” The funniest thing about him was that he used to bowl on Tuesday nights…and often showed up late or not at all on Wednesday. Rather than admit he’d gotten hammered, he always had the damndest excuses why he’d missed time. Once he told us that he’d gotten stopped on his way in by the police because “the guy who is buying my house missed his payment” Me: “Oh yeah, the Mortgage Police…I’ve heard about them”. He came in late one Wednesday and mumbled something about a buddy of his getting married and we immediately started giving him shit about Tuesday night weddings. But by far the best was when he told us about how he was on his way to work and he “saw some lights out in a field…” and began to describe what sounded like a UFO encounter. Suddenly it all made sense: he is so odd, because he’s an alien! We ran like hell with this… Whenever he was missing on a Wednesday morning it was “Oh - looks like Stanley got abducted again…” We decided he must bowl at Zoldar Lanes - “Only three or four light beers away!”or “Where every frame is a beer frame!” One Wednesday morning when he was missing, George looked over and said “Well, must have been an away game….” “He got caught in a meteor shower and his wipers weren’t working….” And on and on. We milked the alien angle for all it was worth. One day the supervisor said to him “Ron…why don’t you just say you went out and got drunk last night?” He kind of stopped making excuses after that. But of all the practical jokers I worked with, he was by FAR the most diabolical. If you saw him walking around giggling to himself, you’d better check your stuff because it was guaranteed he’d fucked with something….

I am no longer adding half and half to my coffee. Drinking it black and cutting back on my consumption. I drink one 16 oz cup at home before I shower and I bring 16oz with me to work and drink it once I get to my desk. Most days I only drink about half of the second cup before it grows cold. On weekends, if not camping, I will add creamer and have two or more cups at home. I may take RG's advice and go find a local coffee shop to hang out at.

Very satisfying. She did great. I fried off the corn tortillas and pureed the chilies while she shredded the chicken. Then I grated cheese, minced onion, and walked her through the green chili sauce. She was surprised how easily the sauce comes together. I made shortcakes yesterday when MiL came over for brat supper. So, we also ate strawberry shortcake for dessert. mr was surprised that whipped heavy cream keeps overnight.

My old neighbor Karen..inspite of our different political views...she allowed me to use a key..and watch the TDF...some mornings (she was not a morning person) she would join me..eventually learning the names of some of the top riders... She would have hit 89 in August RIP Karen Erickson

moral of the story - don't eat canned beans

Just gonna leave this here. @Thaddeus Kosciuszko would tell you that you SHOULD NOT make a batch of caramel onions and leave them out....

Don’t get me wrong, I never ever want to go back to that festering, toxic cesspit, but there were aspects that I miss. Stuff like… The time when one of the middle manager’s wives caught him playing footsie with one of the girls on the shop floor and kicked him out. The plant manager brought his RV in and parked it out back. The dude was living out behind Maintenance in the motorhome for a week or so until he went crawling back to his wife. The time when a guy who worked there and lived in the nearby trailer park decided he wanted a Christmas tree and wasn’t going to pay the extortionist prices at the Christmas tree lots, so he walked over and helped himself to part of the landscaping and then dragged it home. Through the snow. They fired him, had him arrested and took the tree back, put it in the office and decorated it. You may or may not remember Stanley. He is a super nice, super smart guy, but odd. He worked there for at least 45 years and never spoke to anyone outside the Tool Room. Everyone thought of him as “that weird guy who never talks to anyone”. We had an HR manager who is the most miserable human being I ever met. Everyone from her pay grade and down (she was Ms. Sweetness and Light with anyone above her) HATED her. One day, Stanley was out for a smoke and when he came back in, as he walked by HR, she was waiting. “Stanley, come in here. We need to talk about you taking so many smoke breaks”. He said “Go fuck yourself” and kept walking. What was really funny about it was that it went through the building like lightning and he became an instant legend. Speaking of Stanley… They used to do this “6S” nonsense and once a month, each department would get audited. I was the de facto supervisor in the Tool Room and Renee The BusyBody - more about her in a minute - came in to do the audit. Now, she was supposed to be looking at stuff like cleanliness and organization, but she felt the need to point out to me that Stanley was playing Solitaire on his computer. The thing is, he was working - his CNC was running. She said “Do you know he’s playing cards over there?” I just looked over and said “Huh….he’s usually on EBay…” I always used to say that the test for management material was that they would walk up to someone and say “We want you to duct tape a hot dog on every car in the parking lot”. The ones who said “OK!” got the job. They didn’t want anyone who knew anything, just people who would do what they were told. Renee - whom I just heard was recently frog-marched down the sidewalk with a cardboard box - was a case in point. During the aforementioned 6S audit once, she was looking at our “Information Board”. She said “Where’s your Performance Metrics?” I said “We don’t have performance metrics because we’re not a production department”. “Well how do I know what’s going on in here?” “Oh, there’s a spreadsheet on the public drive that has what’s in the queue, what’s being worked on and what’s been done…all that”. “It’s not visible enough” “Not visible enough? You don’t even need to come in here to see it - you can look at it from home, in your pajamas, if you want…” “It’s not visible enough”. Okayfine. Next month’s audit rolls around, I print the spreadsheet and hang it on the board. She looks at it, fussing. Then it occurred to me - “she doesn’t understand it”. So, next month’s audit rolls around, I go into Excell, make a bar graph that meant absolutely nothing. The labels were bullshit and I pulled numbers out of my ass. I printed it out and hung it up. “Oh, that’s much better”. So every month, I changed the colors and numbers and printed another one. …and so on.

I buy several grand in branded clothing for my security team a year & have been using these guys since 2018. I hit them up yesterday stating I need 3 new shirts as I lost weight & don’t want to wear baggy polo’s to the meetings. As we have a lengthy approval process I told them I’d pay with my CC. I got shipping confirmation today, I sent an email asking for payment link and was told Josh (owner) said not to charge, his thank you for 6 years of business. I’m never leaving those guys!

By a recommendation from a friend, I bought the Dynaplug pro plug thingie for gravel. I haven't used it yet. Anywho, Since I'm only using it on my CAADX for gravel riding it would be nice to frame mount it. It did not come w/ a frame mount which made me bummed out Then I thought, I could design & print one. This made me excited So I modeled one up in Solidworks and printed it. It took a couple iterations, but it works great, this made me happy I have a frame pump mounted to one bottle cage, so I designed the plug holder based on that concept for mounting to the other cage. I've ridden a few gravel rides and its still on the bike👍 It comes loaded w/ four plugs, 1 big, 3 not big. Another reason I want it on the frame is for ease of use. When a puncture occurs I want to be able to access it quick, and not fumble around in a saddle bag or jersey pocket. This cost about 57 bucks. Worth it if it works great.

This is 4 feet from our front door at work

I was walking toward my car, tripped and instead of letting myself fall in the grass, I tried to catch my balance, ran several steps but couldn't do it and crashed face-first into the sidewalk. Pictures below. It wasn't bad enough to stop me from doing yard work, but I had to wash my scratched right cheek and then coat it with triple antibiotic ointment. I scratched my right hand, too, and the fat part below the thumb is a little sore. My right shoulder is very slightly sore. Fortunately, nothing serious happened and I was able to do yardwork with just a slightly sore hand and shoulder. That was the first of bad-things-come-in-threes for me. I tried out my tiller on the hard ground where I want to do cucumbers this year and it worked great - until the tiller snagged a 3/16" diameter, bare, galvanized ground wire just barely below the ground that ends at a below-ground post and extends several feet to where I couldn't pull it up. It took me several minutes to unsnag the tiller which wasn't damaged. I can't find anyplace that runs to the wire so I'll have to dig and trace it to see if it's older pre-fire stuff or not. If I can't find what it goes to, I'll have to move it in a different direction so it's out of the way of my garden plot. Then, I decided the bad day should be made less so by getting a double footlong hotdog with chili , mustard, and onions and fries and a chocolate shake at Ann's Dari Creme carryout, appropriately awarded "Baltimore's Best Hot Dog" by a local newspaper. At 6:30 pm on Sunday, there was an unusually long line running outside the door, on top of the one inside the door, and I had to wait 20 minutes to get my stuff. A least that made an fine end to a tough day!

Playing with the camera. The weather is poo so I was just shooting through my kitchen window. A common grackle through a dirty window really isn't wall-worthy, but some judicious editing yielded me this:

Glad I had my iPhone.

Cycling in Teton Park

The company provided me with a phone. It was always a few years behind Samsung FE edition Galaxy on shitty AT&T shitty service in Tampa. But hey, it was free. So the phone was of course logged out of it's work profile but they did provide me with options to transfer my number to a new service/line. With the glaring caveat that I had until close of business to transfer the line! So rapid-fire research and I now have the middle "Unlimited" package with Verizon and a shiny new Pixel 8!

A Tesla just pulled up! Damn. Not a rider. Two riders just showed! Off we go.

I’ll be sure to leave all that goodness in Ohio before crossing back into West Virginia. Even West Virginia has standards. How can I consider this a vacation when a) I’m going to Ohio. And b) visiting the outlaws? I’ll start drinking Thursday morning.

OK getting coffee and then I'm really going to kick ass. Vacation planned and excited for the rest of this work week. Who's got time to be depressed?

OMG, this is too hot!! My cat wanted to go out front when I came home from running errands. Ok. He decided he loves that sunshine. Ok. But Geez, hot! Then I had the bright idea to give my truck a bath. HOT!!!!

I'm part of some work walking challenge thing and trying to get in 10,000 steps a day but seldom hit it. When I'm not part of the challenge (it goes into early May) I usually get 7500. That's my goal anyway. Today I got in just over 15K. I was sick Wednesday and most of Thursday so this helps make up for it. Let's see what I can do tomorrow (today?). I'd be quite happy with another 10K.

I used to park in the park with my girlfriend. It was only a quarter mile from my parents house but it had more privacy than our driveway.

So far we still have power

I guess a lake, as that’s where our sailboat lives. But any will do. Current view:

I used crowd as a start word because my bed was crowded with Airedales on my limbs. Lindy with his head on my arm and Paulie with his head on my leg. worked out

Fly to Yellowknife, NWT. Just outside of town with no light pollution you can rent these glass topped domes so you can sleep under the northern lights in comfort. It is apparently 'good luck' in some Asian cultures to conceive a child under the northern lights so it gets heavily marketed in Asia and they get a large number of tourists from there. In other words, don't bring an Ultraviolet light