Man vs Nature, Part 1

Things are not well at the compound. I was informed several days ago that our house's integrity has been compromised!




To the right is Exhibit A of the violence being done to the house. Apparently, these vent pipe casings are attracting predators that are systematically destroying(eating) the roof's defenses against water assault. Reports indicate that only months ago close to $500 had been spent repairing several of them. Now, in a short time period, the invaders are back and wrecking more havoc.


A source familiar with the matter says that the culprits may in fact be living right under our noses, so to speak. Experts on the matter have weighed in to suggest that the varmints responsible for the destruction are none other than squirrels!


Meet the Enemy!



I will keep you posted on this ongoing conflict between man and nature.

Your moment of Zen with Pop and JB

This was taken this morning. JB has these tumor-like objects around his asshole(the vet referred to them as parietal adinomas or something). He proposed that the best strategy to combat the excess of testosterone most probably causing the swelling was to neuter the dog. So today, JB got snipped. They were cuddling before the operation so I snapped this photo just in case he wouldn't make it through the anesthesia.

Update: JB is alive and well. But without nuts. Now we may need to get him some neuticals.

The Saturday of Despair and Redemption

No, my "lame pussy ass", did not go to the LSU game. In fact I did what anyone should do when faced with family commitments: I got good and drunk the night before, so that I looked and felt my best for the grand clean-up.

The Abita Bar Crawl scene was packed. Downtown Baton Rouge has morphed apparently since I left. They now have 3 or 4 bars on 3rd Street that seem to have some excellent potential. We started at the Roux House to sign up for the $1 Abita beers. Walking up, we noticed that there was an obscenely long line at Happy's across the street. It turned out that the sign-up table was only at one bar rather than 2 as advertised. After some split-second critical thinking we decided that immediate gratification was better than waiting around for $1 Abitas. We quickly escaped the Abita crowd and walked a block down 3rd.

After a shot of Jack and a beer at Boudreaux & Thibodeaux's , we were ready to head back into the throng of people and meet up with our friend and her law-school associates who were now pondering the line situation. It was great seeing her and meeting her pals( they turned out to be pretty cool). They decided to ditch the abita thing, too. We then commenced with beers and carbombs after a wild goosechase for the illusive Thristy Tiger, a dive bar that was closed that night for renovation into an up-scale martini bar. Fucking gentrification.

Now it was not my intention to become shitfaced, but these things happen unintentionally when I let my mind go on it's version of autopilot. It's an interesting gear. And I would say it's somewhat mystical in that it focuses you on the present in a way that meditation should. No thought of tomorrow's ills, only the Now. Intense conversations, sincere promises and assertions. Bold proclamations that goddammit, maybe we should just go to New Orleans. Tonight!

We wound up on the balcony at Boudreaux & Thibodeaux's , and drank and talked until our law school contingent called it quits. After all, several of them had to get to their tailgating spots by 9am. So the night ended up taking us to a friend of ours' house in nearby Spanish Town. In retrospect, I realize that if I had stopped drinking then, everything would have been better. But at the time, a little wine and cheese seemed like a grand idea.

Getting back to our place at 3am was not the original plan, but hey, theses things happen. It's not like I lost millions of dollars in bribes.

So, Saturday morning was ugly. In fact while I was driving to Pop's old house, I was really wondering how in the world I was going to pull it together. How was I going to be lifting and moving stuff and cleaning in this state? I imagined just being propped up in the corner, shaking and looking at the ground while my in-laws cast alternating glances of pity and disgust at me.

But it was not to be. The cornbread that I choked down at the house started to work around the time that the Pepto-tablet/Ibuprophen cocktail kicked in. I got out of the car and went right to work. My condition was not 100%, but I was able-bodied. A victory for late night drunkeness!

We packed a lot of shit up. I rummaged through a utility room with rat and mice-eaten papers and found all kinds of nasty shit that I will not catalog here. Suffice to say that we got everything done in time for kickoff and went back to home-base. My brother-in-law had barbequed some brisket and pork, and by that time my appetite had returned.

So I kicked back in the recliner, porked out and watched tv as the LSU fans at the stadium got soaked by the remnants of the tropical depression.

The end.

Fuck: A Tropical Storm AND an LSU home game!

As of now, Tropical Depression 10 is on a direct course to cause some rain issues for the LSU game(kickoff 2:30pm Saturday). Not that it fucking matters to me. I was gearing up for some hard-ass drinking. I mean some real boozing. The Tailgaters, close associates of mine, are going to get to their spot at 8:30am and start the festivities. Kelly(not her real name, but maybe) plans on bringing some breakfast wraps to munch on while she starts beer drinking. Although she admits that for such an early a start, maybe she should bring along some hard liquor for drinks. That's my girl.

I was all geared up for it, too. I was ready to set an alarm so that I could get to campus by 9-ish, sit in a lawn chair and begin to defile myself. I had even decided to take it easy for tonight's Abita Beer-sponsored bar crawl.

But no. Family responsibilities call. Tomorrow has been designated Clean-all-of-the-shit-out-of-my-grandfather-in-law's-house Day. The in-laws recently put his house up for sale and the closing for it is next week. Tomorrow, GameDay, is the only day that my father-in-law is available to run the Moving Truck Show. Since he has exclusive rights to any use of rental trucks in the household and cannot be absent when one is being rented, GameDay is when we will get a truck and haul away the big furniture stuff such as the frig, bedroom stuff, etc.

I put in a day of packing shit up and moving things around today. And I've been given the "it's okay if you go to the game, but I'm going to help with the move" talk by the wife. But I'm not buying that shit, I know where that leads.

I'm not by nature a guilt-ridden person, but it would probably ruin my buzz at the pregame. And, it looks like it will be raining the whole goddamned time. So I'll sit this one out and have to be content with hooting and hollering at a bar with a clear conscience.

Is this the best picture ever?

You may cast your vote in the comments section.

Virginal Posting as inspired by the comment that any moron can have a blog

This was a view from our bungalow thingee in Costa Rica. That dark blue stuff is the Pacific. We wondered if that stick dangling from the tree was going to drop while we were there. It didn't.