Ketchup Jam! pt.2 Pass the Toast!

Well Hello friends, welcome once agien to the extremely narrow world view, as far as I can see, as far as I can tell! As the sign above sez, "Some things allways burning!" and in my case, it's the desire to be golfin'! Times burning, time to go where the golf never dies,(just gets all rusty from the constant rain,)time to buzz down to the big stink, time to return to the Van.(and who knows, if they get knocked out of the playoffs while I'm there, I might even get to see the riot!)(watch for me on Cop's)(I'll be the one stealling golf shoes, and knickers!)

And, yes, Buzz down is the right term, I bought a Honda Civic, 5 speed. Its got a 1.5liter leafblower motor, with a pull start,(kidding)no radio,(not kidding, antenas broke, so no radio,)and the first cd I put in, is still stuck there! On the bright side, it's a good cd! and the aux. input works with my mp3, so I got tunes. Also it's about 2x's cheaper to drive then the Blazer was, and with the way the world is a squabblen over the remaining fossil fuels, well I'm just one man tring to do his part! It's a little tighter inside then my VWabbit was, but way zippier, plus it's a 5 speed, so thats cool.(come to think of it, the wabbit also had pinecones under the hood, as this car did, but those were after I bought it...dam squirles!

If you zoom close, and look hard, you'll see the three skulls. All on the driver back window of every vehical I drove in Alberta.(there is one on the passangers side of the Landcrusier as well, but it's real hard to see from here!) I'm thinking of some racing stripes, or maybe little flames,(or maybe both!) I read somewhere racing stipes and/or flame will defenitly make you car faster!(it may have been writen by an 8yr. old, but untill I hear otherwise, I'm inclined to beleave!)

As promised, we have a miraculously transformed porch! When you last saw this sturdy piece of post modern construction, it was just a deck, with one sad, short wall, and a underpaid($0)immergrant sitting on it.(sorry Carlin!) Now its a mostly finished, nearly airtight, semi watertight, overly insulated, dimond in the rough.

Notice the door? Stoled it from my old highschool! Throw me out will ya?(really its liberated from an old Atco trailer, the same ones the Woodie shed metal came from.)(I like the full width push bar on the inside,)(although I like most thing with a full bar inside!)

Speaking of inside...here it is! Notice the unfished walls, the clutter, the general lack of order? All part of the plan. Its not that winter caught me with my pants down,(a very serious problem up here, where do you think the term blue balls came from?)but after landing the Black Earth job, most of my time(energy)was used up. Once I finish the walls, and get shelves built, most of the clutter will vanish! Nice ceiling though.

Now its time for the "fuzzy creatures on the ground below" portion of the blog. This is the new family of squatters that moved into my den.(the big one snuck in first, and smuggled the other three in her...well lets just say, its not the first time things have been smuggled in there, but three little ones! how she even get them up there? I heard tell of goats smuggleing dimonds in Africa, and of drug dogs down in the US, but baby cat smuggleing is a new one for me!)(oh well I guess they can stay...but NO citizenship!) The big ones Slice,
and the little fuzz balls are Pitch, En, Putt! Although in this shot it's Putt!, En, Pitch, kitties are hard pose.(just kidding Peta, no kitties were posed during the production of this blog!)
Pitch, has a white face, remindes me of an open faced club, like a pitching wedge, or sand wedge,(Ummmmmm, open faced club sandwitch!)(copyright Homer Simpson...all rights reserved.)Putt!, who was breifly called Chilean Miner,(chilly-m for short)fell down a hole, between the closet, and the shelf they were born on. After a multi hour search and rescue, little Putt! was saved!(get it? putt was down the hole, where all good putts belong!) And En, just likes to be in the middle, so, Pitch, En, Putt!

I'm leaven today for my sun n golf trip, wanted to finish this blog first, get you all cought up, before I get way behind agien, hope to have some good pic. for upcoming blogs, and maybe a story or two, of some grand adventure!(although at my age, the grandest adventure may just be a safe, quite trip, lots of naps, and one of those floppy travel hats.

I'll leave you with this. I know the little ones are too small to start training for this sort of thing, but soon enough.(I've been showing them this picture every day since thier little eyes opend up, and I think they're starting to get it.) Soon I'll bring in one of the poms, they're small enough to be sort of a practice dog...then, when their ready, we'll move on to the big dog's. Together, we'll rule the yard! I'll have my roving squad of ninja
death cats, and then I'll be unstopable! Today, the yard,...Tomorrow the World!(BooooHaaahaaaha)(best evil/mad doomsday laugh I know how to spell.)

Latter all, next blog after my trip! have a good one, DufferKev.

Ketchup Jam! pt1

Well, hell its easter allready! Not quite sure what happend here but my last blog was in january...how the time slimes away from us all! Spring time has arrived,(then retreated, then arrived agien) Todays suns making yesterdays snow melt faster then a fat mans resolve at Tim Hortens!

So whats up with Ketchup JAM? Well, its time for some spring cleaning! Time to empty out the camera, dust off last falls faded memorys, and try in vain to ketchup, by jamming abunch of stuff together! Like the pondering rapter above, I just loved the idea of a tomatoe smoothie...So with the clever title,(and a leap of faith)I get to use him.

Quick get-up-to-speed, crib note style fall and winter: I worked at Black Earth...and thats about it! Oh sure I bought a car, I moved Slice in,(you remember the creepy-est of the kittens from way back when,)Slice had babies,..But thats about it!(and those are for another blog,)

Late(2late?)last fall I decided to build a porch onto my tiny trailer,(I mean the mighty DufferDen!)and caught up in waves of enthusiasm, I totaly over built the sucker!(I mean, in case of tornado, I'll be found under my porch, it'll still be there!)(room for you too, but please book well in advance,)(all major credit cards accepted!)

First off when building a porch, you need a good deck,(or if you get lazy, you can just stop at the deck, nothing wrong with a change of design mid stream, like how most of my omlettes turn into scrambled eggs!) First thought was to pour pads, and bracket 4x4 holders, to save time, money, and last but fisrt, LABOUR! After talking with other overbuilding freinds, and giving some serious thought to the massive frost heaves,(just take a drive down some of our back hiways, and you'll understand frost heaves a little better!)I decided to drill 6foot pilelings, fill them with cement, and jam 8ft. 4x4's(treated, of coures)deep into mother earths clay embrace!(notice the 36can pack of Boxer beer in the back ground, I'll credit much of this design to Boxer!) Next comes the 2x6's, some Tyvek,(same stuff I made flags out of for my Goffer Golf last year,)(pat./pend.) and of course r20 insulation!(cozy deck=warm porch!) To top off your deck, I like more Tyvek, and a fat layer of 3/4inch ply!(this could be the dance floor for a trucker wedding!)(sorry to all truckers, and mostly to all married out there!)(bettcha you wish you could live in a den, or build a truckers dance deck, buttcha can't cause your married, and he/she just wouldn't understand the lost property value for some useless stupid deck! I mean how many trucker weddings could there be? it's kind of a nich market, isn't it?)...(?)(or tell him/her its a Pacidurm Breeding Research Facillity,)(or just keep going and finish your porch!)

One of the most important, key ingredents to any project, is the side kick, right hand man, gopher, and or helper guy, in this case I got my bro Carlin to be all of them! This is him sitting next to the short wall of the porch,(one of his rare un-mobile moments, don't tell him, but I'd say, "I'll be right back," then go for like 3 beer, check my spam mail, play some vid, and he'd be just a hammering away out there for like 20 min!...look at the grin, poor guy still thinks he's gettin paid!)...(I mean thanks agien Carlin!) More porch next Blog, amazing overnight tranformations, etc.

On to a bright sunny afternoon late last fall, when the leaves were gone and the day's were begining to shorten noticeably, the bosses fianally let us play the grass side! This is hole #6 tee box,(back tees) for this year it will be hole #1,(a brutally long par 5 for the opening hole? ouch!) I hit a very happy shot just past the grass bunker, right by the crook in the pond,(upper middle of the shot on the left,)(remember, you can enlarge most pics by left clicking on them!)then waited for like 20min. well the rest of the group sprayed many tee shots left, and right, onto the road, into the pond,(the same pond on the upper left witch feeds into the stream from "Antanmy of a Stream" from last summers blogs,)proving once and for all, if you build the course...don't mean you can play the course. Dont get me wrong, I gave plenty of balls to the water gods, but most of my driver tee shots were on terra firma!(and I don't even care if I spelt it rong. thats how it sounds.)

Above right is the 6th green, with water to the left, and water behind us to the right, you'd wanna lay-it-up-to-the-right-yardage, so to speak.

This is the #7 tee box, the green is over the water, and all that pretty black sand. I hit a couple out of the sand, just for fun, and it was denser by far then normal sand, will take some getting use to, but it is so cool! Notice the long shadows already, and this is only our second hole.

Here is the 8th green from above the 7ths bunkers, notice how the water wraps around the green, with just that strip of black sand around the back to save any over zelisht shots? I got to help dig that bunker in.

On the right is the 8th tee box, hard to tell, but to the left of those trees is the green,(being pinched from the right by trees, and to the left with the above pictured water.)(If memory serves...now serving for match point, memory...I hit it so far left, I missed the water and landed back on the 7th fairway!)

O.k., this is for those of you who don't belive I'm accually living this extravigent life. This is last fall me,(accaually hitting the above noted far left shot!)(thanks Dale for the pic.) Notice the same style socks as my hole in one shot from like 3 years ago?(could they be the same socks...with the amazing Jiffy Sock 2000, only CSI could tell!) Look closely by my right foot, its my aliment aid. I take a full beer can and put it by my foot, and if I swivle too much, I SPILL THE BEER! A decidedly un-Canadian thing to do!

Here is the wonderfully dizzy'n 13th upper tee. way down in the distence is the green,(upper middle/left) you can see the bunkers in frount, but the drop offs to the right and behind are invisible. (till you've mowed them that is!) Several stories up, on the tip of a nub, out in the wind, trouble all around, 200+yrds. I think I'll lay up!(some what un-manly for a par 3, but safe golf is smart golf on this course!)

This is the 13th green, its so far up in the hills, it was dark by the time we got down, we really played three more holes after this, but the rest of the dark shots,(both golf and photo,) are best left behind. Just know this, after the golf we had deep fried turkey, n'pickles, n'mozzarella sticks, n'whatever else moved too slow in the shop that night! Yum!

In closing I'd like to leave you with this...I don't think the problem is the baby carriage, the sequway, or the lazy. The real issue is every cellphone camera carring povorotzi wannabe out there ridiculing any one brave enough to try something fun. She should have strapped on one of those speedwalker, supercyclest, 1970's bannana seat look alike helmets, with a suit designed for NASA, (by speedo) streched over her frame, big goggles, and of course a five foot silk scarf. Hook the kid on back in some sort of streamed line, bobslead on mags thingy, hunch over your "I'm too important to walk" scooter, in your best downhill skier pose, and zoom off at 4mph. giving the camera jerk your best "queen caught at a shoe sale" wave. Remember crazy is better then lazy!

Latter DufferKev.

Fat, Lazy, Stupid, and still alive?!?

Well in case you havent guessed it allready, yes I'm still alive!(they say fat, drunk and stupid is NO way to get through life, I say, throw in lazy, and your already half way to death, witch is after all, through life!)(see I spent this time off in deep metotative thought,)(LAZY!)

This is really about wanting to take a picture of this real cool icicle thingy growing from my roof, then realizing my camera was totaly dead, and wondering when the last time I took a picture was?(best est. some time in july!) So after juicing up the batteries, I down loaded 5 blogs worth of pic's!(not to worry, I'll just skim through the last 6 months, it'll be painless and over soon, just like...)(ahhh, maybe I'll tell you that one latter!)(hehehe) Any who, lets jump in!

I sort of started this yesterday,(my B-Day,) so I'll carry that theme over for the start. I guess dooms day may be over stating things a bit but,(brace you selfs!) I'm no longer at the golf course! Well no one is, it's under like 4 feet of snow! So you can grasp the whole happy dooms day theme.(acually I now work for Black Earth,(it sounds better with a little echo, like Blackkkkk Earrrtthhhh!,) (see how much better that sounds?)(can you see sounds?)remember many months, but only a few blogs ago, when I reported the large black pile, and several building suspected of being a third world bomb factory? Well...thats where I work now. Not actually there, but in the new plant, in the industral park, on the outskrits of Ryley!)(and its NOT a bomb factory)(its a Humilite factory)(?)(O.k. I know its for the ground to help stuff grow better, and I know its the layer above the coal seam, and I know we dry and crush the stuff but the how's and the whys...?)(?)(as you can see my never ending seach for knowlage has led me nowhere!)

I'd like to say my birthday was spent like homer, even the sour, mostly naked one!, but right now I'm on the ever refeshing 6am to 2:30pm shift, so my birthday was video games, + beer,=try to get to sleep by 9!(boy us 42 year olds really know how to party!) I'd like to take this time to apologize to my mother once agien for my black socks, for you see humilite powder gets into the fabric weave, then gets ground into the floor, and/or the socks.(she pre-soaks in a jar, but won't go the extra inch of throwing a couple of golf balls in there and jiffy-socking the sucker!)(you know I got the spare balls!) But lets not ponder the here's and now's, when I must still tell you of the there's and then's!

I think this lady is one of the most gifted people I mave have ever seen in my mid-life! I meen, WoW! If only she could bust-a-smile!(she must be taking them all to her husband, no strudle for her tonight!)(hehehe!)

My brother Carlin, got back to Alberta, from a top secret, inter-provincal, covert assinment,(ah...shit, I've said too much, now wheres that pill?...oh well, good thing no one reads this, I mean heres his picture and everthing!) Any who...He got a cool car! A V-6 Porche!(the perfect car for a land of ice and snow!)(but thats here and now...Not there and then! There and then was hot and humid summer time! Think back fondly to that time, and remember it well, all that is except for the mosquitoes! Remember them not, for there is a special level of hell resereved for those evil, blood thirsty, little sons of a mother-less goat!) He got me a card for my b-day, that reminded me of this Simpsons, where grampa Abe, and Jasper were stoned from Homers hippie love root juice. "We are SO old! hehehehe"

Back to the warm, there and then, this was the 100th bith-day of the town of Ryley!(so now I'm not sooo old!) And there was a parade. This is one of those skim over spots, and these are but a few of the many shots of the parade that was literally longer then the route.(2x longer then main street!)

I like this old truck, it looks like the one that was down the creek, with trees growing through it, by the old place, back when I kid, except it was a 47, not a 50, I think and also a GM, to my rememberings.

This is the oldest(and newest...just kidding, see next.)(ed)Ryley fire truck. I like the tires, they'ed look cool on my crusier!

This is the new Ryley fire truck, donated from CleanHarbours!(the place my Mom works at, remember the mean place that won't let her do personal e-mailing/blog reading at work? yeah, those guys gave the town a new fire truck, just to let them store all their toxic waste here, cool.(see the little seagull and waves? cause its CleanHarbours!)

And this is just a cool car...Betcha he wasn't expecting the pot holes!

Now to the reason I went to the parade, the then and there bosses. The Dodd's coal mine float had a part on the back with a little putting green and flag. They also were handing out golf balls to the crowd.(not whipping them out like doughnuts, or puppies...what? their soft right? oh, yeah, the petaphiles! I forgot, see I'm out of pratice!)So the night before I said I'd heckle them till I got a ball, so they just gave me one, kind of took the fun out of it though! This last shot is of my boss Jason, trying his best to look like Bill Murry from CaddyShack.(I'm glad he told me thats what he was goin for!)

The mower he's on is the loner I got to drive for a while, it was fun! almost too much so. Next spring the real ones will come, this year we had lots of differnt demos come and go. One had a 8 ft. cut swath,(that wide it is call a swath!)with 5 of those whirly, old timey, spinner type blades on it.(you know the ones I mean, like the rusty one, in the weeds out back.) I still feel bad for the little frogs I mowed over, they always jumped towards the tall grass, and away from safety! how terrorfing those 5 screaming vortexes of doom must have been for them!(see petas, I do feel for the little critters!) And now a shot of my two faverite rides with a D-6 beside for size comparisin. Note how clean they all are, and how soupy the parking lot is!(no fun that day!)

This is a shot of hole one, see the natural looking ponds? My friend Dale dug them from nothing, cool huh? This hole looks a lot differnt now, and not just the snow, we got to work a lot on the shaping, the other guys burmed-n-bunkerd, and the whole area was hydro-seeded before the really deep and long lasting snow hit.(going to be soooo green next spring! I can't wait.) The other shot is of hole six, also known as the dream hole, because thats where the whole idea of the golf course took shape. I mowed the stripies in the tee boxes, don't look too hard the ones on the left are crooked!

Also way back in the summer I was doing Lyn's cabin's ceiling, and I finished it. I love the way it turned out. With all the wierd angles and uneven every-things, I didn't alway's love the challange, but I really think it worked out.

O.K. time for a tip on finishing your last panel coverd wall of your 42yr. old trailer. If you choose to do it in a nice light\dark, good/evil, natual\stained, sunrise/sunset, mottif, as I have done, then just enjoy the laquer buzz, like young homer here. I laquerd it every morning for four daze straight, then went to work on my big wheeled truck, hehehe.(who said work should suck!)

Latter SnowedUnderKev

p.s. oh yeah, I never did take that icicle shot!