Enough Said

How bout that.

Click on the pic above to enlarge.

Pre-season starts tomorrow!

Here we go folks! The 2008 Football season is about to commence! With Pre-Season starting tomorrow and our first time back onto the field gets closer, I get out of my summer funk and start to warm up for the fall! The Bronx have had some woes over the last half year including a stupid injury to our top receiver and finding out that our young new QB has diabetes and to add salt to the wounds, CJ has informed me...reluctantly....John Lynch is not with the Bronx anymore. Apparently we think we would be better off with someone else as our starter. (Ooof.) I hope our year starts out better than predicted by the football announcers. I have a feeling that no matter what they say, our Mile High Magic will overcome any skepticism that those "suits" and wannabe's can throw our way. Let the Mile High THUNDA roll! Broncos start the pre-season on Saturday, August 9th @ Houston. Let the butt whoopin commence!

I am coaching my sons football team this year and am looking forward to doing it. Of coarse I filled out the coaches paperwork as soon as I got it so I could enter my team choice. Got the paperwork back early this week showing my team.....THE BRONCOS! Booya baby!

GO BRONCOS!

Prayers of my wife's bro...

Just a quick post to all my friends and family out there. My wife's bro is in the hospital resting up after some pretty serious health probs that occurred suddenly and unexpectedly this weekend. Please keep him and his family in your thoughts and prayers during this tough time. I know he is a strong person and have no doubt that he will overcome this situation.

A New Post? ... yep!

Hope everyone has been having a great start to the summer! Mine has been a pretty good one I must say. In the last month Deidra's job has given her 2 raises! One for the gas price change, and one because I think they are afraid she will look elsewhere for a job due to the distance she has to drive to get there. I love that Deidra has a job that actually pays her for her job performance. My job is a job that pays you despite of it. Not to say I don't pull my weight, but there are those I have seen in the past 10 years that move up due to the time they put in...not the work effort. Will I become supervisor if I stay in my job...yes. Will it be because I am a great leader and someone who my workmates can look up to and follow? Although I would be a great supervisor and a hard worker..sadly these are not the reasons I would be chosen. Nope. I would be chosen specifically for the time I have stayed in my job and by passing a written exam that I would study for and of coarse pass. State work...nuff said.

Well we have been to six flags 4 times since it opened this spring and I have been to my first water park and busted belly first down a water slide for the first time since I was in my mid teens. Going to go there again real soon!

Dad has officially retired from work as of a couple weeks ago and is loving the home life! Although he officially has not seen home due to the fact that he took off to the islands right after his exit! Mom, Dad and my sister and two boys just got back from a long leisurely trip to the Virgin Islands last weekend. You know how when you leave your home and go on a long trip and when you get back you feel like you have had enough of vacations for awhile? Well they seem to have missed that memo. Mom and Dad are already planning our trip to the islands in the fall. Deidra and the kids are looking so forward to it! It's so close I can taste it! However I will have to call my brutha CJ on the weekends to see how the Bronx are doing. I will miss 2 games! Its all good...I will be thinking of them with a pina colada in my hand.

We have so many pics of our fun for the last couple months and I will make an effort to putting them on my computer so as I can post them up for you guys. However I do have some pics that were sent to me that I have to show you guys:

This is a pic from a "live" camera in the Virgin Islands. Shell called me up and had me go to this website and when I pulled it up..this is what I saw! Cool what the Internet has brought to our world eh? That is my mom and dad and my sisters 2 boys in the pic with my name in the sand. I was so excited to see it that I brought the kids down...of coarse they asked me to ask them to put their names on the sand as well:

They tried to get the names in before the water took them away..20 second lag time between pics but you can kind of see Hi Ray n Tay. That's my sister and one of her boys in the pic. Mom and dad are on the dock to the upper right coaching them on the job.

I also have some great pics from CJ that he sent to me of his little girl. Such good pics I had to post em:

Cute little girl. The guy is my best friend in the world. CJ. As for his new beard as of late. Not sure what you are going for here bro. I don't know..what do you guys think? I'm leaning towards one of 3 guys:

Grizzly Adams

Jake Plummer

Or this guy.

"Don't make me bring back the wings!"

Happy Fathers Day!

Ok. So it has been probably going on almost 2 months since my last post. In my defense it has been a pretty busy month and a half! It has been packed with so many birthdays and a mothers day and a fathers day. Lots of stuff to go over, but I have to keep this one kinda short due to the fact that today is fathers day and Deidra is making me pancakes! WOOHOO! First of all I would like to extend a "Happy Fathers Day" to my Father and my Father in law. You both brought up two crazy kids who found each other and due to the good morals and beliefs that you two gave us, we found each other to be a perfect match in a crazy world. Thank you.



On a personal note: HAPPY FATHERS DAY to my daddy.

Dad I am so proud of you. You have been working so hard for so long and to think you have about a week left before you retire! Congratulations and make sure not to lose that fishing license. We will be using it quite a bit this summer. I found this poem. It describes how I feel:

I find myself wondering...Did I give you your due..

For all that you've done for me

Did I ever thank you?
For all of my childhood memories

For helping me deal with life's stresses

For helping me accept my defeats

And celebrate my successes?
Or for teaching me the value of hard work,Good judgement, courage, and being true

The laughter, smiles, and quiet times we've shared

Did I ever thank you?
If I have forgotten, I'm thanking you now, you taught me right from wrong....

I hope you know how much you're loved and appreciated

I hope you, instinctively, knew it all along.
Happy Fathers Day,

"Dad"

Happy Fathers day to my brother CJ and his daddy Big B aka: COACH! Love you guys!

Hey CJ, I have to tell you that when I hear the words "fish" and "taco" together...I cant help but think of this:

"Yummy"

3d annual Garage sale!

Well the garage sale is underway. I came down here to get away from it all. I don't know how anyone can stand that many people wanting to buy so much crap. Oddly enough I have this theory: Those who have a bunch of worthless crap can store it for a certain period of time. This makes the balance of (crap vs non crap) tip in the favor of the (crap) side or as I like to refer to it as (the dark side). If this continues to be the case, all existence as we know it will be forever thrown into a dark time where piles and piles of worthless crap start to grow and start to get tossed out of houses onto the streets. Before you know it gangs of worthless crap sit out on street corners listening to rap music and smoking hand rolled worthless crap cigars dipped in worthless crap while getting high off of worthless crap. Before you know it the worthless crap start rival gangs of worthless crap and doing drive by's. To promote their worthless crap ideas they start to go to music studios and produce what they consider is art but in fact is just worthless crap with a dance beat. Innocent people are in constant danger of being attacked by the worthless crap just by walking down the street. Inevitably or should I say luckily someone without enough worthless crap comes along and wants your surplus worthless crap thus keeping the "worthless crap" at a level that is in balance with nature. I have to say. I wont be one of those people that has a room or a downstairs made for storing such items. Nope. Its just not safe to do it anymore. Wont do it.....eh...ever again that is.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RAEANN!

Happy 6th Birthday to my little girl! Now...quit growing up!

Pictures of her birthday madness will be up sometime in the next week.

Cardinals Win!

Dad got 4 tickets to the Cards vs. Astros game on Sunday for Taylor, me, mom and himself. Taylor got to see his first "live" Pujols homer last weekend. He also got to see Glaus's first homer as a Cardinal. Another first for both of us was that we got to see our first fight at a baseball game. Apparently the pitcher of the Astro's fed Molina some unappreciated chin music. He was about to storm the mound and as both teams cleared the dugouts the fight was stopped. The Cardinals won the game so we celebrated by tearing through some White Castle!

Things to do in Colorado starting in the spring:

For those fishermen out there: Blue Mesa Fishing Tournament (May 2nd - 4th). I hear their is going to be a Grand Prize of some sort and I don't believe there is a cost involved.

Cinco de Mayo Funfest (May 2nd - May 4th). Sounds like you can try some of the local food favorites and home made salsa and there is even a jalapeno shoot out contest!

Downtown Art & Jazz festival (May 8th - 11th) Jazz and Blues? No need to say anymore.

Spring Barrel Tasting in Grand Junction (May 17th - 18th) For the Wine tasters in ourselves.

Got my license!

I got to tell ya, I haven't had that much fun in a long time. I finished second in my class and the trainers said that after a year of practice, they want me to put my application in for trainer because they can tell already that I should have been on a bike a long time ago. That makes ya feel pretty darn good coming from someone that trains close to 800 people in a year. It was a pretty wild trip but Chris and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Friday night, we headed down to Warrensburg for our motorcycle training. When we got there we stopped off at a motel we booked earlier in the week. It was called the "Belmont". As we opened the door to our room, we first noticed the stale smell that permeated the entire room. It was in pretty bad shape. Our beds looked as though they had just been slept in and the only light in the room came from two light bulbs dangling from the middle of the room one of which was burnt out. The bathroom was horrendous! It had crap stains on the underseat of the toilet lid and the shower looked as though it was last used by an oily muddy and moldy hairy sumo wrestler. Needless to say we had our concerns. We both decided to stay the night cuz the room was so darn cheap...less than half of the next step up. As we got back from our first night of training at about 10:30 pm, we arrived just in time to see that the room next to us was rented out to two dirty bottom dwellers one with his shirt off smoking outside his non smoking room with the door open and the other leaning up against his trashy truck drunk off his butt. We both decided to skip a shower due to the fact that I couldn't remember how long it had been since my last tetanus shot and we put our coats over top our beds to lay on as getting into the covers was not an option. The neighbors started yelling, punching walls, fighting, crying, telling each other they loved each other, more fighting and yelling around 11:00 pm. It almost reminded me of my current neighbors at my real home. At around 2:30 AM a gunshot was heard that sounded as though it was shot in our own room. Chris and I bounced up and realized that the noise came from the room next door. Honestly, I was hoping that one or the other ended it for themselves due to the fact that I needed my sleep badly. About 10 minutes later I heard "PUT YOUR HANDS UP!" coming from outside my door. Realizing that the cops were there I turned on my lights as to not make them any more suspicious then they already were. They knocked on my door and asked if we were ok..with hand gun and M16 drawn. We opened the door and advised them of what we heard and wrote a statement for the local PD. Come to find out, the neighbors fired 2 shots that night...one about 10 feet from where I was sleeping on the other side of my wall into the ceiling. Long story short...the next morning we got our money back...booked a new room in the Holiday Inn (which was awesome!) and got the hell out of there. As for the motorcycle training coarse...it was a blast. Even though we got about 45 minutes of sleep the night before I have not had that much fun in a long time. My next goal...to get me a bike. I already have one in mind. Its a Honda Shadow Aero.

Beautiful bike eh? Nice starter bike. Its a 750 and has that cool throwback look. I will probably get it in black and white but red is kinda working for me too. I learned on a 08 Honda Nighthawk like the one below. It was a 250 and they advised that I get a 750 or an 1100 at least due to the fact that they think I would regret such a small engine on the Nighthawk.

Don't know, but I wont wait long. It will be nice to get from home to work on this thing when the weather is nice. If I get one before I move to Colorado...Ill have to drive it out there...cuz...well just cuz! Time to stock up on skull caps and chaps...and oh yes...my goatee will be back sooner rather than later! I have come up with a biker gang name....the Belmont Brawlers! To get in you must weather one night in the Belmont motel. Trust me..if you can do that..even the Hells Angels will show you respect..lol!

-Thanks for the comment Mike...here is the Yamaha V-Star Classic you were talking about...it is now officially on my (wish) list. Any other advise is always welcome!

Taylor's School Cardinal Game

Taylor got to go to a St. Louis Cardinals game for a school trip yesterday and he brought along his mom. I would have loved to go, but Deidra deserved it more than I did. She's been working her butt off. As for as the trip, I hear they had a great time! The Cardinals won which for me is cool. Of coarse if the Rocks would have won I would not have been too mad. I will always have loyalty to the Cards. They were my team of choice as a kid and always will be my team. Ever since the Rocks came about I can't help but cheer for them as well but when It comes to which one I am loyal too...the Cards baby! "I'm sold on St. Louis...I'M SOLD!" If you don't know what I meant by that..then you have not been a fan for as long as I.

Deidra took a pic by the Arch to show how the flood waters have risen. That is the Mighty Mississippi creeping illegally onto a No Parking spot! I tell ya...Mother Nature has no respect for the local laws!

As for me...here I am again...drinking my morning coffee..blogging. I love it. This weekend a buddy from work and I will be taking the MMSP motorcycle safety program in Warrensburg to get our motorcycle license. Always wanted to have one...now I'm getting one. Turns out gas prices can revert a grown man into thinking like a young man. It is an all weekend program. We leave tonight after work and wont get back until Sunday afternoon. Don't worry Ill be careful. I can just see Chris and I riding away from the coarse on our test bike now...both with shiny new licenses..........

(...Wha?..where?...*snort*...uh..sorry..just daydreaming.)