He lives!

This is not a tribute to Mary Shelley or Bram Stoker...

For quite a number of years now, it seems, that the week or two before Easter, I start to feel very close to my Savior, Jesus Christ.

The last 2-3 years or more, instead of listening to my usual motley mess of music, I listen to music about the life, trials, death and resurrection of Christ.

One of the MP3s that I have is from Glenn Beck.

If you can find it, listen to it.

Usually, on Good Friday, the Friday before Easter, he plays this at some point in his show.

If you get a chance to listen to it, I hope that you enjoy it.

As for me, I will always be thankful for the sacrifice that God made for us of His Son, Jesus.

That Jesus willingly went through the trials so that we, wayward, and stubborn people could live and be redeemed of our sins.

Thank you...

I'm a Pepper. He's a pepper. She's a pepper. We're a pepper. Wouldn't you like to be a... ah fuck it.

I mean... ah hell.

It doesn't matter after all, but I thought it would mean more to what I'm about to rant on about today.

I weigh about 270 lbs.

The reaction of some people is to run and scream:

"OH HOLY SHIT!"

Although... when people actually see it on my 6'2"+ frame, it's not so apparent.

I know I'm overweight, but I don't feel overweight.

Right now, I still feel like the skinny dude I was before my legs got lamed and it got REALLY hard to walk.

According to the "doctors", I'm 100 lbs over weight.

It seems like a lot of weight, but when I think about it, when I was at 180-190 lbs, I was VERY skinny.

I fit into 34" waist jeans with room to spare.

Not lots of room, but enough room that they could sag a bit if I wasn't wearing a tucked in shirt.

I just now realized, that I fit into a 38" waist pair of jeans...

Now, I know that's a 4" difference, but it's only 2 sizes larger.  Not 4 sizes larger.

After all, to illustrate things more, I wear a belt that has to be synched up to keep my pants and shorts from falling!
WHY?
Because, I have strong, thick legs.

Even though, I don't walk very often anymore, I can still dead lift quite a bit of weight. 50-100lbs bags of concrete, dog food, etc.

Hell, I don't even want to be on the opposite side of my own kicks.

Many moons ago, and know I could kick hard then, but due to the light weight, I didn't have a wallop.  Now it'll be like kicking someone with my back against a brick wall.  I won't rebound much at all with the force of the kick.

Going back to the pants/shorts fitting, aside from the legs of them not fitting me very well, I also like to wear suspenders.

I really get tired of wearing a belt cinched up, so I like suspenders to keep my drawers up without a belt digging into my waist and gut.

Getting back to the original weight topic, it doesn't really help that I make good money these days, I own a car and that stores plentiful and close by.

So what I'm getting at, is that I just finished off an entire bag of peanut butter M&Ms.

Oh, BTW, that reminds me of a coworker who once messaged me that he was going to get some "MANDMs"... I had no fuckin' idea what he was talking about.. until I realize he meant M&Ms. 

Dumbass.

Well, WTF the "pepper" reference then, Mr. Dipshit blogger?

 I suppose,  it wasn't necessarily the need for a "Dr. Poo", but rather a reference that each of us is an addict of some sort.

For some of you it's alcohol, tobacco, drugs, pornography, soda, sugar/candy and food.

Now for me... I know that I have addict genes, and my siblings have proved this.

One of them, pretty much the one dumbass mother fucker, has such a bad addictive nature, he is addicted to pretty much everything. (Porn, tobacco, alcohol, prescription pain pills, beating off, etc. etc. etc.)

So, this proves that you can very addictive, without much choice....

HOWEVER!

This isn't really true.

We all have the ability to choose how we react to things.

For me, I use my prescription medications according to how they're labeled.

The exception to that, is when I might break them up when I have REALLY bad pain and I need relief immediately!

I stay away from alcohol, because the last time I had a drink, (basically a double tequila) I craved alcohol for several weeks, before the desire stopped.

Due to all the asshole prescription pain med. abusers out there, doctors and health insurance companies are doing surveys about people before they prescribe any meds.

Where this hurts, is that if you're bipolar, you have a major mark against you.  If you have siblings who are addicts/alcoholics/etc, that's another mark against you.

I suppose what I really want to hammer home on this post... or perhaps not...

Is that I have an addiction to...
FOOD!

There I said it!

Ok.. mostly to food that's not good in large quantities.

Long time ago, I posted how much I love ice cream!  I still buy it by the gallon, but much less often.  Perhaps once a month, month and a half.


When my bipolar and emotions are under better control, then my eating habits are under better control too.

So my weight yo-yo's +/- 5 pounds week to week.

At least my weight is down from 330 a few years ago!

Ham radio might be forgotten... but it's not dead!

That's the phrase I put on a flier at the local library.

Really, it's not dead.

Lots of new people are getting into Ham radio.

As I'm getting to know more and more operators/stations, I find that many of them have suffered with bipolar or depression.

If it wasn't the involvement with Ham radio or other activities, they would have more trouble coping.

Previously, I think, I posted that another Ham, Harry, in the area and I bought a couple of those QRP CW (morse code) transceiver radios for $10 on eBay.

They're the latest Pixie radios, version 4.1, and run on 9v batteries or up to 12v with 8 (AAA/AA/C/D) cells or a car battery/12v adapter, etc. etc.

Last night Harry and I finally got time and radios setup to communicate with this little radios.

Now, our Morse code skills are still developing, but it was very exciting!

One, we were able to finally communicate using these little boxes, and two we started planning out how to make the setups better and better.

The major snag with our setup, was that Harry had to manually swap the antenna between two different antennas.

Harry was using his HF loop to transmit, but he cannot receive on the Pixie.  If he tries to listen on the Pixie, he gets the local radio station.  He's still sorting that out.

I was using my 1/4 wave 2 meter, coat hanger "droopy", antenna for the communication.

It seemed to work pretty well at 1/4 wave 2 meter.

The radios are communicating in the 40 meter band, so 1/4 wave 2 meter is approx. 1/80th the length of a 40 meter antenna.

Not ideal, but it was working!

Neither of us have those programmatic keys to keep our keying steady, which is OK.  Neither of us really good and sending/receiving at almost any speed worth a shit.

I like Ham radio, as there aren't really any standards for CW speeds, except that when communicating, you should communicate at the speed of the slower operator.

Last night, after we were done, I tried to copy an audio file from www.morseresource.com at 8wpm, and was still trying to write down the dits & dahs, instead of letters.

I'll have to work on my mental translating of the audio sounds to letters.

Well, I need to get back to work, but I wanted to get this documented as it was pretty darn fun.

So WTF does it matter if I didn't eat the "old" stuff first!?!?

Ellie got all bent out of shape this morning.

I got some cottage cheese with some peaches for breakfast.

When I pulled it out of the fridge, I pulled out the new container we bought the other day.

It turns out that the last container wasn't empty, so I was in deep shit, because I didn't eat the "old" stuff first.

Early in the morning I have a hard time with my joints and it takes me longer to really get moving.

So I couldn't bend over and look at the frickin' cottage cheese containers.

I didn't think it was a travesty.

Yet, Ellie did.

So WTF does it matter which one gets eaten, as long as all of them get eaten?

I mean, I'll eat up the other one too.

My big concern is how fast the canned fruit is going.

We can our own peaches & pears, which are the two things that are used pretty heavily with cottage cheese by Ellie and I.

I also love putting mandarin oranges into mine.

It's something that I remember doing as a kindergartener or first grader when I got home from school for my sister and I.

When I was that age, I was one of the original "latch-key kids".  Those kids whose parents gave them a key to get into the house because both of the parents were working.

I'm not scarred for life... or am I?

Bipolar doesn't manifest itself because of how your life was lived when you were younger.

 It just happens!

Please don't get me wrong.  I really love Ellie.  REALLY love Ellie and the girls.

Without them, I don't know what I would do with my life.

Unless there's a problem with eating the frickin' cottage cheese in the wrong sequence.

So history repeats itself through her...

(Big/Old/Monstrous) Miss, my oldest and most ungrateful daughter has now moved back in with her Mom.

Last year, I helped her to move here AWAY from her MOM.

Six months ago, approx., I sent her to her grandmother's house since I couldn't have her living here. (See previous posts for details.)

Now she's had a problem with her grandmother, and now lives with her mom.

This is SOOO much what her mom did 19 or so years ago!

Unfortunately for her, I'm not going to let her live with us ever again.

I just hope that my folks & brothers don't let her move in with them.

This damn kid needs to wake up and learn how to do things on her own, and get AWAY from those people!

Last year, I kept trying to get her to understand that only SHE can do what she wants to do with her life.

Until she can make things happen for herself, she'll never get out of this and will always be white trash.

Last night she called twice and left messages both times.

The second one was a bit surly. "This is the second message I've left tonight."

She called my cell phone and I told me phone to ignore the call.

Then I got a text message that she had "left two messages" on the home phone...

Last night, Ellie brought up the fact that I really don't want to have anything to do with this daughter.

I told her I was still sooo pissed off at this kid and that I didn't want to talk to her, because I go crazy when I speak with her.

When I speak to her, I really have to hold my tongue back really hard.  I usually speak from the hip and tell things the way that I see them.

However, what do you do with an adult brat who can't figure out why life sucks for her?

I don't want anything to do with her...