I'm offering enough nudles so you can get a one month premium membership. If you are interested just post in the comments on this blog. I will pull names from a hat. There will be more than one winner but I haven't decided on the exact number.

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Edit, this is open to members who are not currently premium.

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Edit, the offer is now closed. 4 premiums were given.

The work is finally done. A total of five rain out days. The roofers put the finishing touches on the project this morning. No more waking up to the sounds of construction noise, I can finally get a good mornings sleep again beginning tomorrow.

The color of the new brick is lighter than the old, but I knew it would be when this project began. It's something I really had to do as the garage was too far along for any more patches. It all has to do with a builders mistake when they used too narrow cap stones 65 years ago. That let water into the bricks, which made it's was down to the lintels and eventually rusted them. When metal rusts, it expands thus pushing up on the brick and further exasperating the problem. Add to the problem a dumbass tuck pointer along the way who didn't understand the different functions of cement v mortar.

So, new lintels, bricks, capstones and topped off with a new roof. This company paid attention to a lot of small details that should make this repair last a long time. I'm glad it's done.

After a three day rain delay, work resumed Monday. Two walls are mostly done. Still to do are installation of two more lintels, two walls, new capstones, roof and some miscellaneous items.

My phone rang at 6:30 a.m. (who the fuck gets at at 6:30 in the a.m.?!?!?!), "This is Naked Masonry (not their real name), we're coming over now to start that work."

So, the offending cap stones, bricks and lintels have been removed. Waiting for materials to arrive now.

I had another contractor out to look at the garage. He pointed out a couple things the first guy is not including, because he doesn't do that. And that is new, wider, cap stones and he will also put a new roof on it. His price is a little higher than the first guy but he is including more. With the 1st guy, I'd have to call out a roofer when he is done so in the end it would be more than this guy. So I'm going to go with the second guy.

This will be the 4th time I've had work done on the garage, I guess you can say the 1st three were patch jobs. This should be a permanent solution. But it will sting the old pocketbook.

Maybe more details and pics when the work is done.

I just got a bid for some much needed brick work I need for the garage. It came in fully 50% more than I estimated it would be. Well, I'm getting better at this, bids used to come in at double what my estimate was.

Now I'm contemplating, get more bids or go with this one. I know this company will do a good job, I used them before. There is always the possibility that a low bid ends up being the expensive one if the work has to be corrected or re-done.

The perfect Margarita.

1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
1 ounce Cointreau
2 ounces of your favorite distilled cactus juice (aka tequila)
plenty of ice. Salt the rim of the glass if you want but it's not essential.

Someone asked a retiree if he had a job, to which he replied, "I am my wife's sexual advisor." Somewhat surprised by that response he asked for more information, to which the retiree said, "It's very simple, my wife told me that when she wants my fucking advice, she'll ask for it."

If you go to a store these days and ask for a record player the youngster waiting on you is likely to show you the cd players. Some of us are old enough, uhhh, make that mature enough, to remember those big black flat disks with grooves on them. You put one of those on a record player, or better yet, a turntable connected to a sound system and it produced amazing sounds. Now don't get me wrong, I like the clean sound that digitalized music produces. But there is something satisfying about putting a record on a turntable, aiming the tone arm at it and watching the stylus float gently down on black vinyl. Soon deep, rich music that stirs the soul comes out of speakers, scratches and all.

It's been a while since I spun vinyl, my old turntable was more than 35 years old and I had retired it some time ago. In recent years however, there has been a resurgence in vinyl as a new generation is discovering what I had once taken for granted.

I received an Amazon gift certificate for Christmas and was thinking about what to get with it. I wanted it to be something special, I didn't want to use for the ordinary day to day things. So I thought about the turntable, I have a number of old records. While much of it is available in digital format, there are some things that are not. So I thought a new turntable would be nice to have. I looked on Amazon and found a decent selection, not like it was when I was a younger man, but there are some worthwhile machines being made today.

This is what I got,



I'm rocking out to Zepplin and feeling like a hippie again