Veni Vidi Vici

Wow, Do you guys get bored on Christmas day? After all of the hoopla has died down and absolutely nothing is open. What does everybody do? I took a nap, and watched some old stuff on TV. It sounds to me like a good time to go downtown and spend some time away from our farm.

My beautiful wife Toni

Way back when times were great and nobody was even thinking about this recession, people were buying real estate and flipping it and making tons of money. I hopped on that train as well. I bought a high rise condo in midtown Atlanta. I paid a premium for it and within two weeks the equity had shot through the roof. Trump announced that he was building one of his famous high rises right next to our building. The plans had been laid out to revitalize the street that our condo was on. It was going to rival the magnificent mile in Chicago. I was ecstatic and we were rolling in it. THEN.....the bubble popped, Trump pulled out and before long we were upside down just like most everybody else. Who would have ever guessed that real estate was a bad investment? Well, I am telling you that it wasn't my best decision. Flash forward to 2013 and we still have the condo. The market still smells like a giant waste pit and we would be absolutely foolish to sell it at these prices. So, we come down here every so often and enjoy our "investment" and all of the culture of midtown.

Actually, the area is coming back and there is a lot of things to do. There are plenty of nice restaurants and shopping, and the High Museum, and Piedmont Park etc... There are a lot of cool people and the atmosphere around here is great. It is almost like we all have this special bond, you know like we all rode out a storm together or something. I am not sure that the storm is entirely over, but I hope we have all proved that we can weather these rough times.

Headed to Midtown

Today, we decided to come down and leave West Georgia behind. We needed to get away and get some more restaurant choices other than the local mexican eateries and fast food. We decided to eat at Veni Vidi Vici.    This is a great Italian restaurant that is part of the Buckhead Life group of restaurants, and rest assured that Buckhead Life does it right. I know this is not a 5 star, but it is close enough for me!!  Check out some of the pictures and pray that I can exercise some of these calories off tomorrow.

Super Tuscan and a cheese plate

Everything is Delicious

Veal cutlet and Ossobucco

Rosco and Lolli

This is a story about the two most unlikely of friends. Please bear with me as a little background and character development is needed. As some of you know, We live out in the country and we have a lot of animals. Specifically, 2 horses, 22 cows, 2 guinea, 7 cats, and 4 dogs. Three of the dogs live inside with us and lately we have added one of the cats to our indoor pets. This is about one of our dogs and our indoor cat. Rosco and Lolli. Rosco is a chocolate lab and lolli is a black and white 3 legged house cat.
We have always had several pets, but after our retired police dog "Shana" passed we were slowly getting out of the pet business. We only had the 2 horses and one dog "Sassy". There is a back story to how we got all of our pets and someday I will bore you with how we got back full time into our pets. I was very sad about Shana and I did not want any more pets. However, God had some different plans for me.
One day I was out doing hill repeats on my trusty cannondale (not a fun thing to do at all), and I noticed a funny squeaking noise coming from my bike on the descents. After about the third repeat I figured out that the noise wasn't my bike at all it was some type of animal that was very close to the road. Apparently, as I was huffing and puffing up the hill I was drawing attention to myself by some sort of critter! The more hill repeats I did I become more intrigued with what and where this noise was coming from.
When I finished my last repeat I had determined that someone had trapped a coyote and it was suffering badly. I had nothing to deal with this situation on my bike so I rode home. I told my son Jason about it and instructed him to take a gun and if it was a trapped coyote deal with the situation appropriately. I do not like such endeavors, but we have a lot of coyotes where we live and they can be a problem. I generally do not care for taking something else's life, but if it was a suffering wild animal it was the only thing to do. Jason and I have had to face several of these situations before. I took my shower and waited on Jason to return with a description of the events. When I saw his face I know something was wrong. He told me and Toni to look on the porch. There was a small chocolate labrador puppy. I was not a happy camper. I did not want another pet, but Toni had been bitten by the puppy bug, and a labrador puppy at that.
Cutest damn bug to be bitten by in my estimation. Jason said that the reason the puppy was making so much noise was that someone had wrapped him in barbed wire and put him on a fire ant hill. Yup, you read that right, there are some seriously messed up individuals in this world, and in this seventh circle of hell that we live in called West Georgia there are some real winners! This is how Rosco came into our lives. Rosco is the happiest dog in the world he brightens every day. He is now a part of our family.

He was this small for about 2 weeks

The story of Lolli is equally sad and happy. You know how cats love to get under the hoods of cars. Yep, thats right. One of our cats had a litter of kittens and she chose to keep them very close to where we park our cars. I suspected that a kitten would eventually find it's way under a tire or on a motor one day, so I was especially careful because I knew that would be hard to explain to Toni or a big vet bill or both. I had a ritual of tapping all of the tires with a stick and honking the horn etc.. All to no avail. One bright and sunny day, after the ritual, I hop into my Cadillac and proceed to back out ever so slowly. One inch at a time until I hear that unmistakable shriek from a kitten stuck where it was not supposed to be. Toni happened to be outside at the time, and she heard it too. I stopped immediately, but the shrieking did not. I inched forward for fear that that kitten was under a tire. It wasn't. The kitten was sitting inside the wheel and it got caught up in the brakes somehow. Toni saw the kitten run out, so we assumed all was well. We were wrong. We found him with his brothers and sisters and everything looked fine.

UNTIL .... the next morning when Toni went to feed the cats. She noticed one with a really screwed up paw. Somehow this kitten had managed to get his paw stuck in the brake caliper and it was mangled beyond all repair. I proceeded to chop off his leg with an axe...... Just kidding. We took him to the vet and they said we had two choices, put him down or amputate his leg. That was not even a choice to be made. Since a three legged cat wouldn't stand much of a chance out here, we knew that he was about to become an inside cat for somebody. That somebody was us.
If you have seen the YouTube video of Rosco and Lolli (part 1) you know how he got his name Lolli. If not you should check it out. You see, for some reason, Rosco had a very strange association with Lolli. They are the best of friends. From day one of bringing Lolli back home from the vet, Rosco has had nothing for him but love. He licks him and cleans him as if he were his mother. He licks him so much we said that he was Rosco's lollipop. Thus the very un-masculine name of Lolli stuck with this cat.

Out of the Closet Finally

The car business is always slow this time of year, and I am not one to sit around and watch talk shows all day, although I do enjoy "The Ellen Degeneres Show". So, I decided to turn our seldom used Florida room into a cedar closet for my wife Toni (mindoverbatter.us).
The first decision was the overall look of the closet. We chose cedar paneling with some cedar planks as trim and accents. For the shelving, we wanted to go with something white to brighten up the space and maybe put in a couple of windows for natural light.

We framed up the space on 16" centers and installed our paneling. The ceilings are 9 feet so the 8 foot panels left some unsightly joints at the top near the ceiling. We installed some 8" planks topped off with 4" for some aesthetic appeal.

The second decision was what type of flooring to go with. We decided on a laminate floor system so we could allocate more funds towards the cedar and the actual shelving. Although we are not really on a budget, Toni and I try to be as frugal as possible (my Amex bill says otherwise). We should have gone with an actual wood floor. This floating system is just not good at all. The joints don't lock in and depending on the relative humidity you can see small to large separations of the panels. The installation was fairly straightforward. First,  Jason (my son) and I taped down a 6 mil plastic moisture barrier then we installed the underlayment which was plastic with small styrofoam like balls. This acts as another moisture barrier and helps deaden the sound when walking. I can not stress this enough, but make sure the floor is CLEAN. Remember the princess and the pea? same effect here. Trash under you flooring will cause you big problems later. Once the underlayment was installed, it was time for the flooring itself. The flooring panels are simulated wood but reminded me a lot of a jigsaw puzzle, both in fit and composition. These production pieces simply did not fit together well at all. For every two or three pieces that were perfect there were one or two that were twisted or contorted and were a nightmare to fit. Unless you wanted your material cost to be quadruple as you discard the odd pieces, you are forced to live with a substandard floor.


Once the flooring was in it was time for the cabinets and shelving. We went with some sturdy mounted melamine and some crown moulding themed shoe racks. We will probably put in some more shelves and possibly a table depending on what Toni wants against the wall with the windows. As you can see, it needs something.

My Wife may have a shoe problem

All in all, I think the trim and paneling turned out nicely. I regret the flooring choice. Time will tell if I have to rip out the cabinets and reinstall some real wood flooring?????

Staying active and falling apart

I have been having some back trouble for about three years now. The symptoms change depending on my level of activity (or inactivity). More activity seems to make my back feel "better". I am learning that better is a relative term for me.

I started trying to find out what was wrong about three years ago when I went to this orthopedic doctor. He did lots of x-rays and prescribed physical therapy. This helped. Maybe not from the specific exercises I think it was getting better just based on an increase in activity. The doctor at that time thought it might be ankylosing spondylitis. I thought holy cow man that sounds bad. I guess it really is. If I understand it correctly, your spine gradually fuses together and you can't move it at all. It happens over time so you gradually get more and more immobile. Of course, this is accompanied by a decent amount of pain as well.
After a while the orthopedic guy decided that I should go see a specialist ( I thought he was a specialist) and he recommended that I see a rheumatologist. After I spent a load of money with her she couldn't decide if it was rheumatoid arthritis or A.S. (ankylosing spondylitis). I thought at the time that if I had to chose I would chose the arthritis. I really did not know about this disease either (still am not an expert). She just wanted to keep testing me and I finally bailed on her. I requested my medical records from both doctors and figured I couldn't be much worse off without these guys. I have since read over the notes from the rheumatologist and there was a lot of stuff in there that we never discussed. I mean, she stated in her reports that we had some conversations regarding treatment and the effects of certain medications etc., problem was we never had those conversations. She was just putting that stuff in there to cover her tail in case something went wrong. What a peach of a doctor huh?

I have not gone to a doctor specifically for my back since then (just about 1.5 years). The fundamental of staying active still persists. As long as I keep moving, I seem to be somewhat normal. I mean, I look like an eighty year old man getting out of bed in the mornings and after a long drive. However, I can still do most everything that I want. Funny thing is that cycling doesn't seem to hurt it. You would think that being bent over in that "C" shape for hours on end would absolutely kill me, but it is just the opposite. Cycling seems to keep my spine somewhat loose.

I keep a check on my blood samples for the usual stuff any aging adult should, but I add a test for Rheumatoid factor. Normal is less than 14 and my last test was 27. My symptoms seem to be heading towards rheumatoid arthritis. After doing a decent amount of research online it looks like this is not fun to have either. I am pretty bummed out about it and am not looking forward to going back to the doctor for this problem (another doctor of course). The treatment options look as scary as the disease and I am wondering (seriously) about just keeping my head in the sand and just staying as active as I can. Not sure what to do???? I thought that ALL my aches and pains were just a fact of life and a sign of me getting older. Seems a lot of them are a direct result from this rheumatoid thing.

LUCKY ME!!!