While I'm Thinking About It

Picture Me Giving The Middle Finger To the IRS...


I spent the ENTIRE DAY FRIDAY, after spending parts of several other days in the past couple of months, finishing our personal and business tax returns.

The gift that keeps on giving...starting a Tennessee Corporation...and electing "Sub chapter S" Tax status...continues to make me crazy with Federal and State forms and filings and other crap in spite of the fact that...

The company operated at a nearly $6,000 deficit in 2009, and we didn't hire and directly pay any employees in the calendar year.

Yet the State of Tennessee and the Imperial Federal Government of the By God United States of 'Merica demands that I pay things like a $100 "Franchise Tax" (although I don't have a Franchise) and file forms like 940 and 941 telling them that I don't owe unemployment tax and I didn't pay wages so I don't owe FICA and FUTA taxes and so on.

If the government assholes would get the hell out of everyone's way and stop acting like we work for them as slaves and that every dollar we earn is their money until we can prove otherwise I say things would improve a lot faster in the economy...without STIMULUS PORKULUS...

That will be all...for now...

I'm A Traveling Fool

Busy Month...


OK, get this story.

I have to get to Atlanta on Sunday for an informal meeting with a client Sunday night before a Forensic Engineering investigation in a Chiller Plant Monday, then I come back home to the Turbo Pup Compound on the Banks of the Mighty Tennessee River on Tuesday.

No problem.

I've done things like that hundreds of times before.

But then hardly before I can catch my breath and lay around being a bum for a couple of days I have to turn around and head BACK to Atlanta on Thursday afternoon with Pat and the Turbo Pup so she (Pat...not the Turbo Pup) can meet with a hospital client on Friday.

And then late Friday afternoon I'll be bringing two females with me (Pat and Missy the Turbo Pup)to an event in the North Georgia Mountains with a bunch of guys I went to High School with--loosely called "MANCAMP." They're all bunking on the floor and sofas and bedrooms in one house owned by one of the attendees/sponsors, while we'll be residing in luxury in our own 2 bedroom log cabin nearby.

Then there's still the trip to Baltimore to be done in the next week or so and there's another trip to South Carolina for Pat's business...again extending over a weekend with my old College roommate, and when it's all said and done...

...I'd say that our own economy is recovering here at the Turbo Pup Compound on the Banks of the Mighty Tennessee River...

in SPITE of the government (which caused me to work all day yesterday finishing TAX FORMS instead of blogging.)

E*Trade Baby Out-takes

I Actually Use TD Ameritrade...But They're Still Cute




Heh...

I'm Ready To Do Stuff Like This

Except They'd End Up Locking ME Up...


For reference purposes, I keep a copy of the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights on my desk in my office. I also have a machine sewn 9' wide American Flag hanging on the wall across from my desk that I look at most of each and every day.

If I had the time and money I'd go back to college and get a degree in US History, except for the fear that I'd end up killing half of my classmates and 99% of my professors in a fit of liberal revisionist homo hetero negro African American commie pinko socialist historical progressive hating rage.

Thus I celebrate guys like this taking the lead in my absence at "town hall" meetings...





All I can say is "Amen"...Brother...people in government are at best uninformed, and in many cases shear IDIOTS...

My Turbo Pup Wants One Of These

Modern Canine Technology




Heh...

Back In The Saddle Atlanta Again

More Broken Stuff...


I've been running around the Turbo Pup Compound this week trying to clean up a bunch of details because I'm heading back down to Atlanta this weekend on another Forensic Injuneering adventure next week.

As my friends and long time readers know, I have somewhat of a love/hate relationship with the city of Atlanta and the "Atlanta Metropolitan Area", having lived there for 24 years beginning in 1977 while attending Georgia Tech and moving north to Smyrna and Marietta and Vinings.

I got to see the little big city go from 1.4 million people up to over 4 million in population, and in the process become something culturally and socially and politically beyond the scope of which I want to deal with on a daily basis.

I moved to Florida and then on to an Island on the Georgia Coast...and now I live here in Tennessee on the banks of the Mighty Tennessee River in order to get away from the traffic and noise and confusion associated with the town I at first loved and ended up hating.

But next Monday morning about 10 AM I'll be standing in a boiler room looking at something that broke--and fortunately didn't kill anyone--and possibly visit with a few old friends Sunday and Monday night in the process.

I can hardly wait to get there...and at the same time I can hardly wait to get back home...

The Things Going On In My Basement

When I Don't Have Time To Make My Own Drink


I'm building one of these...




Four valve rebuilds in process...with eight more arriving today, so I have little time to write....Y'all have a LOVELY day...if you will...

(thanks for the link Rodg)

The First Day Of The Rest Of My Life

Remembering Not To Forget...


On this morning on the calendar in 2001 I was waking up in a motel room homeless, with virtually everything I owned either chared black, else sitting within the four walls of that rented space or contained inside the confides of my old Chevy Suburban.

Turns out I still had a Weber Kettle Grill and my old Nissan Maxima were still intact, but everything else looked like this:













The old 1966 house wasn't fancy, but I owned it (stole it for next to nothing out of an estate foreclosure when I needed a place to stay while getting divorced...I know...too much information)

Hey...don't laugh at it...that house had a $4,000 surround sound stereo TV media room in the basement den...you got to have your priorities straight...

I was nearly finished renovating it--new roof, new soffits & fascia and exterior paint, and if it wasn't brick on four sides it would have collapsed because the kitchen and master bedroom crashed into the basement after they put the fire out.

My personal and professional life was about in similar conditions, and so today you can understand why I feel like a good deal of healing has taken place since then--especially when I don't even remember to write about the event until the day after it occurred nine years later.

There's some people out there that still won't speak to me because of things that happened when my spirit was also descending into the depths and catching on fire like my house, but all I can do is say "I'm sorry" and keep on moving forward...

things are just as positive now as they were negative then, and I'm dang sure happy to still be here "after the fire."

On The Seventh Day He Rested He Rented A Lawn Tiller

Beat To Death By A Gasoline Engine...


So I know it's sacrilegious (or possibly semi-sacrilegious)to do yard work on Sunday, but at the risk of earning myself a lightning bolt on Easter Sunday afternoon I got off my butt and went up to Home Depot and brought home a medium sized lawn tiller.

I couldn't stand waiting any longer and with the weather forecast changing from rain on Saturday and Tuesday to sunny and mid eighty's through the rest of the week I felt like I had to get the garden and tomato plots tilled up before the ground set up like concrete.

Since it was 2 PM on Sunday afternoon Home Depot has a policy of letting you keep their rental tools until 9 AM the next morning for the half day rate.

Yeah...RIGHT...after only TWO hours of hanging on to the infernal machine I had everything I deemed reasonable busted up and I loaded that sucker back up in the car and tossed it back in the front door of the store and ran as fast as I could in the other direction.

It basically whipped my butt in the process, but working in ten or fifteen minute torture sessions I was able to get a 36' x 10' area and two 8' x 12' areas dug up about 8" deep.

My hand's and forearms have had it, and if 8" isn't deep enough according to the experts, let the experts come over and bring their tiller and they can have at it.

So any way, it's still a little risky to plant certain crops here at the Turbo Pup Compound now because we still have a couple of weeks of frost possible, but I'm tossing a couple of store bought tomato plants into the ground any way and sewing some carrots around their bases for ground cover.

Meanwhile down in the basement I have a bunch of tomato and pepper seeds already germinating and I'm planting some more Herb seeds like Mint in egg cartons that don't have to be out until May today.

I guess it's time now to take a couple more Tylenol and go lay back down on the heating pad.

Y'all have a LOVELY week now...

A Muppet Easter Bunny?

"Don't Stand By Me"





Heh...

Easter

I'm Taking The Day Off...


I hope everyone has a chance to go to church today if they want, visit with family, watch the kids chase around looking for eggs and stuff, and generally take pause to remember all of the people in all of the places in the world who are afraid to practice their religion in public and end the day just happy to have not had a bomb blow up in their front yard or a bullet pass through their bedroom wall.

I know I'm glad to live here, in spite of the idiots in Washington DC, rather than in Europe or Ethiopia or Iran/Iraq.

Little Kids in Afghanistan wouldn't know what to do if their only worry in life was waking up this morning and finding a basket with fake green grass full of colored eggs and candy.

It's too bad so many Godless people here hate the country we've spent over 200 years building...somehow feeling guilty because we've worked hard and have it so good...and do everything they can to tear us down and make us equal to France and England and even Russia.

But since it's Easter I'm going to stop writing now (because I'm probably by and large preaching to the choir) and go back to my first paragraph...

Hope you have a Happy Easter...