Weekend Update

I am back, but now I am back as an Appletonian. I am sure you all missed me incredibly. I will get pictures of my new place up probably tomorrow. But here is the weekend recap. Friday night, I got some take out from Crawdaddys. Just crawtails and house rice, but I mix them up together and it is so good. Then I went over by Nate. Saturday morning I was up at 6:30 and I went and picked up some top soil and fixed my retaining walls in the backyard, the ground behind the walls settled and I have been meaning to add more dirt for three years now and just finally got to it this weekend. I then spent the rest of the day, doing other yard work, and my yard needed it since it was neglected for the last 8 months. Saturday night, I went over by my brother, Dan, to watch the Brewers get destroyed and the Detroit Lions pick yet another wide receiver in the NFL draft. Matt Millen is the best. Sunday morning I showed my house to my friend, Tammy, who will be moving in starting June. But don't worry, the Freeman party is still at my house, and then after that I will be living with Preston when I come back to Milwaukee. That can only mean trouble. I stopped by Justus Sunday afternoon. He just bought house, here he is showing me his right hand in the bathroom. After seeing Justus I took my nieces and nephew, Sarah, Jared and Erin shopping for their birthdays. I missed their parties since I was in Minnesota. Here they are outside of Toys R Us. After buying them any toy that they wanted, we stopped at McDonalds for ice cream. I guess you could say I broke my New Years Resolution, because I also had ice cream at McDonalds, but I really don't consider that fast food. Here are the kids in front of the Elvis statue at the Waukesha Rock and Roll McDonalds.
After shopping with the kids, my brother, Jon's, in laws were grilling out and invited me to stop by. After dinner, I raced my nephew's Nick and Ethan across the yard. Here they are coming in 2nd and 3rd place. You don't think I would let them beat me do you?
Later on we go a little game of bongo ball going. For those that don't know what bongo ball is, it is a pretty childish game, but then again what other kind of game would I play. The object of the game is to kick the ball straight up in the air, then let it bounce once, and then kick it straight up in the air again. You keep on doing that as long as you can. Here you can see my sister in law, Julie playing. Can you tell that she was a varsity letterman four years in a row?

Picture of the Day

Well here it is. This is the last posting from Minnesota. Don't even bother checking for new postings for another week. This picture was taken May 1st, 1999 on The Grassy Knoll in Dallas, Texas. Sugar Lips, I know that you think this is a bar, but actually The Grassy Knoll is where many experts think the second shooter who got the fatal head shot on President Kennedy was standing. As you can see, here I am pretending to be the second shooter.

The Brett Favre Game

If you have tailgated with me in the past, you probably know about the Brett Favre game. What is the Brett Favre game you ask? It is pretty simple, two people stand about 20 to 30 feet apart and you throw the football at each other as hard as possible. If you drop the pass, you have to take a drink of your beer. Or if it mutually decided upon that it was a bad pass the thrower has to take a drink of their beer. But do you know the origins of the Brett Favre game. I was up visiting Krum when we were in college. On this night Krum and his roommates were throwing a party. To get ready for the party we cleaned up the basement of their place. Once we finished cleaning Krum and I were hanging out in the basement and started throwing the football around while tapping the first beers of the night. I am sure you can see how the game got started. But as Krum and I continued playing this game prior to the party starting, Krum got the best of me and I ended up a little more drunk than I had hoped. So much so that shortly after people started showing up for the party, I decided that I couldn't handle it any more. I went into Krum's room where everyone had been throwing their coats on his bed. I climbed under all of the coats and passed out. I was out the entire party. No one could find me. At the end of the night as the last people were leaving the party I was discovered. The woke me up, and I felt great, I said to Krum "Alright let's party!" To which Krum replied "Let's party? Are you kidding? The party is over, it is 2:30 in the morning. You missed the whole thing. We had an entire sorority over here and you missed it, you moron."

Just a little update for all of my readers. I am sure you know that I am moving this week. I am turning in my cable box and modem first thing tomorrow morning. So I won't be posting any thing new until next week sometime. So if you need you fix of Rickie, I suggest checking some of archives.

Weekend Update

Friday Night I was suppose to meet up with Krum. I talked to him earlier in the day, and he said that we would meet up at his place around 7 or 7:30. I got there around 7:45 and Krum is no where to be found. I call him, no answer. While I am waiting around, I call up Borky and he says that he is with a group down town. Since I was at Krum's and the light rail station is right there, I decided to ditch Krum since he shined me and head downtown Minneapolis. I get about half way there, and Krum calls me. I told him that I would meet up with him later in the evening. I get downtown and Borky gives me somewhat questionable directions to the bar that they are at, and I end up taking the long route there, but eventually find them. At this point of the evening things aren't looking too good, I got shined by Krum and then lost walking around downtown Minneapolis. I go with Borky and company to the Melting Pot. We sit down and have a drink and then I touch base with Krum. He is going to a bar on the northwest side called Mayslacks to see a band called The Dollys. It is a Dolly Parton cover band that is playing in this blue collar bar. Borky and I have another drink with his group and then cab it over by Krum. The band was actually really good. The girls were all great singers. Then at the end of the night Borky and I cabbed it back to his place and watched Reservoir Dogs until 3 in the morning. Saturday night I went over by Browny and grilled out there, then we went to meet Krum again at a bar called The Triple Rock to see this Japanese band. They were awful. I know nothing too exciting of a weekend, but for my last weekend here in the Twin Cities I got a decent amount of stuff in and saw quite a few people. Here are some pictures from Saturday night.

Here is the band. Doreen guessed that one of their songs was called "I am getting a gun because I want to shot myself". We only stuck around for 4 or 5 songs, but they all sounded the same. They started off real slow and quiet and ended way too loud.

Me, Krum and Brown, what a bunch of dorks.Browny, Doreen and Krum.

Work work work

Nothing too exciting up here in Minnesota. I am preparing for my move to Appleton. In the event that anyone cares my new address is as follows:

Richmond Terrace
400 North Richmond Street
Unit 444 (I am guessing that is the length, just kidding)
Appleton, WI 54911

Now that you know where I live you are all welcome to come and visit. However, I heard the same thing when I moved to Minnesota, so I am not holding my breath on having too many visitors, but you people have surprised me from time to time.

I am planning on moving on Wednesday morning, and the plan was not to come back to Minnesota. Well things got screwed up last night at work. It was the acceptance testing for the bridge. I had the prime contractor, the sub contractors, the DOT and my companies top bridge engineer all on site to test the bridge out. at around 1:30 in the morning one of the four pumps that runs the bridge started acting funny and then pretty much just shut down. That halted testing and could mean that I will now be running back and forth from Appleton to Prescott on a weekly basis. It was just great timing. That pump has been workign fine without a problem for 16 years, and it decides to go last night. In case you are wondering, no we didn't make any adjustments for changes to the pumps as part of my project. It is unrelated to the work that we did. I haven't figured out how to post videos on my blog, but I do have some uninteresting video I shot last night of the bridge opening before it broke of my bridge opening. I posted it on You Tube. Here it is. It starts opening pretty slow, but once it is past the mating stage, the bridge actually moves rather fast.

Dead College Roommate

I really have no opinion on the recent tragedy in Virginia Tech. But it got me to thinking about my own death story in college. It was either my third or fourth year in college, they all blend together, plus I was in college for so long I can't remember. Anyhow, I was living up in the attic with Mark, Kevin and Todd at 2949 Murray. But Todd moved out at semester. Todd ended up getting someone to sub lease his room. And his name was Tom. Tom had his own issues, we all thought he was a manic depressive alcoholic. One time Kevin and I were hanging out having a couple beers and watching TV. The phone rang and it was for Tom and I knocked on his door and opened it at the same time to give him the phone. As I opened the door, I noticed that he was hiding a vodka bottle under his pillow. I asked him what he was doing, and he said nothing. I told him if he wanted to drink he could drink with us instead of drinking alone in his room. But he wanted to just hang out in his room. Now this is not to say that I didn't have my own binge drinking issues which technically are still to this day not fully resolved. I eventually nicknamed him "The Gimp" (a Pulp Fiction Reference) because he never left his room. Another time "The Gimp" came home from classes and actually asked for our help with his math home work. Since the three of us were all engineering majors you would think it would be easy for us to teach him. Not quite so. It was easy stuff, I think Algebra. He would ask why you do something and we would just tell him "because it is a rule, it just is." He never got it. The story I heard about "The Gimp's" death was that he tried breaking into his parent's house one weekend when they were gone. He was drunk and locked out, so he broke the bathroom window and crawled in. While he was crawling in, he managed to cut himself so badly that he ended up bleeding to death in the bath tub. A couple weeks later, his sister called and said that they were going to stop by to collect his stuff. Mark answered the phone and asked "Why? Where the hell is he?" And that is when his sister said that he died. By the way, I did not receive straight A's for the semester because my roommate died.

I was watching a little of CNN today and they were interviewing the roommates of the shooter down in Virgina Tech. I was trying to imagine what I would have said if I had been interviewed after "The Gimp" died.

Reporter: "What was Tom like?"

Me: "The Gimp? He was a drunk who never did the dishes."

By the way this is me, Mark, Kevin and Todd, with Suzanne in front.

Picture of the Day

These are some pictures that I got from my sister in law this weekend. They were taken back in January. As some of you might agree, this might be the most engineering I have done in a while. The kids are my niece and nephew, Abbigail and Josh. I had promised them that I could make a tower using all of the their building blocks and that I could make it taller than both of them. Give me something hard to do.

Antonio Freeman Party

It brings me great pleasure to announce the date of this years Antonio Freeman Party. So break out the Sharpie and mark this one on your calender. I will be supplying the beer, booze, soda, juice boxes, brats, burgers and buns. If you would like to bring a side dish, it would be appreciated.

Date: Saturday, June 2nd, 2007

Time: Anytime after 1:30 p.m.

Games will begin with the kids around 2:30 p.m.

With adult games to follow

Dinner will be served after the games hopefully around 5:00 p.m.

Where: The party will again be at my house, 127 North 78th Street, Milwaukee

Please RSVP by Friday May 25th, 2007

I will be mailing out invites later this month once I get settled in Appleton. And if I have your email address I will be sending you an evite.

Weekend Update

My trip back to Milwaukee wasn't anything too exciting. So here are the best of the pictures. This is the Bowling Team Dead Meat, comprised of my aunt, uncle, sister and brother in law. I went and had a couple drinks with them on Saturday night. They claim to be in first place in the league. My uncle Dave did have a 203 game while I was there. Nice work Sherman.Here are Nate and Elery before the baptism.

Pretty much the same picture, but you can see Julie's hand slapping Elery up side the head. Julie is one of the Godparents, but I think she has a lot to learn about being one, you aren't suppose to hit kids. She is a terrible role model.Here are all of the God Parents. I am the tall one in the back. Julie is the one if front of me who likes to hit kids, as shown in the previous picture.The happy Hardwick family. At the brunch afterwards, Nate's mom asked if we could believe that Nate is a father. I said that he is doing just fine and that he has turned the corner. The night before the baptism, I was all ready to hit the bars and Nate said "Nope, I am going to bed early." So Nate has started a new chapter in his life, the old Nate is now officially dead, joining the ranks of Old Schmidty and Old Stegall. May you rest in peace. Sunday night I went out to dinner with Chris and Rebecca, here Rebecca is trying to avoid picking up the check.Chris and Rebecca's dog, Butters, and cat Mona.

Running Out of Gas

Back in my college years, we had a group of people that were all going out. At the end of the night I decided that I would get a ride back to my parents house with Justus. Also along for the ride were, Tree, Momma and Tyler. I think on the way home we stopped at Denny s for some breakfast and then the first one to get dropped off was Tree. As we were leaving Waukesha I mentioned to Justus that maybe he should stop and get some gas. To which Justus replied, "Don't worry, I know my car, we have plenty of gas." We dropped off Tree and were on our way to Delafield when sure enough the car stops. Justus looks at me and says "You aren't going to believe this, but we are out of gas." To which I answered, "Oh I believe it, I told you it was going to happen you moron." Justus and I get out and figure that it would be a shorter walk back to Tree's place than walking to a gas station. And of course Tree is our good friend and he will help us out. It was at least a 3 mile walk and I am guessing it was somewhere around 3 in the morning. On top of all of that, I had just hurt my foot playing soccer a couple nights earlier and was walking with a pretty good limp. I do have to admit, that while my foot was killing me and I was pretty mad at Justus for running out of gas, we actually had a pretty good time joking around as we walked back to Tree's place. Tree at that time was living with his sister and brother in law. We didn't want to make a lot of noise since it was the middle of the night so we knocked on Tree's window. We told him that we ran out of gas and that we needed a ride to the gas station. Tree seemed really pissed that we were there and told us to hang on a minute. Justus and I went back to the front of the house. We heard Tree going into the garage and there was a bunch of rumbling around going on. Finally Tree comes to the front door, opens it and throws an empty gas can at us and then shuts and locks the door. Justus and I looked at each other absolutely dumb founded that Tree was not going to help us. I was so dejected. I knew that Tree wasn't going to answer the door anymore and we were screwed. I also knew that I didn't want to walk another mile to the gas station. I just sat down in the driveway. I would bet that Justus and I sat in that driveway for at least a half an hour talking before we grabbed the empty gas can and started walking to the gas station. It was probably 4:30 in the morning by the time we got to the gas station. They didn't open until 5:00 in the morning. I knew that my brother, Jon, had to work early in the morning. I thought he had to start at 6 in the morning, but it wasn't actually until 7 in the morning. Jon finally picked us up and gave us a ride back to Justus' car. I think I got home at around 7 or 7:30 in the morning. And just as a last little side note. This whole time that Justus and I were walking all over Waukesha county, Momma and Tyler we waiting back in the car. We later found out that they occupied the time by having sex in the back seat. I know that Tree is a loyal reader here. And I never really got a true explanation as to why he didn't help us out. So Tree if you could, please expand on your actions. Just writing about this story makes me realize that I still owe Tree one. Your time will come my friend.

Picture of the Day

This picture was taken on June 26, 2000 in Cleveland, Ohio. I spent a good share of that summer in Cleveland. On this particular day I was headed to see the Three Tenors. Can anyone name all three? Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and the other guy. Do you know the other guy? Anyhow, they were playing at Cleveland Browns Stadium, seen here in the background. Kind of a funny story. I went just to say I went. I planned on scalping a ticket, but couldn't find any scalpers as I was walking towards the stadium. Finally I asked a police officer, no doubt distracting him so he couldn't be arresting drunk drivers, and he actually pointed out the scalpers for me. On this day, it was hot out. I think by mid afternoon it was well over 100 degrees. I remember as I was walking around the stadium, I stopped and talked to some security guys and had them take my picture. Just after they took my picture they got a call that another person passed out. There were a bunch of old people who were all dressed up for the concert and couldn't handle the heat. They were dropping like flies. I walked by one of the tunnels that lead to the end zone seats which were directly in the sun, and there were people laid out everywhere on the ground. Paramedics were just pouring water on all of them. I should have taken a picture of that.

Movie Sequels Follow Up

Staying on the topic of movie sequels. I have come up with my top 5 and worst 5 movie sequels.

Top 5

1. Lethal Weapon 2

2. Meet The Fockers

3. Rambo: First Blood Part 2

4. The Road Warrior

5. Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Me

Worst 5

1. Caddyshack 2

2. Oceans 12

3. Blues Brothers 2000 ( I never saw it but I know it had to be bad)

4. Jaws 3-D

5. Smokey and the Bandit Part 2

Question to Readers

This is a topic of conversation that came up at my rocking Easter Eve party. Can you name a movie sequel that was better than the original? I am open to any suggestions. The best that we could come up with is that "Empire Strikes Back" is better than "Star Wars". And if you want to take that a step father, the second three were better than the first three. Anyhow, I am looking for any others. I watch "Smokey and Bandit Part II" today. Wow is that a horrible movie. I liked the third "Jurassic Park", but I think that was more because of the special effects than the actual story.

I just made myself a Chocolate Banana milkshake. The chocolate milk had an expiration date of April 16th. But it smelled pretty funky. I drank the milk shake anyway, but then poured the remainder of the chocolate milk down the drain. And it was a brand new carton, so that puzzles me even more. Do you think it was bad? I am guessing that it had been sitting around out of the cooler before getting stocked on the shelf.

Lawe Street Bridge Construction

Here is something of a news story that was on line concerning my next construction project. Here is the link.

How Cool Am I?

As my readers may know, recently I had a party up here in Minnesota. The turnout wasn't quite as high as I was expecting. Not only that, but when I looked at the evite invitation that I sent out, a number of people (at least 15 or so) looked at the invitation and then didn't even bother to take the 2 seconds required to respond. I have also been having a bit a of problem in getting a hold of my friends via cell phone. I think that I call people and they see the number and decide not to answer it. I have come up with two possible reasons for this behavior from my friends. One, they are just busy. Many of my friends are now married, having kids, and or their jobs are more demanding. Or two, I am just not as cool as I think I am. I honestly find this pretty hard to believe, but stranger things have happened. I have been a bit low on ideas for my blog as of late, and I am not even sure I have done a poll on this before. I very well may have. But it never hurts to poll the 8 people who will vote again. I know that some of the same people who were too busy to click on my evite if they were going come to my Easter Party, will not doubt be too busy to vote on this poll. This however is something that I have been learning to deal with.

Am I as cool as I think I am?
	You are Fonzie, your friends are the flakes who are just to busy.
	Cool? You aren't even luke warm.
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Picture of the Day

I don't have the date on this picture, but it was taken out in San Fransico, California back when I used to work for Merge Technologies. If you look to the left of the picture you can actually see San Quinten Prison the home of one Charles Manson.

Easter Eve Bash

Sadly the Easter Eve Party has come and gone. Because the number of attendees was down, I opted to serve food. Sorry Nevermann. The only ones to show up were, Andrea, Lisa, Doug and Amy. We grilled out, played some games. Then stopped into the Bellagio of Woodbury, Champs Americana. I call it that because they have a water fountain in the pond in front of it. When we got kicked out of Champs, I had the wonderful idea to drive to Hudson, Wisconsin to finish out the evening. We got kicked out of Champs because they close at 1 in the morning, not because we were too loud or out of contro. Lisa eventually drank too much and got sick. Based on that fact alone, I will call my party a success.
The last time we together at Doug and Lisa's place, Lisa broke out the photo albums. My party was such a hit that at one point everyone was looking through my photo albums. I know it was a rager.

Doug and Amy at the Bellagio.Lisa and I showing off our broken wrists at the Bellagio.Doug consoling Lisa at the end of the night.

Picture of the Day Request

As requested by Sugar Lips, here is another picture I have from The General's wedding. I know which pictures you are talking about, but I don't have any of them. And as far as getting Teh General to post any pictures good luck. He doesn't return my phone calls. Last I checked his blog, he is still bragging about his fantasy football team that finished out of the money.

Sort of a funny story behind this picture. As you can see Tree is the one flipping off the camera. Earlier in the day after the church service but while we were still church, I was sitting with Preston and Tree in the first pew. The photographer came up to take a picture and she said to us, "Do something crazy." Right away Tree gives the photographer the double bird just like in this picture. Needless to say the photographer was a bit offended. So I was no surprise to me that when we took this picture and Tree did the same thing. She wanted to kick him out of the picture. I explained things to her. And there is this same picture without the obscene gestures somewhere in the Stegall archieves. But this picture was taken after the photographer left. I am not sure, but Sugar Lips, you might have taken this one.

Wrestling

Normally I am very happy with my readers. I appreciate the fact that so many people stop by to reader what is going on in my life. I am actually pretty amazed by that, as boring as my life is. And I almost always enjoy comments. However, recently I was called a retard. A retard by a person who knows nothing of which they speak, Wrestling. I am actually more offended by the person who thinks I know nothing around wrestling than the person who made the wild claim that my wild behavior while drinking is responsible for drunk driving deaths. Now listen up. As a kid, I used to watch the old A.W.A. every Sunday after church with my brothers. I know who "The Crusher"is. He was always a headliner on those Sunday mornings, and that picture I posted IS "The Crusher". This is Larry "The Axe" Henning.

Get your facts straight before you go off making accusations towards me.


Another reader, The General, who isn't afraid to leave his name with his comments, recently called my Whitewater Wrestlemania Story, "the worst story ever". I hope he enjoys this story a little better. Back in the day, The General and Diane were living together in sin before they got married. From time to time, I would pop in unannounced. Sometimes they were busying have pre-martial sex and were either to busy or embarrassed to answer the door. That story was actually chronicled before, here is a link if you missed it. By the way, when you two sinners go to hell, could you do me a favor and say hi to TT for me? But it was a different time that I popped in that I would like to talk about today. I stopped by their apartment and the front door was open, so I let myself in. The moment I opened the door, I heard to awful sound of a cat meowing coming from the guest bedroom. I opened the guest bedroom door and this is what I saw:

Lastly I would like to leave you with one of the only Easter stories I have. This actually isn't even one of my stories. When I was in high school and college, I used to work construction. There were these brothers that I worked with, the Prices. Carl, Dean and Ted. Three of the nicest guys you will ever meet. They were all pretty big guys, and used to wrestle in high school and college. They were a couple years older than me and used to pick on me quite a bit. But I was told that they only picked on people that they like. Dean told me this story one day. When he was a kid, his parents would have bowl of candy out during Easter, filled with jelly beans, chocolate eggs, etc. One day Dean was in the yard and found a Robin's nest. Of course there were eggs in is. Dean thought it would be funny to take one of the eggs and put it in with the candy. So he did. Then he baited his brothers into eating some candy until one of them finally ate the egg. As Dean tells the story, the look on his brother's face was absolutely unforgettable. Maybe you have to hear him tell the story. Anyhow, enjoy your Easter everyone.

Picture of the Day

Here is today's picture of the day. Tree will be happy about this one. Just a note to all of my readers, the more you comment the more likely you will be to get your stories and pictures up on the blog. Anyhow this is at The General's wedding. Me and Tree doing a shot with The General's mom.

A Tree Requested Story

This story was requested by Tree, and it goes back to the days when I was just fresh out of college, I know that Tree was in his last semester of college at Whitewater. And Justus was also at Whitewater at the time. Tree was living with his now wife, girlfriend then, Heather. I came into Whitewater with Preston, Stu and Brandon. We met up at Tree and Heather's apartment and then went out to hit the bars of Whitewater. Justus at the time was working as a bouncer at some bar and was telling us how cool that bar was and that we should stop in. We got there and the place was dead. We got some drinks and then the five of us, Tree, Preston, Stu, Brandon and myself thought it would be fun to pick on the bouncer (Justus). So we started pushing him around. I think I was the most rambunctious of the group and kept on grabbing Justus just below the knees and trying to tackle him to the floor. I was following him around the bar wherever he went. Justus actually found this quite annoying. But I had the other 4 guys with me, so there really wasn't much Justus could do. Eventually people started filing into the bar and it was getting more and more busy. But I was still harassing Justus. I think he finally just got sick of it and told Preston to get me out of there. Now mind you, I was far from drunk at this point, but I was just having a very good time picking on Justus. And everyone but Justus thought it was funny. The five us of left that bar and were out the rest of the night until bar time. At which point we started the walk back to Tree and Heather's apartment. I was still in a pretty rambunctious mood and as we were walking I was staying a couple steps behind Tree. And every once in a while, I would come up behind Tree and tackle him to the ground. Believe it or not, Tree found this pretty annoying. I had tackled Tree probably 4 or 5 times, and Tree finally said, "Hey Rick, that isn't funny anymore, if you do it again I am going to bring the hurt down on you!!" If you know me at all, idle threats of pain mean absolutely nothing to me. So it was about a minute or two later, we were walking across the front lawn of a frat house and I tackled Tree. And then it was on. After I got Tree to the ground, he quickly had me pinned and then Stu came to my rescue and tackled Tree, then Preston and Brandon piled on. It was pretty much Wrestlemania. This battle royale had been going on for a good five or six minutes. I am guessing we were making quite a bit of noise, since the lights of the frat house started coming on. At this point I think it is safe to say it was somewhere around 3 in the morning. A couple of the frat house guys came walking out and yelled to us, "Hey get off of our lawn!!!" At which point we all stopped and looked up at them. I would estimate that between the 5 of us, our average size was all of 6' 2" and around 220 lbs. I think it was Tree who yelled back at them, "We will leave when we are ready to leave!!" The frat guys answered back "Sounds good to me. Thanks." So that is the Whitewater Wrestlemania story.

NCAA Basketball Pool

I got a phone call at 6:30 this morning from Tree asking where his money was. Yes for the second year in a row Tree has won my NCAA basketball pool. Here are the final standings:

1st Tree ($90), 2nd Dan ($40), 3rd Roman ($10), 4th The General, 5th Liquid Lisa, 5th Heather, 7th Sherman, 8th Nate, 9th Rickie, 10th Borky, 11th Tim, 12th Joe, 13th Bubs and in last Krum.

I am not going to start with a deadbeat list just quite yet because I know I told everyone that their credit is good with me. However, expect to not get any resistance when I come to collect. I haven't broken anyone's thumbs in a while, but I am sure I can remember how to do it. So don't give me a hard time. Roman, we are square. Tree, we have already talked about your situation. And Dan I will pay you next weekend. For the rest of you, be prepared with my money when I come knocking on the door.

The Last Comment

I realize that this is pretty much a dead issue. But I would like to get the final word in on the fact, that because I drink too much, get forcibly removed from a bar, and the police are called to intervene, that I am responsible for drunk driving deaths. Since the incident I have contacted the Breckenridge Police Department. While an official police report was never filed, I did manage to get a copy of the on site officer's daily activity log, which can be seen below. I am the last line on the first page. The highlights of the evenings events other than the 20 minutes she spent speaking to me include: a verbal warning for a headlight out, a parking ticket, a written warning for speeding, 15 minutes on radar enforcement, a verbal warning for an illegal turn, two noise complaints and assisting on a domestic disturbance. Hardly anything life and death in there. And while I am sure I did nothing to impress Officer Lynn, talking to me may very well have been the highlight of her evening.

Over Due Posting

I have been a bit preoccupied the last couple of days. Working 3rd shift really screwed up my sleeping patterns. But I am not done with that. Maybe I will have 1 or 2 more all nighters for the rest of the project. There hasn't been too much that is exciting going on in my life. This weekend wasn't anything special. Friday night, I grilled out at Borky's and played ping pong. Saturday night, Krum had some guys over to watch the basketball games.

I always welcome suggestions from my readers. I know that Tree has brought up a question or two and some stories that I will eventually tell.

Tree asked if I liked my job. I like my job quite a bit. The best thing about my job is that my company holds all of it's employees accountable. If you aren't getting things done, you are gone. This was not the case at the DOT.

Here are some photos from my bridge. Thursday night while we were testing the bridge. I decided that I wanted to ride the bridge while it was going up. It is kind of like a fun house where the room turns. And this room turns about 70 degrees. In a way I have my own $20 million amusement park ride. I am pretty much tell them to open and close the bridge whenever I want. Here is one of my contractors who was in the bridge with me.

And here is another contractor who was in the bridge with me. They were actually doing work, checking lines for leaks. I was just there for the ride.