The Man Store

Many of you know that Shamoopie and I have been working on the house. Well most of the tools came from the Man Store. It's real name is Harbor Freight Tools but Lovely our eleven year old calls it Daddy's toy store or the man store.

It is truly heaven on earth for manly men who like tools and know how to use them. Now granted if I were doing home repair or construction for a living I would buy better tools. The nail gun that I have purchased for the floor is showing it's ge after only five floors. Is it dead yet....no. It was having a little trouble with the last two floors but we are done now. Five floors complete and we didn't pay $500 for a flooring nail gun.

The finishing nail gun is another story. It might not make it. We have had to replace all the molding in this house and only the downstairs is even close to being done. The gun is jamming and leaking air. It's not doing so good. But for $40 I can buy a new one and have it last at least through the work in this house. I bought my finishing nailor with a 25% off coupon that came in the mail from Harbor Freight. Even with coupons and discounts from Home Depot their nailer prices don't even come close.

You decide Home Depot vs Harbor Freight.


The one thing that I didn't skimp on was my air compressor, Porter Cable contractor grade. Awesome.

I have my eye on this crown molding stapler, Shamoopie.




Shamoopie will tell you that I have big tools in the Man Shed.




To quote her "I am surprised how many tools it takes to do this." .

She's cute.

His sisters is bigger...

Did you know that Randy Parton has his own theater. Yes it's true Who is Randy Parton you ask? Well doesn't everyone know? He's Dolly's younger brother. That's why he is famous. His sister has Dollywood and he has the Randy Theater. Awesome but Dollywood is a little bigger.

Here is the story. The town of Roanoke Rapids North Carolina put up $15 million or so to build him a theater so he can perform and draw large crowds. It's hard to figure out how much really went into this theater from the press releases. But the story is making news and Randy is trying to get some publicity.

The plan was flawless except for some unknown reason the theater is not selling out everyday and the ticket prices are only $25 to $34 each. Imagine that! So little to see a country legend like Randy Parton. Now some people in the town are upset because Randy is making somewhere between $750,000 and $1.5 Million a year, depending upon who reports it.

I want a theater. Not for me for Shamoopie and all we need is $10 million. I will only make $500,000 a year. That's all. A bargain. So I am starting the Shamoopie Theater fund and we are accepting donations or if you know of any towns that would like to build her a theater, just let me know.

A good day

I almost took Shamoopie to the beach this weekend. Lucky for her there was a hurricane coming to shore because she got a surprise baby shower instead. She was very surprised and loved all the things that she received. I can say this because I had to be shown each and every one of the gifts that she got at the shower, twice.

It wasn't until I told that I must finish laying the floor in the dining room that she let me get back to work.

I would like to say thank you to all the people who made things and or gave things for the shower. :)

Shamoopie had a good day.

Namaste Mofo

Shamoopie is laughing but she is a little upset that I have taken to saying "namaste mofo" as a greeting to people. I use the full term and not the abbreviated version. I think it pretty much sums up my attitude lately.

From Wikipedia 'Taken literally, it means "I bow to you". The word is derived from Sanskrit (namas): to bow, obeisance, reverential salutation, and (te): "to you"

Mofo is a common insult and profanity in American English and in other varieties of the English language. The term, widely viewed as an obscenity, may be used by some in a neutral, or even positive way... Frank Zappa's band, The Mothers of Invention, were originally called The Mothers (shortened term for ...mofo...), but their record label refused to publish them under that name, and so it was changed.'

Since Frank was involved, I am thinking that it's all good since you can take it in a positive way.

Speaking of Frank I want to name the bird as he would have. Somethink like moonunit, dweezil, and what ever the other one was. He changed his name later in life. So I am thinking something like Fender, Gibson, Gretsch, PRS, or maybe Floyd Rose. :)

Pregnancy Brain

I never thought that it existed. But it does. It's a condition that affects a woman when she gets pregnant.

Shamoopie has been making me my lunch since I started my new job. She did a great job of including variety and nutrition. Until she got pregnant that is.

So today I get my lunch and I eat my sandwich. It was good. Nothing special. The chips were nice and so were the carrots. I even got some banana bread that she made yesterday. That was great. So I decided to eat my raspberries for snack at 2pm. I like an afternoon snack.

I went to the coffee shop and bought a soda. On my way there I called shamoopie and thated her for the nice lunch and asked how her day was going. When I got back to my desk I tried one of the raspberries and it didn't taste right. So like the genius that I am I tried another. I had to spit it out. I then took a closer look at all the raspberries. They were rotten.

In the trash they went. It did remind of the time a few weeks earlier when I open my lunch and found a granola bar. Not much else, just a partially eaten granola bar. I went out for lunch that day and when I got home I asked Shamoopie if she was mad at me. She said "No, why do you ask?" I don't know maybe it was the fact that you gave me a half eaten granola bar for lunch. She just started laughing and said that she was sorry and that it wasn't for my lunch it was left over from her lunch the day before and she was wonder what had happened to it.

Hense the proof that pregnancy brain does exist. When I got home tonight I asked her when she had purchased the raspberries and she said "oh about a week or two ago. We have more.... see. Why do you ask?" I asked he to look at them and all she could say was "yoooooooo...yuck".

Again pregnancy brain. A non-pregnant Shamoopie would not have that reaction.

She is still adorable.

Craig's list

Shamoopie complains about Craig's List. I don't know why?

The people never show up unless you are giving something away and even then they want to argue with you about it. One of my friends had some book shelves that he was giving away. A guy calls him up and says that he wants one of the shelves. My buddy gives him the dimensions and tells him that they are heavy. The dud says no problem and shows up with a Chevy blazer.

The Blazer is not the largest SUV on the market and the guy spend two hours trying to load the shelf into the blazer. Two hours later he finally gives up and says that his buddy has a pickup truck and he will be back tomorrow and he leaves my buddy to drag the thing back into the garage.

He comes back the next day with the Blazer, again and trys to load the bookshelves into it again. Like to today the universe will be in alignment and he will succeed! Not. After an hour he gives up again and leaves.

This time my buddy get out the chainsaw and just cuts it up so the trash man would take it.

Craig's list only a genius can use it and Shamoopie!

Car repairs

So the Mercedes needed some general maintenance done. That's my car. It's a convertible. As it should be. We got a coupon in the mail from the dealership to do the service at what appeared to be a discounted some what normal price.

So Shamoopie makes an appointment and they offer a rental car if we drop it off during the day before 8am. Sounds good right?

Wrong. The rental car is just that a rental from one of the local rental places. They drive me to the place and the only car they have is a big white minivan. So I decline and they offer to drive me to more places until I get a car that suits me. Great, I get to waste all my time to get a car that should have been ready for me in the first place. It should have been at least a car that most people would drive. So I have them drop me off at the house and I drive the volvo. Yes the Volvo was a better choice than a beat up smelly minivan.

Then it gets better. The car needed an inspection. So the inspection was also scheduled. I get a call as soon as I get to work that they won't do an inspection since the tires are bad. I told them that they needed to do it anyway and fail it since you get 30 days to fix it and get it inspected again for free. But it means that you get the sheet of paper that says you attempted it so you won't get a $50 ticket for not having your car inspected. They still would do it because the car would fail. The only way that they would do the inspection is if I paid $1100-$1500 for four new tires. So I told her to stop the service which was supposed to take four hours to do since they were doing so much. She said she would and hung up.

I then get a call at 3:30 Pm from her telling me that the service was performed anyway because it was completed before she called me at 9am. Which either means that she lied about how long it take or lied about telling them to stop. Either way she lied. I was also informed that the service would be $400 that the coupon was only the starting point and because of my car the charge was more. But she did offer to take some money off since I didn't get the rental car that I was promised. Awesome.

So much for having a nice car. I am driving the Volvo until it stops.

Not easy being me

As I have said before. It's not easy being me. Well one of us was wrong and the other was right. I am not going to say who was right but you need to see what Shamoopie is posting about "The Bird".

Remember who called it first. Me. That's who.

gloat..gloat...gloat...and oh yes.....GLOAT.

Everybody likes cake

I like cake. Most people like cake. These cupcakes are ginormous. But they are not as big as Shamoopies' cupcakes. These are in a trailer park. I thought that was somehow appropriate and since there are three of them.

What she doesn't say in her blog is that she was able to hide them for quite a while when we were dating. How on earth can anyone hide cupcakes as big as these? She must be the illegitimate daughter of David Copperfield. He can make boats, cars, buses, and buildings disappear right? Why not cupcakes?

Shamoopie I applaud all the things that you are able to accomplish. You are amazing and you are able to put up with me to boot.