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Butterfly Garden, Minnesota Zoo June 30th, 2004

Google Ads

I just have to add that my Google ads over on the right side of the page have been a little disgusting lately. Just because I talked about the Stinky Old Guy, the google ads insist on trying to sell Enzara™ just incase you are starting to have a fishy odor coming from your taco.

Misc Update

Aimee & I drove up to south Minneapolis to pick up a free Comanche pick-up topper. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. I might sell it on eBay or sell it to my Grandfather who owns a Comanche. I know what you are thinking, "What an asshole, he gets a topper for free and sells it to a family member.". My Grandfather lives in IN so I'm not going to haul it all the way out there for free. The topper is in good shape. It's nothing special because it just one of those aluminum toppers and it does have some hail damage on top. I will have to take some measurements because I'm sure it will fit on some rangers or s10's pick-ups.

I was able to weigh myself last night and it appears I have lost roughly 12lbs. I am now down to 220lbs with another 20lbs to go. The first couple weeks of the diet were pretty tough because you had to figure out what you can and can not eat. It's just a change in lifestyle.

For example Chipotle: I used to get a chicken burrito with rice, sour cream, hot sauce, cheese & lettuce. That's 1062 calories & 101g of carbs! Now I just get a burrito bol with extra chicken, sour cream, hot sauce, cheese & extra lettuce to make it more of a taco salad. That's 700 calories & 7g of carbs.
Chipotle Nutrition Calculator

I've also been trying to get more fruits and veggies in my diet which is hard because you constantly have to go to the grocery store to buy more fresh products.

As you can see below I have been posting some pictures. I'm going to just post some random pictures every couple days just to spice up the blog.

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Paris Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas Oct. 29th 2005

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Sedona AZ in June of 2005

Stinky Old Guy

Dammit! The stinky old guy sat behind me again on the bus. He smells like cigarette smoke, body odor & coffee all in one ugly old man package. He resembles Roberts Blossom's character Marley in Home Alone but with some sweet Payless velcro shoes. Stinky old guy is at least 6'3" tall but he insists to sit in the normal bus seats instead of sitting in the side seats where your have all the leg room you want so this results in his knee being forced into the seat which turns into the worst lumbar support for my back. Then I end up leaning forward so my back is not on the seat.

Living Things - Ahead Of The Lions

From the first song Bombs Below to the last song I Wish The Best For You, this album is filled with anti-war and political messages. Even their website is very politically charged. Living Things second EP Ahead Of The Lions is one of those albums you can listen all the way through. Although the album does fizzle out towards the end I would still recommend it. Bom Bom Bom was their first single off the album and would assume you will hear more as I Owe & New Year are two more potential singles for Living Things. They sound like a mix of The Vines & The Strokes but the vocals have a little Smashmouth taste too it. The first 5 songs off the album are great but after that it starts to sound the same and just blend into one song.

Living Things has a late 60's, early 70's rockish look & sound to them. They are not the most attractive kitties in the litter. They are just another band to come out onto the scene that looks like they haven't had a hair cut since the 90's and have been addicted to drugs to give them a beautiful Nicole Ritchie skeleton figure. All I want to say is…THE 70's ARE OVER! GET A JOB YOU HIPPIES! It's all been done before with The Strokes, The Vines & The Darkness. But on the plus side I'm sure the Army Surpus stores are picking up some business because of these trendy bastards.

Bio of the Living Things:
Born and raised in the socially conservative St. Louis suburbs, brothers Lillian, Eve and Bosh Berlin began playing their ferocious brand of rock 'n' roll together almost as soon as their hands were big enough to hold instruments. In the early years, their father had a job laying carpet under the attractions at traveling carnivals and the whole family would accompany him around the country. The boys formed a three-piece -- Lillian on guitar and vocals, Eve on bass, Bosh on drums -- and spent summers gigging in parking lots next to the Ferris wheel.

Nowadays, the Bosh brothers crisscross the U.S. and Europe, opening for acts like Velvet Revolver and The Libertines in support of their debut EP Turn in Your Friends and Neighbors and their brand-new album for Jive Records, Ahead of the Lions. Lillian, the band’s singer, lyricist, guitarist and chief provocateur, took the time to share with us a list of his favorite albums. You'll see from his selections that Living Things aren't your average three-chord, garage rock revivalists.

Bass Pro Shop coming to MN

According to an article in the Star Trib, the Mall Of America is in negotiations with Bass Pro Shops to be an anchor store for the Malls 1 billion dollar expansion. 300,000 sqft of sportsman's paradise. This would kick some major ass but Gander Mountain will loose a lot of sales in the Metro area. REI will be fine since they specialize in more extreme sports.

Link to article

The Wild

I watched the Wild game last night (by myself). We have a great defense but damn we couldn't hit a broadside of a barn on offense. If Gaborik is our "best" player then we are in trouble. Where is are Jagr, Heatley, Iginla or Crosby? We have great goalies with a .914 & .928 save %. But we do not have any scorers on our team so we always loose stupid games by 1 goal. We have lost 14 games by 1 point & those games were like 1-2 or 2-3 for scores. At least if we had some good players we could tie or beat these teams for the extra points.

BTW the OLN announcers suck and their cameramen suck too.

To add a little insult to injury I accidentally broke off the caliper mount for the rear disc brakes. So...I get to go to u-pull on Sat & pull of some disc brakes off of a Crown Vic to replace my old ones. Right now the Jeep is sitting in the garage with the rear axle torn apart and it will stay that way for at least a few weeks. I have to order some new gears on Friday from Mad4WD. It appears the Detroit locker is ok. I think the bearings on the right side of the locker were not a good fit causing the locker to spin the bearings off which would cause the ring & pinion not to line up correctly.

Enough of this bad news. On the other hand my Dad & I went out to Carls lake on Saturday and I caught 7 sunfish/bluegill, 1 small walleye & 1 crappie. But my Dad got skunked that day. The fish were biting so light that we had to use some horizontal jigs. I started to use some wax worms instead of minnows during the day and it was a lot of fun catching the bluegill. It's better than not catching anything at all. I went over to Gander Mountain last night and found some awesome new jigs made by Fiskas. They are awesome little jigs made from Tungsten so they are small but heavy enough that you can feel them at the end of your line.

Some Wax worm facts: Wax worms are not made of Wax. They get there name because the larvae feed on pollen, honey in honeybee combs. In contrast to its name, the wax moth does not digest beeswax. It lives on impurities in comb and for this reason prefers to infest beeswax comb that has been used for brood rearing. Foundation is seldom bothered and only by small larvae that often die before reaching the adult stage. In capped honey, young larvae tunnel just below the cappings. This causes harvested honey to leak from packages and makes comb honey less attractive and salable. After the larvae stage they turn into a Wax Moth, also referred to as a Bee Moth.
Wax Moth Link

Jeep Problems

A couple of weeks ago I started to hear & feel this weird vibration noises coming from the rear of my Jeep. If you don't know I have a Dana 44 with 4.56 gears and a Detroit locker in the rear. On Friday I decided to investigate so I took off the rear diff cover and I find out that there are 2 teeth missing on my pinion gear. For the non-car buffs out there this is really bad. I pulled out the Detroit and took the ring gear off which would now enable me to put the Jeep in 4wd and drive it using front wheel drive. Now I have to take everything apart again and take a better look to make sure the locker is ok and if everything is ok I have to order new gears & master install kit. Then on top of that find someone that can install it. I personally think the bearings failed allowing them to slip off of the Detroit and went down from there. This really sucks.

Aimee and I went out to Carls lake fishing yesterday and we got skunked! Just a few bites but we look to the right of us and there is a guy sitting on the ice with a chair, bucket and the fishing pole in his hand just raking them in. I don't have a clue what in the hell he was using but we did not see him ever rebait his hook so I can only assume he was using some kind of plastic grub. It just pissed me off.

Mom & Dad are coming up this Friday for the weekend and Dad & I are going to go ice fishing one of the days while he is up here. I hope they don't mind not having hot water for awhile on Sat because Kirby is coming over to replace our hot water heater that day. Stupid Centex homes. (yeah you heard me James)

I have confirmed that Spring Lake sucks for ice fishing. I got out on the ice around 6:30am yesterday and sat there for 3 hours with out a single bite nor did I see anything on the vexilar. So I decided to head over to Prior Lake after and it was still slow over there. I caught a few perch and a sunny. Aimee's off tomorrow so I think we will hit Carls Lake in the afternoon for some Crappie. Also the old fish house went for $202.50 on eBay...woohoo!!

The Fresh Prince

Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith stopped by the BBY campus today or so I hear, to pormote her bands(Wicked Wisdom) new album. I guess I just missed seeing him come off the elevator heading to their SUVs. No sighting of DJ Jazzy Jeff.

Nothing much to report. Corey and I went to Carls(sp) lake Friday night. The bite was a little slow and sparatic but we ended up with 9 smaller sized crappie. Then Sat. morning we went to Fish lake and we got skunked with only a few bites. I put my old Mankato E-Z set fish house on eBay last week. It's up to $152.50 with 11 bids, 12 watchers and still 3 days left. Not bad considering I bought it for $150. I think it might get up to the $200ish by the end of the auction since everyone bids at the last second. I love eBay.

p.s. Just took Wednesday off because I maxed out on vacation hours so I'm going to head down to Spring lake for the day to do some ice fishing.

This week I kind of started a little diet. My goal is to drop 30lbs. It basically comes down to me eating right and stop eating shit (not feces...junk foods). I started out by looking at what I eat for lunch each day and figured out I go out for lunch way too much. I saw in the Sunday paper that Cub foods had 50% off Lean Cuisines so I figured I can buy a bunch of them to try them out to find out which ones I like. I'm not a big fan of veggies but I need to learn to like them so I'm trying my best. Also the best snack is Jell-O! Oh I love Jell-o! I just make a couple batches of it then put them in little separate containers to bring to work or to snack on at home. We will see how this goes. I have totally cut out soda from my diet for a couple months now and I feel much better. Water is your friend :)

Tonight I'm going to get my fish on. Not sure where I am going to go but It's not going to be Prior or Crystal lake. Corey had a few suggestions but I can't remember them off the top of my head. Then tomorrow I'll be doing some more fishing in the morning. I have to get out as much as I can this ice fishing season. I'm also going to find a weekend where I can go up to Mille Lacs for a day or two.

That's all for now.

In my attempt to be just like Pete I have added a link to my Frappr.

The New Year

I hope everyone enjoyed their new years celebration. The only tough part is going back to work after a nice 3 day weekend. Jason, Mike & I did a little fishing yesterday on Prior Lake. I had to show them how it's done :) Fishing was a little slow. You could see the little suckers down there but they were just not biting! But on the good side we were able to figure out how to fit 3 people into my new Clam 5600 ice house. We also learned not to forget the beer.