The Drama Never Ends...

Things here in New Orleans still hasn't changed very much, we still have a FEMA trailer out in front of the house, just like most of our neighbors, the house itself is still a shambles with all the walls torn out and the roof is still crushed in the rear from the tree falling on it. The Army Corps of Engineers came out months ago and put blue tarps up there to keep the rain from causing further damage to the interior but now most of that has blown away from the high winds we've been experiencing here lately. LOL The big thing is still waiting on government approvals and permits, survey results, applications for grants to either raise the house or level it and rebuild from scratch. In other words tons of red tape resulting from bureaucratic foot dragging. And we're just one of the many thousands in the same boat.

How the hell do they expect people to get their lives back together and rebuild an entire city when you can't even get one fucking house repaired in a timely fashion? Beats the hell out of me!

Most of you know about my liver transplant, and it's now getting close to it's 2 year anniversary, yay me! July 10 will be 2 years which is pretty damn awesome considering I never expected to live long enough to even get the transplant in the first place. But, even that's not all said and done though, I've talked about getting chemotherapy treatment to try to cure the virus that destroyed my liver in the first place, something that I had planned on starting nearly a year ago. They expect the therapy to last 6 to 7 months and because of circumstances out of my control the starting date keeps getting pushed further anmd further back.

One of the biggest obstacles of late has been the aftermath of Katrina. My doctors offices are still closed here in New Orleans from hurricane damage and they are working out of borrowed space 2 days a week up in Baton Rouge. Every trip to see them means a 160 mile round trip for me, what a pain in the ass! They need to be able to monitor me closely to start the chemo which will be impossible from such a long distance so I'm forced to wait till they rebuild their offices in New Orleans. What a mess, and the doctors and staff are in the same boat as everyone else, with heavily damaged or destroyed homes.

I visited my doctor in Baton Rouge last week for a check up and now I've found out that there's a new obstacle to getting the chemo out of the way. I have a small, odd bulge in my upper stomach area just below my ribs along the 14 inch transplant scar line that is apparently a defect from the operation where my stomach muscles have separated and now I've got to have surgery to have that shit fixed. LOL They tell me that has to be repaired sooner than later and it will have to be completely healed up before the chemo can begin! The problem is that the chemotherapy can cause your body to heal very slowly from any type of trauma and anything like surgery will be totally out of the question during that 6 to 7 month period. So my life is still in a freakish holding pattern that seems to go on and on and on.

Yeah, the drama never ends...

But hell, I'm in good spirits overall, I'm staying plenty busy, I bury myself in my web work and I'm happy as hell to be alive! And in spite of all the crap there's shitloads of good things happening that make me laugh and smile everyday. Each day you wake up breathing is a good day! hehe

So, I'm far from whining "woe is me" and I know for a fact that I'll be fine in the end, life wouldn't be any fun if it wasn't hard right? Sometimes you do wonder though, does it have to be this much fun? LOL

Have a great weekend everyone!!

Happy St. Paddy's Day!

Try not to get toooo drunk! LOL I know I haven't been around much lately and I apologize for that but I've been a very busy boy, really I have. Besides spending three kick ass weeks in NYC with the lovely Lisa I've been creating websites and blog skins out the wazoo! Some really cool stuff too!

Check out this killer new template I did for Redneck Mommy, very cool! I've also set up two different sites for downloading free blog skins! One site is here at Charm Skins for Blog Charm which is a really cool new blogging platform from the folks over at Blog Explosion. They pay you to blog! They run very small advertisements in the nav bar at the top and then split 50% of the proceeds with the people on the blogs depending on how popular your site is. It has some really nice features compared to Blogger, including categories for your posts. If you've been thinking about ditching Blogger I would recommend it.

The other site is Free Blogger Skins which also has some really nice skins to download for free! That's a shit load of new skins I've created and coded in the past few weeks!

I've finally finished my new web design site at Fire Site Designs and it got very good reviews from a couple of different webmasters that review stuff like that. I'm pretty happy about that!

And finally I have a brand new site called Blog Flak that is just now opened with it's own forums and it will be featuring reviews on blog platforms and blog sites and graphic software and general blogging news. Also I'm seeking reviews from people on several different topics that are listed there and winning submissions will receive Blog Explosion credits. I'll also be putting up reviews on free software that I find that can make blogging more fun! Cool stuff!

Everyone is welcome to come by and join the forum! See ya there!

And don't forget, I'm still doing my thing over at Blogs Gone Wild! Always looking for more! LOL

Have a great weekend!!!

That Bike Goes That Fast!?!?

I've always owned some type of motorcycle or another from my teen years on up to just a few years ago. My first bike was a dinky little Yamaha motocross dirtbike I paid for with money from my paper route when I was in jr. high all the way up to several Harleys in my later years. I raced motocross for many years as a teen and moved up to bigger and faster motocrossers as I got older and once I got tired of that I went over to the big super bikes for the street. They were extremely fast and agile street racers that were tons of fun to ride and sometimes just a bit scary. The fastest one I owned though was a Suzuki GS 1100, which was a real screamer but I added on a few goodies like high profile camshafts, bigger carbs, header exhaust and a super duty clutch to make it even faster. It looked just like the bike in the picture below but it had a really cool custom paint job.



My brother, a couple of years younger than me was always trying to one up me with his toys. Kawasaki came out with a new fuel-injected GPZ 1100 street racer that was arguably the fastest bike on the road at the time. This bike was guaranteed to do 160 mph top speed and cover the 1/4 mile in about 10 seconds right off the show room floor! And yes, it was faster than mine! Fucker! It looked just like the bike in the picture below.




Of course it ticked me off that I no longer had one of the fastest bikes around and since it was my little brother that made it even worse! One day we both happened to be visiting my parents and we each had our bikes parked in the driveway. My brother was extremely picky about his stuff and didn't like anybody touching his bike, not even me. I just had to get a test ride on his super fast bike though and after a lot of nagging and aggravating the hell out of him he finally agreed. I had to practically shame him into it though. Grudgingly he handed me the keys.

I went out and fired it up and rode off to find some place safe where I could see just how fast this bad boy was. I have to admit the damn thing was incredibly quick, with so much power that you REALLY had to be hanging on when you rolled the throttle back or you would just go flying off the back of it, losing your grip on the handlebars. It was just as fast as it's reputation, that bike was just amazing. I drove around for about half an hour, rolled it up to about 120 a couple times, stopped a couple times to smoke the rear tire just for fun and I finally brought it back to the house with a huge grin on my face.

My brother was standing out in the driveway with my mom and he was very impatiently waiting for my return. I could tell by the look on his face that he was not happy at all about me being gone for so long. As I was climbing off the bike he complained about how long I had taken to do "just a quick test ride".

I answered "Sorry bro, guess I just lost track of the time, but don't worry I didn't take it much over 100 mph". I already knew he would never let me ride again so what difference did it make. LOL

My mom who was standing right there thought I was kidding though and asked something like "Where can you go around here that you could go over 100 mph?"

I stupidly answered "Mom, this bike is so fast that I could start from right here in front of the house, easily hit 100 mph and still be able to slow down in time to make the turn at the end of this block".

I saw my mom's jaw drop at what I just said, and she yelled out "That bike goes that fast??!!?? OH MY GOD!!!!" shaking her head in absolute dismay. I swear I thought she was gonna faint right there!

My brother just shook his head at me saying "Thanks a LOT bro, Thanks a LOT!!!"

Apparently he had given my mom some lame song and dance that the bikes weren't really very fast. LOL!! And my poor mom probably didn't sleep for days after that worrying about the two of us!!