Okay, it's been a while...too long, but judging from how many multitudes of friends that have been hounding me about not updating the website, I guess I'm not really that missed. Been busy working and playing. When I'm not doing either, I'm passed out or nursing a bit of a hangover from the former reasons...pardon me for living my own life. Well, on that note, here's an attempt at a compacted version of what the hell has been going on in the past week.
Had a bang-up productive day a week ago Thursday. Got up and motivated, ran errands, visited the Desert Botanical Gardens for no reason but because I could. Turns out I got a lot of really cool photos. It is spring out here in AZ (the three weeks in the beginning of the year when it's a lovely 80 degrees...right before the inferno of 120 kicks in) and all the plants and cacti were in bloom.



I spent a good 2 hours there in the afternoon hiking around by myself looking at some cool stuff. Bought some new cacti at their garden to plant in mine and then I split, ran some more errands and ended up buying an ice cream maker. A $50
Cuisinart from Sam's club. Let me tell you, this fucker makes some deadly ice cream. First batch I tried was a vanilla with berries. It was good, but needed improvement. After that attempt, Doug, Crystal and Chris came over for the second meeting of the
Amature Beer tasters of the East Valley. Um, yeah, got a little wasted doing two 40
oz'ers of Mickey's and Jim Beam shots in boilermaker form and including a 22 oz tall boy can of Mickey's which I shotgunned in the parking lot of the Circle K I bought it from while on a beer and
Rockstar run.
The video speaks for itself...somehow the Wicked Pissers and Bloody Wankers/ Dirty Knickers make a band appearance on Thursday nights.
Anyways, back to Ice cream.
The second batch a few days ago was the bomb.
Ghiradelli chocolate with Starbucks ground espresso, heavy cream, eggs, whole milk, powdered sugar and real vanilla extract. Fucking orgasmic and 100 times better than store bought. Also 100 times worse for you. 340 calories per HALF cup. No wonder it tastes so good- because it slowly kills you.

It was some strange
segway that got me thinking of working in my family's ice cream store when I was a kid that somehow led to what else I used to do or have that were strictly followed vices of mine as a kid. Video games were another one. Dirty Ryan and I would spend countless hours playing games.
Whether it be at his house or at my house playing our
Atari or Sega master systems or making our near daily
pilgrimages to the Malibu Arcade or Emerald City Liquors (which was far closer, 3 blocks to be exact). We pretty much could have bought the games at Emerald City through a lend-lease act if we wanted to because we
were there so much. It didn't help that we both had paper routes or somehow easy access to quarters (my dad's apartment laundry machine money or sneaking in Mom's purse.) I can remember the joy of the end of each month on my paper route because it was bill collection week. I'd get my cash and tips and no sooner than the cash was in my hand that I was riding out of their driveway and into the liquor store parking lot for ice cream and video games. There was one game in particular though over the course of a summer that ruled them all.
I'm only talking about Double Dragon.

I...Want...this..game... It was so cheesy, but man, to us...it was heaven. Not to mention that I nearly pissed my pants every time I played with Ryan. There were times in the game when your character was lower that your opponent, but you could still punch at them...right in the balls. Ryan would add commentary at the point of impact that I would start laughing convulsively, turn red faced, even to the point of tearing, drooling, or a few times pissing...too classic. This game was the source of our bliss, and a little bit of pain too, as on occasion Dad had to come searching for me and dragged me out of the place to whoop my ass. Anyways, if I see this game or anyone else does in it's full
standup console glory, let me know as I will buy it.
Continuing with nostalgia, Monday my cousin Jen came into town with her company, Kaboom!, to build yet another
playgorund here in the valley. She was in town for 5 days and we were able to get a lot of good quality time in. We hooked up Tuesday night at Iguana Mack's in Chandler to find out that it was reverse happy hour from 10pm-1am. Yeah, we got a bit drunk, but had an awesome time.
Wednesday I had to work, but
Thursday I was off and had planned a good meal for Jen and her buddy Dusty's last night in Phoenix. We had a LOT of grub. Mussels, steak, turkey, chicken, appetizers, munchies and of course a lot of cocktails.

Oh, I did get a new Crock pot at
Walmart today too. Quick story-I borrowed/inherited my Mom's old one a few years ago and have really enjoyed it. Whether it be making soup or beans in it, or my personal favorite-cocktail weenies and meatballs in BBQ sauce. I decided to make it for Jen and Dusty, so I prepped shit, dumped it in and turned it on. It worked for about 20 minutes before I heard a click and it stopped heating. Confused, I went up to the 24 year old relic, which has a aluminum canister exterior and grabbed it to see what was up. Um, frayed cord and metal base= electrified cocktail weenies. I had planned to let it cook while running errands, so while at W
almart I picked up a new one for $24 and cooked the heck out of meatballs and weenies.
We had to have
easily partied from 4pm to 3 am. Several of us passed out, but Jen and I stayed up and shot the shit til the early morning hours. It's been a while since I've had a good family talk. We touched on a lot of family topics. What's been new, going on, bad things, good things, rant and raves, but mostly what it came down to is that family is nearly unbreakable. Something drastic and heinous has to occur before we turn our backs on another. We may not like some of the choices that are made, but regardless, you back your family up 120%. You can get new friends, but it's impossible to get a new family.
On that note, I'm off to work and then you suckers won't see me for 4 days as I'll be out in the middle of nowhere with a rifle, my dog and a bottle of booze camping. I'm headed up north with Chris for his birthday on Monday for a few days before the fire season and hot weather kicks in and we're unable to go until October. My cell should still work in spurts, so if you need to get a hold of me, leave me a text and I can try to reach you.