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Realization

After spending some relaxing moments admiring his work, the boy left the oasis with an optimism that the rest of the world could be brought around. He could repair his damage. As he stepped from the calm of the oasis and laid eyes on the rest of the world. It began to spin. His stomach knotted. His head grew light. The tasks ahead are formidable!

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A New Day! Let’s start the day off with a PayPa…

A New Day!

Let’s start the day off with a PayPal donation link:

This Morning

I went to bed last night with that fluttering in my lower right side just at the base of my rib cage. My heart seemed to race. I am anxious to see more progress on the house, the programming, financial stability and health insurance. I am torn between going into the office to work today and staying home to swing my shift and spend the morning fixing the dryer and the afternoon/evening programming. My gut says that won’t work.

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Magic Space

I had planned on spending the day programming and practicing juggling. Missed on both accounts. BUT I did spend the day cleaning my garage. The intent was to clean the office so that I could move one busted dryer out and move another busted dryer in. How did we end up in the garage? Well, the trash from the office has to go somewhere! The driveway had become so messy that a person could hardly walk through it. Now it is clear and the retaining has shelves to hold all the gardening suppies. That clear driveway gave me the ability to pull a bunch of stuff from the garage and in the process threw many things away! I swept then looked at the space. Took some lumber that was doing nothing (oak I think) and used some cinder blocks for some make shift shelves. Put everything back in and was left with this great vaccuum in the middle! The kids bikes should fit in the garage now!

I wish I could take the rest of this week and just clean.

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Hope

And the boy in his nakedness wandered out into the chaos. There he found a shimmering oasis but it was defiled with trash and remnants of the mobs which had come for the boy and instead took the Genie. His eyes began to tear with regret and a ray of sunshine beamed through the clouds. The boy acted upon a sudden inspiration and attacked the oasis with vigor and vim and began a cleaning frenzy. A breeze blows and the boy feels a burden begin to lift from his shoulders.

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What got me so down?

Sarah has a lock-in at the school. I went to pick her up at midnight and noted a police officer speed trapping (a practice I feel is a waste of tax payer’s money–follow anyone long enough and they are going to do something wrong). I pick up Sarah and we are having great father/daughter chat, laughs and good quality time. Turn on the blue lights to ruin the mood. Oh. Sarah is in the front seat which is a no-no at her age and she says, “Should I move?” to which I said, “no” of course. Officer comes to the car and explains that I ran a 4-way stop. It’s after midnight and the stop sign he is referring to is on a two lane road. No other cars around. He says I slowed but did not stop which I may have did a rolling stop but I put no one in harms way because there were no cars on the road! I am a victom of some young punk cop trying to fill a quota. I wouldn’t be so upset about it if I didn’t feel completely victomized.

Here’s the rub. It’s only a $15 ticket. BUT there are $83.50 pre-court charges so the total comes to $98.50. That’s the hundred dollars I needed to fix the dryer. I don’t exactly have money to be pissing away on some cop trying to make big numbers. It gets worse. TN has a point system. If you lose 12 points off your license then your license can be revoked. This fool stop sign is worth 4 points! If I am going to lose a third of the points off my license I want to be racing to some meeting that I’m late to and blatantly run some red light at a major intersection!

I am a good driver. I’m alert and have great reflexes. I drive a little fast but mostly obey all other laws (Sarah in the front seat is where I fudge). I pull over for emergency vehicles while watching others just stop in the road. I see moronic behavior go up punished on the road while I am reamed for a traffic violation at a time of night when all the rules should change anyway.

I was in such a good mood. Sarah and I were having such good talk. Cathy and I were planning on lounging in bed and sharing laughs. This moron that didn’t have the decency to let me off with a warning (which is what post-midnight at that intersection should have been) had nothing but negative effects on me. He did not make me a better or more cautious driver as I spent most of my day lead footing it in anger. I drove distracted as I kept fretting over and over the situation. My productivity today was killed because I had no energy and lost all cares and couldn’t get my mind off of how to handle this. I decided no longer to freely volunteer any time to Knoxville. That means no more free juggling shows no matter how good the cause. There was no positive to come from this but to pad the KPDs budget.

So, what do I do? On Monday do I requistion the squard car’s video tape to see how badly I did or did not run the sign? Or does that preserve evidence that otherwise would be discarded? Do I just pay the fine and watch my insurance rates go through the roof? Do I go to court and if I do what do I plead? Guilty? Not Guilty? No content? The sick thing here is even if I was innocent it still would cost me $200 or more to prove it. The police could randomly hand out false tickets and make a profit.

Why wasn’t this twit out making our city safer instead of harassing good people?

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Amy Speaks

Amy just came up to me asking for a “Hambone.” Took me a minute. She wanted a hairbow. Hair bows are pretty serious. It means that Amy is very happy. She takes them out when she is not happy. The picking of the hair bow is critical. Although her drawer contains more than a dozen she gets it in her mind that a particular bow is the one to wear and she will dig and dig and search and search until she finds just the right one. It is really a fun activity.

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Incomplete List of Broken Things

two dryers, Jeep exhaust system (could be manifold, muffler and/or catalytic converter), car tie rods (possibly cv joints), car tire, garage door, air conditioner, Sarah’s scooter, Tommy’s scooter, yard, dog’s bladder, kitchen cabinets, driveway, Noah’s ant farm, all computers, drywall, downstairs bathroom, upstairs bathroom flooring, upstairs bathroom caulk, Tommy’s bed, wood floors, Tommy’s bicycle, Sarah’s bicycle, Noah’s bicycle, DVD player, my office, fire extinguisher

My spirit.

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Yesterday I was happy

Yesterday I was high on life. Everything looked like it was going well and going to come together. Today I hate where I live, how I live and why I live.

I have a charitable event that I do on Friday Oct 8th. That ends my community support for this shit town. I understand why everyone hates Knoxville after 2 decades. I came here for college and tried to help my friends that grew up here understand that this is a great community but inevitably after 2 decades everyone gets fed up and leaves. Once retired, people come back. It’s a good place to retire because then you probably have less than 2 decades in you and can put up with the crap until you die.

I’ve had my two decades of this place. I give up!