Yeah, that’s the sound I heard right before shouting quite loudly after Corbin did a backwards “hop” right in to my bare foot. I was just sitting their minding my own business, well that’s not entirely true. I was actually laughing while watching Corbin do what he calls the “booty dance”. I have no idea where he got it from but he sticks his butt out behind him and then hops backwards like a rabbit in reverse.

The problem was that I was too busy laughing to see that he was coming right at me and wasn’t paying attention himself. I wasn’t even sure which toe(s) were hurt at first because there was a general numbness to my entire foot. But after a few minutes, it became pretty clear…

I thought it was broke at first, but after a few days I was able to walk pretty normal on it. Now that it’s been about a week, the color is “almost” back to normal. In fact just about an hour ago, it was so much better I forgot about its current status and kicked a football to Shalen across the back yard. It uh, kind of hurts again…

After weeks of trying to get a good shot of one of these crazy birds, I finally snapped this one a few days ago perched up at the top of our TV antennae. It was rattling away at the antennae and making quite a racket while doing so. I don’t know a thing about woodpeckers, so I don’t know if this is actually common. If you have some insight on the subject, let us know! Why would they DO this?

Suddenly, I find out today that my brother Jim and his wife Cammi lost their house and EVERYTHING within while they were away at work yesterday. A fire gutted their home. Gone… House… Clothes… Pictures… Personal Items…

I know that at some point, both he and I will look back at this point in time and think about how much those around us helped out, smile a little inside, and think about how glad we are to be wherever we are at that point. But right now it stinks.

Jim has hands down gone through more (a LOT more) drama in life than I have, and I really feel terrible about his situation right now. I’m sure he’ll hear all the normal things over the coming weeks such as “at least no one was hurt” or “it could have been worse, the garage could have gone up too and you would have lost your Harley.” But none of that will lessen the sting right now. I know they are going to be hurting for a while…

Jim and Cammi, you are loved by many. We are all thinking of you. Jim, I pray for you more than you know and I will continue to. Keep your chins up.

With love…

On Tuesday of this past week I found out that I was no longer gainfully employed. This is the second time in 18 months, but this time’s a little different. 18 months ago, the company that I had worked at for the previous 10 1/2 years was closing its doors. I was simply a casualty of war. As much as it hurt, there wasn’t much reason to take it personally. Last week was the first time that I’ve been dismissed from a company that is going to move on without me.

Now to clarify, I don’t blame them for making the decision. I don’t. The business model coupled with the drying up of client based work (and income) made the company take a good hard look at what was essential and what could be outsourced. When you take those factors in connection to my salary, there was a big red arrow pointing at me. I of course didn’t want to see it coming, so I didn’t. I tend to think on the optimistic side no matter what and I’m not going to stop now…

I will find work. Soon. In the meantime, maybe I’ll post here a little more often. Too bad it’s not spring. I’d ask dad to go fishing…

We were the best of friends through our late teens and twenties (my mom called us two peas in a pod), but somewhere along the course of us working together, worshiping together, and playing together, our lives took separate paths. I don’t think we talked to each other more than a dozen times during the last year we lived in the same town, and it’s sad that it happened the way it did.

Every now and then, someone we both knew asks, “Oh man, what’s ol’ Shemp up to these days?” and I quietly reply that I don’t know. I always get the exact same look, the one that you’d expect to see on the face of someone who just found out that a close family member died. I add that I haven’t heard from him in over 8 years. But you know what? He hasn’t heard from me either…

I’m still working on getting all the old comments back in place and then I think the site repairs will all be done. Whew…

Just love all this work. Stupid hacks…

I’ve upgraded to the latest and greatest version of WordPress now and hopefully the new “auto-updates” feature will keep me in line this time.

So while I was able to save some of the old posts via an export file, many of them I’m having to re-create by hand from an old snap-shot back-up I have of the site. Pages and Galleries are being re-created too, so it’s going to be a bit “broken for a little while.

The Invader Zim Gallery will be last, and I’m thinking of dropping it completely. It was a huge project to build, but the original version I built can still be found at the old badbadrubberpiggy.com website.