Update

So, for the past year I and several of my neighbors have had some problems with our newest neighbor in our complex.  Two years agoish the owner was having one of several apartments fixed up and thought it would a wonderful idea to rent out his worst apartment to the kid of the contractor.  So suddenly we have a 20 year old in our old fogie complex who does not give a fuck.  And what I mean by does not give a fuck, is he's 20 year old Bro, who is loud, obnoxious and a complete and utter sack of shit.  Soon after he moved in I went out to get something from my garage to find an unknown car parked in front of it.  Oddly enough dumbass shows up and I ask him if he knows who's car this is as it is blocking my garage to which dumbass replies with a big shit eating grin "I know not to park my car in the driveway".   Oh, so you do know who owns this and you're badly trying to bullshit your way from answering said question.  OK dumbass, I know I can trust you.

So over the next year he throw's little shindigs  with his loud and obnoxious friends and slowly pisses off most of the neighbors in the complex.  He's also contracted to do some work on various parts of the complex and either does a shitty job or never really get's around to it.  Great, worst of all he slowly starts to use the old driveway as his personal parking space, which is right next to my apartment.  Fuck I love a drunk dumbass at 2am waking me up on a semi regular basis.  Worst of all, other neighbors start to use the driveway as parking lot too since owner doesn't appear to be doing shit about bro in back.  So I start making my own complaints about the driveway  and about 4 months ago I find a unknown car parked in driveway on a sunday morning with the engine running.  Going outside I find no one around, so I reach in and turn the car off for the obvious reason of I fucking love having exhaust emptied into my apartment.  Ten minutes later he outside and yelling at the top of his lungs at another neighbor about it so I exit my apartment and calmly tell him I came out 10 minutes ago to find an unknown car outside my apartment dumping exhaust into my apartment and that simply turned said car off.  He then yelled at me not to touch his fucking car again and I should come and get him if I have problem with said car.  To which I calmly told him that I didn't know whose car it was and that even if I did know that I wasn't his mother and wasn't going to fetch him when he illegally parks in the driveway and dumps exhaust into my apartment. 

And of  course he again starts yelling at the top of his lungs in thinly veiled threats about touching his car and how he's doing work on one of the buildings and needed to go get supplies to do his work.  Being the smart ass I am I am I simply replied when did 5 minutes of setting of ladder this morning, leaving it out most of the day unattended constitute work these days?  Yes, I was purposely trying to push some buttons and letting him know that he couldn't bully me either.  Stupefied by me not backing down he yelled not to touch his fucking car again and put his car on the street like most of us do.  Later that evening I went to move my own car and found the door had been keyed.  Great, fucking great, so since said incident I've been parking my car a few blocks away, taking photos of the various cars in the driveway and reporting him to the owner on a weekly basis.  Berkeley rent laws though pretty much are going to protect him though so I know I'm in for a long hassled filled shit of a time with the dumbass. 

So I should say that the owner actually hates the kid at this point and I point out that if you stop hiring him to do shit work around the complex he's likely to not make rent in the near future, so no work for dumbass for the last few weeks, but best or worst of all was last week, and here's what I know. So two weekends ago I get a knock on the door from the owner and tells me that the dumbass in back was arrested during the week and to give him a call of the kid shows up on the property.  it turned out that his latest girlfriend swore out complaint that he smacked her around, so the Berkeley cops came by looking for him and when they couldn't find simply sat down in our garden to wait for him.  It turns out he was hiding in his apartment and after a few hours he tried making a run for it.  Fuck, I would have paid money to watch the Berkeley's finest cuff the fucker.  So off to jail for the dumbass.  The owner tells me that he's been evicted and his family would be coming by this week to get his shit out of the apartment.  So yesterday morning I leave for work but the chain on bicycle fowls up and I head back to the apartment to fix it, only to find my young friend parked next to my apartment filling his car up with shit.  I stared at him for a moment then burst out laughing as he turned to greet me with the most forlorn look on his face.  Good bye and good riddance.

Portlandia: Season 6

Just finished episode 5 and this season has been pure snooze fest.  I haven't laughed once and it lacks pretty much any sense of humor.  Oy Vay, it's really just the same shit, but with even less writing then the previous years.  Apparently On February 10, 2015, the series was renewed for an additional two seasons, so it appears that Portlandia will be with us for at least one more season, shit, that's 2 seasons too many.

New Point Break

Well, I knew this redo of a turd of a film wasn't going to be good, but holy fucking shit was this uber turd of a film.  Do not waste your time on it in any way shape or form.

This Politcal Season

OK, it's been a while.  Sorry.

So, it's presidential circus time again and i have to say it, I am ready for it end.  While most people know that I am very politically minded, my fuse this time around has become very short and I find myself following (not unfriending) almost everyone I know.  I have also been very sparse in posting anything political to my own timeline, I do find myself wanting to comment to both my right wing friends and to left of center friends who currently hate Hillery.  But when I do, I can only muster sanctimonious blah, I can't find myself raising above it and finding clear and present words for me, or for what friends I have.  I think I tend to make things worse.  So  anyway .  . .

Trump - at the start of the primaries, I told a right wing friend of mine that I really didn't know who I would vote for, but I knew categorically that I could never ever support two candidates , these being Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.  One, I simply do not like either one of them, and second I do find myself agreeing on anything they are for or support.  Both of them seem incapable of telling the truth. They both strike me as sociopaths.  Now that Trump has the Republican nomination, I categorically know who I am not voting for.  Period.

Hillery - Now, this isn't such a  straight arrow thing for me.  First, I am not a fan of the Bill years, I don't hate him or even many of policies.  I understood when we elected him back in 1992 that he as "center" democrat and never failed me here.  Where he did fail me was who and how he handle judicial nominations.  Basically speaking he flubbed them and completely caved to the right on the issue.  Judicial nominations are super important and pretty much moved the federal court as a whole to the right, when he didn't have too, it was just politically expedient for him.  During the 90's I was generally a fan of Hillery, she was obviously to the left of Bill and she hit me as smarter then Bill, not nearly as charismatic, but definitely smarter then Bill.  Anyway, move forward 20 years and I still have a very mixed opinion.  In many respects I'd like to vote for her, but to be honest she is less than stellar and is her own worst enemy.  I can totally understand why many left of center folks are still not backing her.  But at the same time, many of them are going on feeling and not fact.  Not all of the problems with the current DNC go back go her (primary voting irregularities for instance) .  For instance the DNC email/Wikileaks debacle comes to mind.  I've read quite a lot on this and varying opinion pieces too, best yet is that you can go and actually search and find the damning emails in question and make up your mind.  The thing is, most of leftie-hate-hillery friends have not gone this far.  Don't get me wrong, the DNC fucked up and did do a number things during the primary that they shouldn't have, but whole sale fraud that we've been sold on concerning the DNC email debacle isn't quite horror show it's been made out to be.  I really really suggest folks read and do their own work here.  But I will state, even with the DNC shenanigans, I do not think he would have won the primary.  The Voter poll problems (think Arizona, Brooklyn and other state fiasco primaries where folks were kicked of voter roster) for instance were not national DNC's fault, the DNC emails actually show how surprised and pissed off they were to find many of these out (especially the Arizona primary).  But at the same time, the DNC really did fuck itself over here and Hillery too.  As such I am having a very hard time actually wanting to get myself to vote for her this time around. For such a smart person, she can at times be her worst enemy (to say the least).

Anyway, this is more then I should post these days.  Happy August!

Anyway, that has been my soar thumb issue within an issue here

The Break

OK kids, so it's been a while since I posted here. So the good, the bad and boring the boring of what's been up.

First, work (good). I think I posted few months back about starting a new job at local university up here. My days and hours a kept me busy and after 6 months I had my first review and my bosses are very happy with my work. So happy I'm writing and posting this from work! I also just received 30% off classes BAVG and should be taking a few classes this summer on my job's dime, which should make happy on the job front. On another good note, my stress levels are lowest they have been in over a decade. Which is really really good.

Bad: I'm only half done with that lambretta engine video and over the 3 of the last 4 weekends I rebuilt my vespa rally engine, badly. Ugh. I hate scooters. I ended up dropping it off at Ptown scooters last weekend so Patrick will eventually fix what I can not. Ugh

The Boring: So last weekend I was in Portland for Spring Scoot scooter rally. I was reminded of a few things. Mostly I hate socializing and I'm boring. OK, that makes little to no sense, so maybe I need to write this out a wee bit. So since moving to the bay area, I don't socialize as much as I did when I lived in portland. Even when I lived in Portland, I didn't always socialize that much mainly because of the stress of working 40+ hours a week and trying to do grad school and then on top of that stupid family drama. But since moving here I socialize as a whole, less then I did or ever did, and when I do, I prefer to keep socializing to an 1-3 hours at a time. Then I need to not socialize. I'm not sure of the why or extent of it either. But after more then 3 hours I socially shut down. I don't want to talk, I don't want to get close either. I turn into bah humbug and get off my lawn.

Now I don't hate people or anything like that, but as I've been getting older and socializing less, letting people in and closer to me has become harder and harder for me to do. To the extent that it's completely flat lined my dating life. When I first moved here dating was actually easy and I dated quite a bit. But over the last 2 years I've really curtailed my dating all together. At first I thought it was because I just wasn't meeting anyone I liked. Nope, that wasn't it. Then I thought it was because quality of who I have been meeting, and no, that's obviously not it either. It's me, it's totally me, and it's me. I've slowly withdrawn and stopped caring about stuff like this. I don't and won't let myself get close. Which over the last weekend of a LOT of socializing was apparent. I barely talked at length about anything relevant this weekend. I shared nothing of a personal nature, but I also didn't ask anyone of a personal nature about themselves either. I was unsocial to say the least, even though I was among my people to so to say, I placed myself outside of it and just observed it.

So that's it for the moment. Hopefully I'll have some photos and what little story I have of last weekend to post in week too

Portland

I know, I'm not remotely done with posting about going to Arizona, but Xmass is almost amung us and this is fresher in my little mind at the moment, so here goes

Over the USS Hornet

Because of the new job I'm without any vacation or sick time at the moments, so heading up to Portland for thanksgiving meant that I'd have to leave on Thanksgiving this time around. Oddly enough the Oakland airport was rather sparce and stared off with no one in line ahead of me to get into the terminal. That didn't stop TSA from over searching my bag and chemical testing the wrapped charizo I had in my bag. I brought it along so I could make breakfast pasta for the family the next day. The flight up was aboard a turbo prop plane that seated about 40 folks, and I was happy to find that I wouldn't have share my seat for the trip too. The skies were rather clear so I was also able to snap a few photos along the way.

Over Mount Shasta

Over Crater Lake

Dinner with the rents and family went fine, for the first time in years I stayed home and didn't go over or out to see friends after dinner. I mainly hit the internet and started looking for places to go hiking the next day. For msot of time living in Oregon, I rarely crossed the Columbia, so this time around I looked north for a place to hike the next day. So after sleeping in a bit I got up the next day went about making breakfast for the rents. I made version of breakfast pasta (AKA Carbonara), but instead of prescuto, I used charizo I brought up with me. It was different, but wonderful none the less. Afterwards I got into my stinky smelly rental car and headed up north along the 5. This time around I found 2 places to hike both on the south side of Mount St Heleans, the first was called the Ape caves, the second hike was to be in Lava Canyon. After hitting the bottom of the mountain getting away from the river it tunrs out that this area had some snow recently, but it was clear sailing to my first stop. Climbing down into a lava cave was rather easy, at the bottom of the stairs the passageway split into two. One was marked as easy, the second as moderate hike.

A few years earlier I had explored similar caves in california and thought I knew what I was doing, so I chose the later "moderate" rout into the mountain. The trip was about 3 miles underground, with about a dozen semi cave ins along the way (a cave in meaning you'll have to climb and over quite a number of rocks and boulders in order to move forward). About a mile in I found myself looking up a 8 foot wall, at this point the whole moderate hike was pretty much in the toilet and I tried my hands and climbing in the near dark, up wet rocks and almost found myself tumbling back down. At this poiint I couldn't move forward so started to climb back over the rock dree I had passed before my impass. At this point I got lucky, and 20 something couple was at the bottom of the rock pile and starting to climb up. I told them of the impasss and they were nice enough to help me up said wall. I kept up with the couple for another half mile or so, but being old and fat I really found myself not being able to keep up and thanked them for the help and bid them adu. About a half hour later of shuffling over rocks in the near dark I finally came to the of the hike and was happy to see sunlight again.

Out of the hole

The Hike back

Climbing out revealed that I was back up the mountain and had passed into area of frosted snow upon the first around me. It was a rather nice and brisk walk back to the parking lot at this point and I was hppy to get back as I hungry and wanted to store up the backpack I brought along too before starting the second hike about 5 miles away. Unfortunately the drive over to Lava Canyon was a bust as the road had far more snow on it then expected. I actually ended up driving the car sideways at one point as the road was frosted up more then I should have been driving on at the time. So I had to abandon hike number two for the day and headed back to portland in smelliest car I had ever rented (I actually had to keep the rear windows partially open so I could breath).

The only hole and light during my hike

Friday night was spent with a few friends at a local dive bar, which was rather nice oddly enough. The bartender was pretty nice and generous with us to say the least. Though I wasn't up for that much drinking. Around 10 I bid adu and headed back to the rents for a nice long shower. Saturday was spent trying to find jewler who could fix an old watch of mine. I hit up 3 different places and all them said it would be too expensive and time consuming to do the fix in quesiton (broken crown). Oh well, the restof the day was spent helping my mon do her weekly shoping at a fe places so I my sister wouldn't have to deal with it. That night was dinner out with family. Sunday was rather bland and I tried stopping by my favorite german deli, only to find it closed on a sunday. Ugh, so no frozen sausage came back with me that afternoon to Oakland. Oh well. After all it was still a nice tight trip to say the least.

The Rent's cat trying to ignore me

Birthday and Xmass

If you're inclined to exchange presents with me this year for my upcoming birthday and Xmass, here is what I'm looking for . . .

In Who's Name - book Birth/Naitre/Die Geburt: Photographs of Magnum Photos/Photographies De Magnum Photos/Fotografien Von Magnum Photos Magnum Opus - book paperback In Our Time - book Magnum Story - book reading Magnum - book Magnum Magnum - book Kubrick Archive - book Kubrick A Life in Pictures - book