Not much else to say here....

Like many others, I'm positive that Scott Adam' works in my office.

For those of you who have your own "pointy-haired Boss"!

BK....

I was going through some photos (lots of them actually with my new Flickr site),
and found some pictures of BK.
BK was my cat. I got him as a 9 month old kitten from a neighbor who had to
give him up. I had him for almost 10 years before he got dreadfully sick and we
had to put him to sleep late last year. He was with me through the good times and
the bad. He didn't judge, he knew how to be a comfort, he had a great personality.

He was my friend....

Rough seas....

The carrier is the USS Kitty Hawk, based in Yokosuka , Japan . The "Hawk"
was underway for CQ (Airwing Carrier Qualifications) in the Sea of Japan during
the week of March 22, 2008.

When your watching this, keep in mind that the carrier's flight deck is approx. 60'
above the ship's normal water line. And it weighs in right around 90,000 tons
(that would be in excess of 180,000,000 lbs. - yes, 180 MILLION!!)

The chopper seen on the ship's bow, tied down at helo Spot 2, is a Sikorsky SH-60F.
The pilot had just landed on deck, and his helo was tied down on Spot 2 because
the seas were too rough to move it to a safer place. Fortunately, it only suffered
some minor damage (blade crutch support socket) and a lot of salt water intrusion
from the sea...

What happened???

Wow, it's been a whole week.... not quite sure how that happened...

Maybe I've just got a boring life?? Or just too much stuff going on? Yeah,
I'll go with that one. Home computer's been down because I'm remodeling my office -
but with the new storage space and the larger work area, I'll be able to work on my
photo projects a lot more efficiently and quickly (yeah, right...). Some construction
projects this weekend - a new floor for a neighbor and cabinets in Joan's office.
Caught the new Indiana Jones movie earlier this week, and while I'm not as negative
on it as my friend Marty ( http://renzntzman.blogspot.com/ ), I thought it was a little
too long and a little on the weak side. "Hellboy 2" looked good from the previews,
and "Hancock" looks like it could be good as well. Something to look forward to.

A race fans favorite weekend...

As a racing fan, this is probably my favorite weekend of the year. And
with a big screen, a DVR, and a REALLY understanding wife, I'll get
to watch even more of it (it's gonna be hard to top last year - I watched
the Monaco GP while standing in one of the garages at Indianapolis - with
some ex-Williams team guys).

Friday there's the Indy Lights - a family friend owns AFS Racing and has
2 cars in the Freedom 100. Saturday there's the Craftsman Trucks and the
Nationwide cars, Sunday is the Monaco F1 race, Indy, and
World 600 Nascar race, and the Rolex GT guys from Lime Rock on Monday.

Maybe Indy and Nascar will figure out a way to time the starts so that
somebody can try the double again-makes sense from a TV standpoint if
nothing else. Cross pollination of demographics, etc.

And our own car to get ready for the Historics over the 4th of July....
Man, I love this time of year.

Nostalgia....

Found this in one of my photo archives.... built it from bits and
pieces salvaged from various junkyards... It was a great truck - got
HORRIBLE mileage (maybe 8mpg), but it was the right vehicle for
me at the time....
And I will be building another one... ;-)

No words necessary....

How our kitten "Pit Stop" sees himself......

Busy few days....

So I broke one of my vows about trying to blog something everyday-
and it appears that I've failed miserably ;-)

Last Tuesday (the 6th) was a great day - spent all day out at the
racetrack going through a high performance driving school with
Proformance Racing (http://www.proformanceracingschool.com/).
It was a gift from Jeff- the owner of the race car I maintain.
High speed braking and avoidance maneuvers, and instruction in
the correct line around the track, and extended lapping time with an
instructor in the car - It was a blast.
Now, since my daily driver is a pickup truck, I used one of the school
cars. There was a photographer there - here's a shot, and I've ordered
up some more. they'll look good on the wall with the diploma -
(http://www.redmistphoto.com/gallery/4881487_Gp5ZC#291117806_kLip4)

Other than that, finished another photography project for our church
for Pentecost, did a little work around the house, put in a new front door
for a friend of ours - her house got broken into this past Friday night...
Did some more work on the race car over the weekend - we've gotten the
body panels back from the painters, and are just scrounging up a couple of
more bits for the suspension, then it goes back together for this weekend.

And if the weather holds, I might even get one (or both!) of the vehicles
washed after work....

Finally.....

Well, it appears that the nice weather is finally here. Still rainy
on Saturday, but it looks like the sunshine we got on Sunday is
going to stick around for a while..... 'bout time!
Quiet couple of days - grilled steak outside last night, went to see
"Iron Man" with Marty and Sarah on Saturday night, got some
projects around the house done. Just waiting to get the race car parts
back from the painters, then start reassembling it for our next race.
All in all.... life's pretty good right now.....

And now for something completely different...

So it's the first Thursday in May, and while I'd love to go review yet more craptacular art, it would appear that all the dispossessed and impoverished workers of Seattle, will be marching through downtown to celebrate that most American of holidays.... May Day. Yes, brought to you by the same folks who protested the WTO and demanded free trade and equal wages for Guatemalan Nike workers while wearing their $300.00 tennis shoes... downtown Seattle will be a parking lot for several hours tonight.
I, on the other hand, will be taking myself down to Renton to go work on the race car, thus sparing myself the several hours trapped on a bus with 50 other sweaty, pissed off people just trying to get home.

Dont touch that dial!!

So.... there's nothing wrong with your screen. You haven't gone back in time to this past winter.... This is this past weekend here in the part of Seattle that I live in. We're about 30 miles north of downtown Seattle... due north, not inland near the mountains or anything like that....
8" of snow in the driveway... snowed most of Friday afternoon and evening and part of Saturday morning. The plants are seriously confused, the frogs that live in the stream behind are seriously out of sorts, and I am just so over this weather... We went racing this past weekend - the tracks about 50 miles south of where these pic's were taken... and yes, we had just about every kind of weather there as well. I'll put those up a little later...

New Americans....

84 people from 31 different countries....

That's how many people became US citizens at the swearing in
ceremony that Joan and I went to yesterday.

Think about that for a minute... For all of the bad and horrible
things that others around the world (and some here in our
own country) love to say about us, for all of the things that
we're blamed for around the world, there sure are a lot of
people that want to come here, and leave their old country
behind. Multiply that number from here in Seattle by
however many Immigration offices are around the country
doing the same thing.

Take some time - go and see one of the ceremonies. I think
you'll be moved by the emotions and the reactions of these
new Americans.

Congratulations again to our neighbor Nina (from Lebanon).

Welcome to the United States!!

Too much fun....

Wow.... what a weekend. Saturday I hit the big five-oh (I know, hard to imagine the handsome guy kneeling on the starting line of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is 50... goes to show what good genes and clean livin' can do!!)

So - my lovely wife Joan decided to throw a party - catered Mexican food, about 50 friends, and a live band (many heartfelt thanks to Midlife Chrysler and their new lead singer Marty Gordon (http://renzntzman.blogspot.com/) ) - this was their first gig, and they were great! Joan got to sing with them on the Beatles song "Birthday" - and she sounded better than ever as well. There were friends from church, from work, from racing. My folks flew up from San Diego (and Mom did bring several years worth of embarrassing photos to share with all). It was the best birthday party I've ever had. Thank God I've got a few years to work on Joans 50th.... So how does one get in contact with the USC Marching Band.... and do they do parties??

Missed a day...

Had the day off from work yesterday... my folks are in town for a big party Joan is throwing, so there was a lot of running around and general hangin' out. And the weather cooperated - it was a perfect spring day. Today is supposed to be even nicer - highs in the upper 60's or low 70's. Course it's going to start raining again Monday, but for once it all worked out with the weather and the weekend coinciding (if you live in the Northwest you know how rare that is.....)

General grumpiness....

Busy day at the office today... I had a rant about air travel all ready to go (my folks flew into town last night... When did we
all start accepting that flights were just gonna be late, crowded, and be just like big flying buses??). I'm old enough to remember when (and flew on) airplanes with propellers instead of jet engines, and people actually got dressed up to go on a flight. Of course, my wife (too young by far) says that "they don't fly Pterodactyls anymore, now quit yer bitchin, and pass me that complimentary bag of peanuts ....

Off track again..... looks like I got a mini-rant in any way....