Hi friends and nosey people,

I hope you had a good Christmas.

I had to work a coupe of hours on Christmas Eve day and then I had business to take care of. I had been hearing some noises from the fireplace during the night and I realized that something had moved in. It was starting to bother me a little so I finally decided to take care of the problem .

I went to Home Depot and bought some wire mesh material to put around the top of the chimney where the end cap vent type thing is and also picked up a fire log at the grocery store.

I went home & lit the fire. I wanted whatever was in there to have a chance to get out so I waited about an hour before I went up and put the screen material around where it was getting in.

I went to my garage and got the ladder which I keep hanging sideways on the wall on a couple of large nails.

First I leaned it on the patio cover that I built a few years ago and then climbed up and pulled the ladder up and leaned it on the chimney and climbed up there and installed the screen material with some bailing wire. It took a few minutes but I wanted to be careful not to fall.

Now is when the plot thickens.

When I came back down fromt the patio cover I found a hunting arrow that was very loosely lodged in the ground. I figured that some idiot was doing target practice and shot it over the fence by mistake. I climbed back up the ladder and again pulled it up on the patio cover so I could climb high enough to get a good look. I then walked around on the top of my roof also but still didn't see any sign of a target or where it may have come from.

I then climbed back down & when I got off the ladder the second time, I found a second arrow in about the same spot but it wasn't lodged in the ground from the same agle. I figured that I would have seen it before so someone was shooting right now and was either playing a sick joke on me or just a bad shot.

I decided to take the arrows and walk around the block and start looking in back yards and knocking on doors. I won't lie, I was pretty fired up and wanted to have a word with whoever was shooting arrows in my back yard. Those Muther F#@%ERs!

I changed clothes real quick so I would look presentable to the neighbors from around the block since I had never met any of them and I went out through the garage and opened the garage door and got in the car.

Then I rembered something. Sometime back there was a guy at work that was going to throw away some arrows and he gave them to me instead. I have a bow that I keep up on the garage wall above where the ladder is. The bow was still up there and the third arrow was also.

Apparantly the arrows had fallen onto the ladder and had fallen off one at a time when I was raising and lowering the ladder.

I calmed down and went back inside and had a diet coke and enjoyed the fire for a few minutes and haven't heard any critters since then.

Happy Festivus, Good Golf, Good Tennis, Bow and arrow target practice, Or what ever blows your skirt up.

THanks,

Marc

2001, A Technical Odyssey

2001 may sound futuristic to some folks but not to the kids thesedays. That is about when my computer was built and I have a dial-up connection.

I don't have an Ipod or a Zune. No Blackberry or DVD Burner. No Cable TV either.

It is one of my soon to be New Years resolutions to get caught up with some of the current technology.

I want to have a new computer so I can do some home recording to make a new CD & I hope to get a faster Internet Connection also.

We will see how it goes.

I did just get a digital TV a couple of weeks ago when my 14 year old Toshiba went out. I bought an off brand one this time and it seems to work just fine. I never new there were alternative broadcasts for Channels 2, 11, 13, & also the pbs station.

I do want to thank Micheal-Ann & Gordy for helping me by converting my DVD tracks so that they can be uploaded to Youtube and other Internet sites. Very kind people in deed. Also, Eric who offered to help also. He is the guy who converted the songs on my CD to MP3s so I could put them on the Myspace Bands Page.