Nice Guys, Dumb Guys and North County Roads

I got this from a friend and thought it was rather amusing.

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Nice guys don't just finish last, they get kneed in the guts and the nuts, then stabbed in the back, kicked while they're down, shot in the face, then shot in the nads until she's out of mags, and then thrown into a grave she made him dig without his knowledge, and then buried in time for a dance that involves sea of urine unto said grave followed immediately by running off with a guy and forgetting all about you. Even if you were just a little more than friends.

I wish women would save this truly frightening level of what can only be malice for the guys that are the jerks that actually screw them over.
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From my experience this is totally true. While the fore-mentioned account is rather vivid I think it describes exactly what happens to guys when girls abuse lines such as: "God said we should break up" or "I just need to date different people for a while". Many a friend have recieved those .30-.30 rounds to the stomach before and become a sobbing mess at their dorm room desks. It's amazingly hard to know what to say when you see the kindest and most loving guys you know disembowled by an apparently heartless female. People always quote the cliche its better to love and lost then never to have loved at all. In this case...that's crap.

Somehow this tragedy reminds me of other such ironic paralells. For instance, I know about 20 - 30 people who have never taken a turn with more than two wheels touching the ground. They never have to buy shocks because their cars aren't touching the surface of the road long enough to wear them out. These guys are never ever ever ever stopped by police. Then there's me...who gets stopped for doing 8 over. Granted, once they look at the record the just let me go with a smile, but still. I have counted down the meters as idiots pass me on a busy highway while I'm driving the truck with a 30ft trailer on it. Yes, I pass trucks when they are going slow...but I'm usually going the speed limit when I'm driving the truck and these guys seem to think that playing chicken with a semi at 85 mph is fun. Trust me, the semi doesn't care and isn't going to move and I can't stop that fast either...if you mess up or misjudge this move your dead just because you wanted your snot on a burger faster.

I do speed and drive crazy often...but I do my bit on back country roads where it takes a little doing to stay on the road at 70...and there no one else in the car or on the road...except for moose. They usually just watch but every once in a while they run out to join the fun. This is when you find out if your a good driver or not. The half a second that seperates you from getting to know the moose's rear end a little more intimately or waving at him in the rearview mirror is esophagus squeezing to say the least. Its when a good friend gets stuck with the first option do you stop and realize. You grip the wheel a little harder and try to push it out of your mind. You focus on the road and try to outrun the memories and the fears. Northern maine roads are the best for outrunning things. They're long, curvy, hilly, narrow, and remote. Not many other people around to see you screw up. Not many people around to hear you scream as the needle pushes the bottom. I would go faster...but Danielle doesn't do well past 100...and she didn't really appreciate the 120...so I try and keep those speeds for especially trying times and a little flatter roads.

What a day. As I went through my day I discovered that I have only ingested approximently 270 µg/ml of caffeine today(I am usually hitting ~12,000 - 13,000 µg/ml a day to stay alert) which would explian why I pulled into a work site today and promptly collapsed lengthwise on the seat truck seat for the next 45 min. Luckily, I was the only one there so I didn't have any awkard explaining to do. Equally as lucikly I didn't do that while I was driving. The equipment I use is worth more than my house...no clue how in the world I would pay that one back if I put the truck in sombodie's kitchen. So, I can't decide whether its better to involuntarily sink into unconsiousness or maintain the attention span of a squirrel. The latter one is also difficult to manage. One of the buildings I clean in my second job is a TV station. They have TVs in EVERY room...that building takes way longer than it should.
I did take a cool picture with the phone today. Its a butterfly sitting on one of the trailers. I also have a sweet picture of two flies...umm...yeah...but I didn't think that would be the best thing to post at the moment. Perhaps if I write about a related topic it could make a good object lesson or something.

I know I work too hard. Friends have been telling me this for weeks...but I guess I suck at listening. Bills are a great motivator. I'm running low on money to maintain the caffeine stamina...and the constant flow of adrenaline that has been pushing through my chest constantly for the past month is getting unreliable and spotty, hence today, so I'm not sure what to do. I've tried to tell boss B twice that I would like to get done but neither attempt has worked. The first one I chickened out on and the second one I could not for the life of me contact my him. Sigh. Guess I'm stuck for a while.




Sometimes you wonder if this fight is worthwhile
The precious moments are all lost in the tide
They're swept away and nothing is what is seems
The feeling of belonging to your dreams
-DHT

Pride

Pride is like gasoline. A little whiff and it's a good thing. A whole great bunch of it...And all it takes is a dude with a match to send you into orbit. So, a little bit of pride can be a good thing. Small bits of pride promote confidence and strength (which I need right now). Let's just say my pride gas tank was getting low...then tonight I went at it with an acetylene torch. Like I've said earlier I have two jobs. My second job often includes cleaning businesses between the hours of 4pm and 2 am after my day job, which occurs from the hours of 7am and 4pm. I have been holding this schedule everyday for the past month and a half. Needless to say lately, I have been making stupid mistakes that I don't usually make. For example: two of the buildings I clean are located in a small town 30 or so miles deeper into the great northern maine woods than my home town. Yeah I know, more remote than my town....go figure. The great metropolis of Ashland has something like 4 gas stations, one small hardware store, a post office, one police officer, three banks, and four people. What they need three banks for I have no idea. Anyway, I clean the chip steam power plant up the road, and one of the banks. The night started out like anyother night. The cleaning of the plant went smooth. I chilled with the guys in the control room as they laughed about eachother and made light of certain other activities every person I've ever known who does mill work make light of. Once I finally got out of there, ahead of schedule even, I made my way to the bank. This bank is arranged with a small lobby holding an atm in the front, then a locked door leading into the bank itself. I went in, unlocked the door, disarmed the security system, and proceeded to get the tunes pounding and me cleaning. It went great, I was grooving and cleaning and having a wonde...errr...okay time. Then...I made the fateful decision to move on to cleaning the windows. The windows that I needed to clean were in the little atm lobby. Before I let the inner door close, I checked my back pocket to make sure I had keys in them then went on the to windows. Come to find out...the keys in my pocket were not the keys to the bank but the keys to my car. I was now officially locked out of the bank I was supposed to be cleaning. The keys, were sitting on one of the cabinets right beside my cell phone. I had no way to call my boss (who just happened to be on his was to Bangor about 4 hours away anyhow). I had no options. No one wants to let some random guy make a long distance call on their phone and I tried. You'd think finding the policeman in a town with three streets would be really easy...yeah no. I even went "trolling" for policemen and I didn't get any. To keep this entry short, an hour and a half later the bank manager arrived to unlock the door and wrench every last bit of precious pride out of the bottom of my stomach. What's worse is that I only had roughly ten minutes of work left in the bank. I just wanted to crawl under one of the clerks desks and die. My luck if I did that I would accidentally bump the nice alarm button and actually get to meet that friendly police officer that no one in the world knows where he is half the time. In short, my day has been pretty much the most frustrating day I've had in a while.

Hardest Learned Lessons

I've learned a great deal in the past week.

Opportunites are lost.
You understand the failure,
You morn the loss,
You accept the loss,
You move on.

Things are lost.
You adapt to life without them,
You morn the things,
You accept the loss,
You move on.

People are lost,
You learn from them,
You remember them,
You mourn them,
You accept them,
You move on.

People die.
You learn from their lives,
You remember the good times,
You mourn the loss,
You accept their death,
You honor their death,
You move on.

This is the nature of things.

5 Little Cards

5 Little Cards


I laid down my sword today.
I traded it for 5 flimsey notecards.
Their blue stained threads have held many words,
But today they held my defense.

As my demons raged upon me my hand longed for the powerful grip of a sword.
But I timidly revealed 5 little cards to mine enemies.
And I read.

My past was dealt with at the cross.
No demon has strength over me.
My sins died a long time ago with my Saviour.
They did not raise with Him.
The enemy has no power.
He has only lies.

Today, I lowered ancient walls of fear and shame.
Walls I built to keep those who cared out, kept the enemy in.
They have fallen.
I have revealed myself to those who I struggled to hide from.
I have revealed myself to the enemy.

Before, all that was left was what I pretended to be.
But I am a Child of the King.
Nothing can stop that now,
My heart bleeds for only one.

The road ahead is long, but I will walk it with Your strength.
I know it will hurt and my hand will long for the sword again.
Instead, I will pull those 5 battered little note cards out.

I will fall.
But this time I will fall for You.
When the blood covers my eyes,
And I can no longer read what is written on those 5 cards.
I will speak softly to my enemy.
For those 5 little cards are written on my heart.


-Ty

(Thank you so much Jenn. I don't know how to say it any other way. Thank you)

Random Stuff I have discovered about me and the outside world.

These aren't in any real order. I just wrote them as the sifted out of my confused brain.


3 months of little to no sleep....really stinks.

When I am stressed and tired:
-my brain goes into neutral without telling me. Yeah...awkward.
-pencils are distracting.
-all voluntary control of the left eyelid is lost.
-stupid things are a big deal. The other day I forgot a spoon for my yogurt. I almost died. You would have thought I was an recovering bipolar patient on relapse. After a few minutes, I discovered that if you squeeze the yogurt container hard enough the yogurt comes out way faster than it ever did with a spoon. How fun is that.

When caffeine concentration reaches and/or exceeds blood plasma concentrations fun things happen; limbs move on their own accord, muscles you didn't know you had twitch, you forget your lunch box at home but remember in great detail the day your kindergarten teacher asked you to spell the word "car" in front of the class.

Worry is an abuse of imagination. I'm good at this one.

It hurts to cry for help.

50cc hedge trimmers should not be used by people who really like power tools.

There is no therapy for depression like old fashion pain.

If at all possible, move to maine and convince your boss that you melt when you get wet. Then you will get lots of days off. Unfortunately, some weeks ago I walked to my car and back into the garage while it was raining. My boss ran out to see which parts of me dissolved first. I work in the rain a lot now.

A mixture of caffeine, taurine, Dextromethorphan HBr, Pseudoephedrine HCI, sugar, acetaminophen makes the pain and the exhaustion go away...AND I can still drive.

I have way too much fun with industrial lawn equipment.

I drive a commercially registered vehicle, which means I can legally be stopped at any time and given a drug test...crap. My supervisor says I am a professional driver...really? Is that why everybody always waves at me while I'm driving?

They say love will always find you. Sigh. I guess love doesn't look under the bed...I'm screwed.

Shakira's song hips don't lie...is pathetic. Music has officially reached a new low.

People get mad at you when you drive on the wrong side of the road.

Gravity sucks.

Getting your Z-mower stuck in a ditch the size of the Grand Canyon because you somehow didn't see it coming really really stinks....yeah turned that afternoon into bundles of non-embarrassing fun.

I need to stop listening to the radio while I'm at work. All they play are baby I love you or baby how could I have lost you songs. Seeing as how the only baby I have is Danielle my car...I don't think these songs are constructive. I don't need to be singing my heart out wishing Danielle would come back to me. Most of them are just depressing anyway. I'll wait till I have someone to sing them to that could do more than grumble at me when I suck at shifting.

I've decided I do not want to work in a lab for my entire life. I've never heard of a Field Chemist...but by golly I'm gonna be one.

I need to get out of this country...Americans are starting to bug me.

Weddings are stressful.

Little old ladies who think they are God's gift to the stupid stress me out.

Lawn mowers, chronic exhaustion, emotional instability, and little children DO NOT MIX. There is a strange rarely seen part of you that is fed up with life the way it is and takes it upon itself to determine the casualty rate of a drive-by-mowing while the rest of you desperately tries to bury the aforementioned portion of your psyche. If you or anyone you know should find yourself in this position please do the following:
- disengage the blades
- proceed to the largest non-movable object and bash yourself silly. If not successful, repeat
until unconsciousness is obtain.

I don't like turning people's power off. It's my job so I do it. Most of the time I feel really bad when it ends up with me having to cut the power, but there are times when I don't really mind. There are those people who legitimately forget to pay or honestly don't have the cash. Then the situation is tough. There are those people though, who have 4 atvs parked out front, three sleds out back, a 45,000 dollar truck, two satellite dishes, a pool bigger than my house, a big screen tv so big you have to sit across the room to see the whole thing at once and lawn ornaments. Yeah no...sorry not feeling bad for you today. You can do all of the following and I still will turn off your power:
-pout
-smile
-offer me a drink
-offer me a beer
-start telling me about the renovations your doing to your house and how expensive they are.
not come to the door (funny thing is, I can pound on the door and have nobody answer, or better yet have somebody else come to the door and tell me the account holder isn't home and when I go turn off the meter WALA, the account holder appears out of thin air...its MAGIC)
- close all the blinds
-start yelling at your kids
-start yelling at me
-scream bloody murder at your poor innocent dog
-blame your spouse( most common one is: she has the check book)
-blame Bush
-blame me
-blame the ground I walk on
-Find new creative colorful ways to describe me
-give me "messages" for my boss
-you can come to the door in nothing but a towel and hope I'll be impressed enough to not disconnect you so you can finish your shower. (all you really succeeded in doing was giving me something to whistle about on the way outback to the meter)
-act surprised (right...your 950 dollars short on a 60 dollar a month bill...ya saw this one coming sister)

Yes, all of these things have been tried on me by actual customers. The worst one was when the person that came out in the towel was a nasty old guy. I just about barfed.

The Piece Too Deep

They lay all about my feet: yellow pieces, red pieces, green pieces, black pieces. The shards sparkled gold in the azure haze of dusk. They flared and dimmed their colors like so many coals left behind from a roaring fire. Somehow, they seemed familiar to me. I tried to put the pieces back together. This jagged edge to this one. The beveled rim lines up here. As I placed each piece gently back in place the one before it would loosen, then fall. I began to attempt to hold all the pieces in shape while adding new ones at the same time. I failed time after time. With each attempt I became more and more frustrated. I began to fear what would happen if I couldn't get them all in place. What would they think? I creased my forehead in effort as I added glue to each broken piece. Surprisingly, it held together. I slowly added glue to the edge of the last piece and put it in place. Perspiration lubricated my hands as they rung. It held. I began to notice something strange about the object I had just reconstructed. It was incomplete. There were pieces I had somehow missed. I scoured the floor searching for any sign of the forlorn shards. Confused, I paused a moment to take another look at the object. At that instant the glue gave way and the pieces exploded around the room. Tears began to flow. I threw myself to my knees and frantically started reassembling the object but now no piece would hold. The jagged edges soon found rest in my shaking hands. Blood flowed freely adding its dark hue to the radiant color about the shards. My anguished sobs must have wakened him. Father came into the room without a word. He picked up my shaking body and looked deep in those flowing eyes. "My child," He said, "Why are you trying to put the old pieces back together? Why not start anew? Shape them better than they ever were before." He gently laid me on the floor and cradled my pierced hands in His. "First though, we must remove these old shards." My Father gently grasped on one of the small shards and began to pull. Pain scattered every coherent thought I had. I clenched my fist driving the piece deeper into the palm. "NO!" I cried, "It hurts too much." "Yes," He whispered,” The deep ones often do, but you must unclench your fist before I can get them out. If they stay in infection will follow." I stared into His eyes wondering if this really was the only way. My now ribboned hand mirrored the broken shards. I wanted to tell him to go away. I could get these pieces out. I could put them all back together. I did it once, I could do it again...but in the reaches of His eyes I saw the answer. Some battles need not be fought alone. With one deep breath I uncurled my ravaged fingers. "I trust You."

-Ty

So tired.

Good ol' Northern Maine fun

The past several days have been intense. Friday night my boss gave me the night off so I got together with several of my boys and geared up for an evening of much needed northern Maine stupidity. We searched the county and found an older GMC truck that we bought for 150 bucks. The thing was a wreck...but we worked hard and got here running. Saturday we drove her out to the badlands (deep woods logging area with numerous dirt roads) where we were delighted to find another beater car dumped in the woods. We hot wired it, got her running and sent that poor honda flying down the road with the ol’tacoma close at her heels. We pulled over into a gravel pit to prep the cars for some off roading. After painting them both pink (because we can) we removed the windshields, most of the lights, any non essential features, and gassed them up. We then promptly got the tacoma stuck in a flippin' pond and spent till 5am Sunday morning pulling it out. After a few hours of sleep it was back into the woods for some hardcore northern maine rally car racing. The five of us piled in the two cars and bombed through logging roads bashing and drifting. In the midst of this I managed to mis-read the road and bash my head on the tacoma. I recieved the standard: mild concussion, big gash on the head, temporary loss of hearing you know...the normal. After having a buddy check out the wound it was deemed survivable. I tightened on my hat so as not to lose too much more blood, cleaned the blood off my glasses...and jumped back in. It was perhaps two hours later that we simultaneously crashed the GMC and tore open the fuel tank on the honda. Remember mind you we are miles away from my little berretta and my buddies' caddy. Miles of winding dirt roads with no cell reception. So, it was decided that I would start the walk back to the cars while the other guys worked on unframing the truck and trying to get it started. About an hour later they finally got it out and barely running. With my buddy sitting on the hood holding the serpentine belt on the pulley track they set off down the road pushing the honda in front of them. They picked me up and we slowly continued on our way back home. Once back at the gravel pit we beat the heck out of the truck. Including, in part, putting a large rock on the accelerator and standing back pouring .22 rounds into the radiator. After a few salvos, she blew the biggest cloud of steam I've ever seen into the cold air while melting nearly every plastic part anywhere near the block. Throughout the whole weekend our activities were interrupted by paintball guns, sling shots loaded with paintballs, spud guns, choice beverages and good ol' time toe cable. In short...I had an amazing weekend. I got absolutely nothing done that I was supposed to...and no sleep, but it was worth it.

(Please note: we are experienced in all of the above activites. Do not attempt off-roading, rallyracing, paintballing, or in general being retarded without proper adult supervision.)