In Memory of those who lost their lives on 9/11. You are not forgotten. God bless their familes as well as all of those who are serving our country.

None of the above apply to me. Oh sure, once in a great while I’ll spout off an ounce of wisdom, but that hardly offsets the metric ton of stupid I’ve pulled off in a lifetime.

One of the biggest dunce acts is not taking care of my health. I tend to push myself. I’ve always worked high-stress jobs, and more often than not, handled long commutes. Meanwhile, I fed myself caffine, sugar, and junk food. I learned how to live on adreneline very early in my life, when short sleep and cheap food was the norm. My health habits are awful. Exercise consisted of running amok.

So, after a youth spent in the wrong crowds, and then an adult life spent quickly in a desperate effort to make up for past mistakes, I ended up with a stuck accelerator. A collection of nagging, but seemingly unconnected health complaints, escalated for awhile until exhaustion and physical problems couldn’t be ignored. After many panels of blood work and medical tests, I’ve received a diagnosis that’s a big kick in the butt.

I had to make a treatment decision in a relatively short amount of time. The condition doesn’t have a cure, per se, though the symptoms and the related problems can be treated and managed. What it means, though, is for the rest of my life, I have a health “issue” that will require ongoing monitoring, and some degree of medication. I’m fortunate that this wasn’t an OMG diagnosis. The disease isn’t a death sentence; it’s more like being handed down 30 years of hard labor.

It’s been a sobering experience. Quality of life, something I took for granted a few short years ago, is now a day-by-day experience. Man, I’m glad I traveled as much as I did, in the past, and went to as many shindigs and goings-on as I could afford. Because life can change in a freaking eyeblink. Again, I’m glad the changes I face are not more serious. It’s enough, though, to make me do some heavy thinking.

I need to leave the corporate rat race. Stress played a role in where I’ve ended up physically, and my current gig is a pressure cooker. I need out, but in this economy there’s few places to go…and nowhere, it seems, that pays what I make now.

Now that I’ve had a wake up call ( like a gong falling down a brick staircase at 3 a.m.) I know that I need to make some Seriously Big Changes in my career. I’m talking an 180-degree turn. The big question is, do I have the raw guts it’s gonna take to leave a decent paycheck? The next big question, is…do I have a bloody choice? I don’t think my health is going to get better, staying where I work now. I know it’s not. In fact, it seems the height of stupidity to take time off for medical reasons, do a fairly edgy treatment, and then go right back into the same pressure cooker that helped flatten me to begin with. Smart, huh.

I share all this personal crap on my blog, because somewhere out there, one of y’all is going through the same kinda thing, or may face it in the future.

And for myself, this medical road is just beginning. I may not have it much easier as I go down this road. I could be fine…or I could have quality of life issues that affect me significantly. As of this writing, there is literally no telling. It’ll take weeks, maybe months, before the progress of the treatment I’ve selected will show.

With this being Unknown right now, it’s antagonizing to guess what my limits might be down the road. Frankly the biggest limit I have right now, is my temper, as thinking of that commute and that job makes me want to throw a chair through a window. Ooopsy, there’s that stress again…deep breath….

My short term plan is to go tearing down the road in the Impala and get a speeding ticket. How the rest goes, I’ll letcha know.

This just happened to me this week and I’m giving you the straight-up truth. The only reason it took a couple days for me to post about it, is I got sidelined with some other things. But this story needs to be told.

Last weekend I went to a county fair. There was a charity raffle near the main gate. I didn’t stop to look at it going in. Then I ended up running stuff back to the car and I stopped at the charity booth on my 2nd pass.

The charity was for the jail ministry. Bibles for convicts and all that. Counseling and spiritual services. Tell ya the truth, I didn’t really read though the whole spiel, I just pulled out five bucks and prepared to donate it.

The young woman watching the booth asked me if I wanted to buy raffle tickets. I looked at the prizes, being tickets to sports events, and said, “Nah, I’ll just donate.”

“The grand prize is $500,” she pointed out. I still didn’t really care, as I figured the odds of wining were such that I shouldn’t hold my breath. But then a thought occurred to me, and I answered thus:

“Oh, why not. Gimmie the tickets. If I win, I can donate even more.” We both chuckled, and I added that donating half back would still leave me with a nice prize.

I put my entries in the jar with the others. After leaving the booth and getting involved in the fair for 8 hours, I forgot all about the raffle.

Two days later I got a phone call from the prison chaplin. I’d won the $500. And you know what was running through my mind?

I though that my words must have went up pretty high, and now they were going to be put to the test, know what I mean? So I was happy I’d won, but also a little freaked out at the same time. Who has their words turn out this way?

My prize check is in the mail. I will be sending $250 back to that charity. It’s a good cause, and I’m happy to do it.

I’ve heard of speaking things into existence, but wow.

I’m still waiting for the repairs to be done on my ‘67 Chevy Impala. Still. They’ve had the car for a month, and at this rate, I’m cutting my fix-it list short and pulling it out after they finish the current task.

In the laundry list of Stuff That Needed Fixing, the rear end of the Impala was too low due to worn-out springs and shocks. Not a surprise, since I used this car as a moving van a few years ago. I had to wait for the parts, as finding springs for a car like this isn’t easy these days. I believe the current set of springs are from a tractor, come to think of it. Anyway, I need these huge-ass springs to keep the huge ass of my car up.

When the mechanic was explaining all this, I told him to go ahead and put the rear of the car a bit higher up, and give it more of the hot-rod stance. But while looking at the car tonight ( which is parked outside of the garage) I kinda liked the straight-line look it has. I might tell them just to keep the overall stance high and not worry about the raised rear.

I’m afraid though, that if I change the specs too much, I’ll end up with something like this:

At this point I just want the car back. Even if I need a ladder to get into the thing.

I was looking at a bar website to see if my favorite local band was playing there soon. It’s a biker-friendly bar, so they had links to other biker-friendly bars, and ya know what happens when you keep following links, right? I ended up on a tattoo website. I’m used to seeing mean-looking tattoos (I’ve been in some rough dives) but this one takes the cake. Or rather, the ice cream:

Wonder if this guy hangs out at Dairy Queen. I might get this photo made into a fridge magnet, it’d probably keep everybody out of the ice cream. Beware the Bad Humor man!

I recently returned from a short road trip that involved an overnight stay. The hotel we had wasn’t that great, and the experience jogged my memory of all the roadside dives I’ve ever stayed at. For fun, I’m gonna list a few here, which have been re-named to protect (somewhat) the establishments. Here we go, in no particular order:

Howard’s Johnson: Yes, there’s a reason I spelled it like that. Forget family-friendly; this HoJo in Madison featured condom machines in the lobby restrooms, and “adult entertainment” guides in the guest rooms. Advertisements included the reknown Geisha Bath House in Madison, along with an adult superstore and a strip club. The hallways had a funky smell, the mattresses were wore out ( from what, there’s no question) and a couple of the towels had stains on them. The good news is, it was cheap. The bad news – it was too cheap.

The Dirty Sock – this quaint mom & pop hotel was somewhere near Oblivion, Indiana. (That’s my name for the town, and it’s not far off the mark.) The place looked cute enough on the outside, and it was late and I was too tired to drive anymore. It was too dark to question the place much. Only after walking around on the carpet in my white socks did I realize how dirty the place was. The feet of my socks turned black. Not like, grey with a little fuzz, but asphalt black, as if I’d just run outside in them for two months.

The Gas Meter: This interstate bailout was found along a lonely stretch of Ohio. I’d been driving through bad traffic, and fatigue compelled me to stop for the night rather than push on further. There wasn’t much to pick from in this area, and I tried to pick the lesser of the two rat holes. This placed seemed ok, but the scent of natural gas from the furnace was strong. It was everywhere. The room was closed up enough that it wasn’t as bad in there, but all the same I left the room window open a crack, despite it being cold outside. I was grateful the place didn’t blow up while I slept.

The Rug Stain: Dried blood is dried blood, and if this old wooden motel was in the city I would have slept in the car instead. But it was “up north” in a very rural area, and it was another situation where there was nothing else for 70 miles around. The motel was a seasonal-use dive that appealed to fishermen and deer hunters. Outside of the rug stains, the cobwebs, and the errie, silent darkness, there was nothing wrong with the place.

The Crime Scene: Folks, the moral of this story is, don’t keep driving until you’re so desperate that you’ll stay somewhere truly awful. Well, we did just that, coming home from Michigan during a hellacious snowstorm. The interstate was a field of white, it was after 11 p.m., and we were unable to tell where the road was anywmore. There was no other traffic to speak of; even the semi’s were pulling off. We bailed out at the next exit and took the only motel we saw. It was a decrepit Super 8 and the hotel check-in cleck was behind bullet-proof glass. It had the signs of a drug hotel, but sleeping in the car would have meant freezing to death and the roads were impassible. This was the scariest damn hotel I’d ever been in. The room didn’t have a working heater. We slept with our clothes on, and barricaded the door. We could hear people walking past our door, back and forth, as if waiting for one of us to pop out for ice. Hell no, pop out for ice, and we’d be iced, I had a feeling. We got up at 4:30 a.m. , and seeing that the snow had stopped, we got the hell out.

The Fixer-Upper: A rainstorm in southern Illinios made driving through one-lane construction detours a living nightmare. We bailed out upon seeing a nice-looking Whatever Inn and booked a room. The place looked fine until we got to the hallway leading to our room, and found it tore up, no carpeting, and extension cords running the length of the hall. The place was in the middle of major renovation, but they didn’t tell you that at the check-in desk. The room itself was ok, but dated and musty. The worst thing was, the bare hallway had other hotel guests confused, and about 2:00 a.m. three drunk bikers were trying to use their key in our door, and were pulling and rattling on the doorknob. They finally figured out they had the wrong room and wandered off. The only reason I know that it was an honest mistake and not a deliberate attempt at robbery, was the fact that they could’ve busted the flimsy door off it’s hinges, if real determination had been in their minds.

Ah, travel. I enjoy it, but these days I’m a lot pickier about my hotels. Though sometimes I still get surprised to the negative, such as the Howard’s Johnson.

One of my favorite songs, for the lyrics. Enjoy this meaningful RUSH tune.

Candy for all you tough-types.

I’ve been offended.

Because after years of hard work, sacrificies, difficult changes and assorted hell, I’d managed to buy a house three years ago. Got one just before the market went to hell and loans became impossible.

Most of my money in recent years has went into the house for one project or another. Then I got a new job with a longer commute that made a new car necesssary. I bought a modest new car during the “cash for clunkers” thing and got a pretty good deal, zero percent interest on the loan, ect. Still, it’s a car payment and higher car insurance premiums on top of having a mortgage payment, ect.

So my 1967 Chevy Impala has been silently rotting in my driveway. I got the weatherstripping all replaced last year, but the car hasn’t run right in two years. It needs more work than I had money to throw at it, or time to worry about, and there it sits.

Turns out, that’s a crime in this town.

I got the infamous “knock at the door” early last Saturday morning. One of my neighbors complained about an “abandoned car” sitting “junked” in my driveway.

The cop was nice enough about it. Apologetic, even. I have to get the car running, or at least get a tarp to throw over it, so it doesn’t offend the artistically sensitive eyes of one of my neighbors.

I’m a good neighbor. I don’t blast loud music. I don’t have wild parties. I don’t have screaming kids, ferocious dogs, or an electric fence. But some sonofabitch with nothing else to do but look through his window at my house, is giving me shit.

Another possibility is, somebody’s mad because I keep refusing to sell the car. I’ve had people just walk up to me and other members of my household out of the blue and offer cash for that car. The answer, of course, is always a polite but firm “No.”

Maybe somebody thinks that by causing me trouble, I can be encouraged to sell the car. Not on your life, bub.

Whatever the motivation behind the complaining party, he or she is gonna rue the day they ever said a damn word.

Because this 67 Impala has just been bumped way up my priority list. I’m going to get that engine not just fixed, but souped up to the extent my bank account can handle. I’m going to get bigger rims and bigger tires. I’m going to put the loudest and highest performance exhaust system on that car that money can buy. I’m going to paint it, fix the interior, and put in an excellent stereo system with an amplifer and a big box bass.

And then I’m gonna roar this thing up and down my street. I’m going to leave so much rubber on the road, there’ll be no need to pave it. If there’s a day I don’t plan to take the car out, I’ll at least start the motor and let it idle in the driveway, revving it as if I’m gonna plow through a house.

I’ll be sure and hit the Dixie horn two, maybe three times a day.

Be careful what you wish for, neighbor. There is no junk car in my driveway. There is only a 67 Impala that was once asleep; you have just ensured it’s awakening.

A couple months ago, my cousins and I picked up a rental car for a trip “up north.” We’d won the use of the rental car free of charge, at a local dealership shindig.

They gave us this thing, a 2010 Buick Lucerne. Black with chrome trim. It had about 300 miles on it. If that.

I immediately called my insurance company to make sure I was fully covered if I drove the thing. I wasn’t gonna fool around with a $45,000 car. Finding I was good to go, we gleefully packed the thing and headed off on our weekend trip.

Driving this thing felt great. It was kinda like Cinderella’s carriage; beautiful, but I’d be back in my own pumpkin in three days. I made the most of it, though. Leather seats, all the buttons you could stand to push, gadgets galore, and a smooth, solid ride. Plush, fast, and just mean enough looking to be taken seriously, this Buick was an elegant highway war machine.

It felt great to pull this thing up to the resort we were staying at. Doormen lept to assistance, offering to take our bags. Mind you there’s times I’ve pulled up to this place in our nondescript cars and didn’t get that kind of enthusiasm.

I noticed that people did treat us differently in this car. On the highway, other cars moved over so I could pass; people didn’t cut me off ; people didn’t park so close. We were given a wide berth and treated more deferentially than usual.

The moral of this story is…people do judge you and your worth by what you drive. I’ve suspected this for years, after suffering harrassment by law enforcement for driving beaters most of my life. But at no time was it as proven, or apparent, as when I was driving this thing.

In my daily commute, I drive a 2009 Pontiac G5. It’s the first brand new car I’ve ever bought for myself, in my life. It’s a good little car, and I like it. On the freeway, however, it’s not taken seriously. People cut me off. They swoop up on my bumper and try to push me down the road. Most drivers along my route are fairly decent, but in the most aggressive rush hours, this little Pontiac is not the war machine that big Buick is. Not that the Pontiac doesn’t serve me well; it does.

What you drive makes a difference, though. I’m convinced.