Oo oo oo!!!!

Henry Rollins to appear on Sons of Anarchy!!!

Yeah Baby! Two of my favorite things. I've followed Henry Rollins for years, huge fan of everything he does. Have an original Black Flag album, Damaged, on vinyl, from SST records. Have tons of his music in MP3 form, some covers, some Rollins Band, a book, spoken word cd, I've seen him perform his spoken word three times locally here in Dallas. And on FX network Sons of Anarchy. Not a big TV guy, a few shows, Sopranos, other than that the primary regular shows are news and sports, but I did catch every episode of SoA in their first season.

I'm pumped and can't wait!

LA State Rally

This was the first time I have been to the Louisiana State HOG Rally and I must say I enjoyed it greatly. This year it was in Shreveport so it was almost too convenient to miss, just a short 200 miles. We left mid-afternoon Friday and took interstate the whole way, getting in around 6:30 pm. Thanks to Kim and Glen once again for putting up with us and sharing a room for the weekend.

We hung around Saturday, toured the rally site, went to the dealers and didn't do any rides this time around. Although there were a few to do including a Bonnie and Clyde ride that would have been pretty cool.

Relatively early night Saturday night and a good early trip home today got us in before noon for breakfast with the boys. The wind was picking up and we got a bit the last hour or so, but the first hour was awesome with a clear sky and low sunlight at our back.

We ran into several other Eagles and hung out at the concert Saturday night for a bit.

Two words of wisdom. Don't drink Margarita's in Styrofoam cups (I think the alcohol causes the petrochemicals to leach out and cause slight poisoning.... Really) and don't eat a Funnel Cake around Darlene.

Here's some shots from the weekend, including an awesome totally chromed bike and other sights.

Musica Musica

I have Sirius satellite radio in my Truck. For music I usually listen to Faction (think action sports - mix of rock, alternative, punk and hip-hop) and sometimes spin the dial. In mornings when I drive my truck instead of my bike to work I usually listen to Howard Stern. Tonight on the way home from my hockey game (yet another loss, although not nearly as heartbreaking as the loss last night 0.5 seconds left....) I was spinning and stopped on Boneyard. Boneyard is not my favorite station by any means as it was the replacement for the Punk Channel, which was my former favorite... Anyway, some song caught my attention so I stopped. Then the next song came on and it really caught me off guard. Not so much the song but the band. Can you believe it, it was April Wine. Maybe most of my Texas friends won't recognize, but any of you Canadians out there, who grew up in the 70's are familiar with April Wine. I would have been less surprised with Loverboy, but would have been totally blown away if it was Max Webster!

All things must pass however as I stopped to get gas, music had moved on to AC/DC and when I started up again, uggg, it was Def Leppard. Sorry, not a fan, spin the dial back to Faction, no good, couple more spins and land on Underground Garage, playing the very classic Velvet Underground - I'm waiting on my man. Redemption!

Completion

All these weekends working on renovations are finally starting to pay off. This weekend we put on about 2.5 gallons of paint in the main entranceway and hallway. And we finished the French doors! Well there may be a bit of finish work on the trim but essentially they are complete. So in honor I am going to post a couple of picture of some of the work we have finished.

Here are a couple of shots as we were moving in.
Entranceway, which shows the landing, the "arch" into the living room, and the three teirs on the stairwell.





Some in progress shots. Note archway had been completed by this time, and you can see that the wall on the top tier of the stairwell has been extended to the ceiling.




Here is the finished French Door view. The paint colors are a bit off in these pictures, a mix of many different lighting, including natural, incandescent and flash, sorry about that.




Here is our game room "kitchenor" (hint - Bachelor). We don't really have a before shot but its at the top of the steps built in behind the extended wall where the third tier of the stairwell was.



I don't have a before shot of Ryan's bathroom, but this is the boys bathroom when we moved in which is basically a mirror image.


And the after shots.




We have had several other projects, some small, some not so small, and many more still on the list. Here is the early shots of our backyard, before pool and fence, when there were trees where the pool is.





And a very recent backyard shot which shows the pool, the fence and the shed.

Brrrrr....

What a crazy, if not typical bout of Texas weather. Last weekend was working outside in shorts, temps over 80F, I actually had to put the A/C on for a couple of short spells to cool off the house so everyone could sleep comfortably. We've practically been in a drought so far in 2009, then as of yesterday, the temperature drops to below 40 for the high and we get about 3.5 inches of much needed rain in 24 hours. I had to switch the thermostat back to heat as it cooled off so much. Forecast for the next couple of days is continued cold and wet, then back to seasonal temps.

Last weekend was our chapter meeting and we had a huge turnout. We were awarding our long flyer patches in commemoration of our chapter riding in excess of 2 million miles in 2008. Here is a copy of the patch.



We had a rather large support group from the Panther Creek Chapter in Allen come out and recognize us on this milestone.

Also a bit of excitement, one of our good friends, Doug "Mini-T" Hull is in contention for a spot on the next season of America's Biggest Loser. For those unfamiliar with the show its essentially a televised weight loss competition. Doug is in the third stage of "auditions" and was taking a video of his activities and his support group, which is of course his extended family. So for the video Darlene panned the rather boisterous group of about 100 or so. I think it certainly will provide the impact desired.