I think too often we get caught up in all the BS that surrounds us. I work a regular job I'm out the door usually around 7:00 and home around 6:00 in the evening.

Now granted alot of that time is travel time. But you get the picture. I'm not exactly home for all hours of the evening. Sometimes I am alot later and I don't see the kids till the morning. But.......

I have weekends off. I'm involved in the kids lives. We have a pretty good relationship considering they don't want to do their homework, and want to live on ice cream, torpedo pops and pop tarts, and are complete and utter pigs (typical boys i think.)

I hear people talking about how rough they have it. Working the daily grind, not getting to see the wife and kids. Not enough money to pay the bills (some of those bills are for toys of course). I have gotten to the point now that I want to just reach out and smack em back to reality.

If you don't like what you are doing....Quit...do something else. Yeah yeah I know, how irresponsible that is...How you gonna make ends meet? The economy is soooo terrible and you will never find another job right???? Wrong. You will most likely find another job, and probably quicker than you expected. The problem is that your next job will be total crap too. The reason..... It's not your job that is making you unhappy. It's your outlook. Change your perspective a little, it'll work wonders.

I did go get a new job, and it was a better paying job, and then after a few months I started having some issues with one guy I work with. Right away I started comparing this job to the last job. Poor pitiful me. Why is everybody picking on me? :( Then I realized that I was being an ungrateful whiney little snot.

My job is fine. I have to learn to deal with adversity better than that. The only person that can truly make me miserable is me. I let this jerk get under my skin and I was the one paying the price, not him. so I took a different perspective, and realized that his problems with me are just that HIS, not mine. I started focusing on the fact that I get to come home every night to a wife and 2 (sometimes 3) kids, that are genuinely happy to see me (usually). We don't have much extra money, but our bills get paid and we get to the movies and the ice cream shop pretty regular. My kids have all their fingers, toes, and mental facilities (for boys). I can still move around fairly well, considering I thought I was indestructible as a child, teen and young adult.

Sure we have had our problems. I've had sick kids, sick wife, sick me. Injured kids, injured me. Arguments, late bills, even having services turned off at one time or another. Oh well that's just life. I'm still here, so is the rest of my family and we are no worse off for all the crap I worried about for so long.

Take it from a 40 something father of 3 with not much in the bank to show for all his years of work. Life is good, and it gets better with each passing day. It's not about money. I know you hear it all the time, but money is not the answer. Being a part of this group of crazy people I call my family is what is truly important to me. Once I realized that, I was able to understand what gratitude really is.

We have had some of the worst luck when it comes to housing... Landlords that bought a home for an investment, when they evidently didn't understand that paying the mortgage is the way to keep the house. So we have been forced to move twice in a three year span.

first of all the property management company we dealt with really sucks. They are as inefficient as it gets. They may as well work for the Govt. It doesn't get any worse than that.

Then of course there is the move. So every little thing we buy seems to end up in the garage. Now i have a garage full of garbage and the decision to make is, keep it or trash it. Well after taking about 7 truck loads to the new house, I decided that trashing alot of it is just fine with me.

The rest of the family wasn't so happy with my decision. They evidently liked alot of that stuff that was stored in the garage. Even though they hadn't touched it in 2 years. I normally get run over in my house, but on this occasion I was able to win the battle (while I'm sure I'll still lose the war).

So now we have boxes of "stuff" everywhere. Marked boxes, unmarked boxes, bags, you name it. It's laying around the new house scattered through rooms waiting to be put in the proper shelf or in the proper drawer. The only problem is that I don't know which shelf and which drawer most of this stuff goes in. (That goes back to the whole normally run over in my house thing.)

So I'm sure that over the next 3 or 4 weeks, my wife will explain to me where I need to put this item or that and which shelf needs to be hung up where. But in the meantime, I get to work at 7 am and rush through the work day, only to come home and lift heavy items and load them in the truck for the move that is finally ending tomorrow.

Now all that's left is some general cleanup at the old house, and moving a few items that are still there (pet turtle and a couple dogs). The next step will be the fixing up of this house. But that's for another day, and for another post.

Well, once again we have a lot of people getting together to voice their opinion about a really bad call by the "environmentalist" faction of the country. They have essentially taken away the farmers ability to grow crops. All this over a smelt. I hate to sound uncaring, but that's just sorta crazy to me that we are going to sentence whole communitites to death over a 2" fish that isn't even indigenous to the region.

Of course for good measure they threw in a couple salmon and don't forget the killer whale. Are you serious? A killer whale is impacted by the water flowing through the valley?

Devin Nunes and Paul Rodriguez are doing their parts to make people aware. They even caught the attention of Sean Hannity (who is a bit far right for even me). National awareness seems pointless though, as more and more people lack any concern unless it directly involves them.

Well guess what guys and gals, pretty soon it will directly affect you. With the systematic killing of our crops in the valley we are slowly but surely killing our ability to provide food to our own nation. That's right pretty soon, China and India will be our primary sources of produce. Without the strict rules and regulations that we impose on our own farmers, America will soon be helpless to protect it's own from the unregulated filth that will be used to grow these crops that will soon be in our kitchens.

You want to talk about a Health Crisis. As more and more produce becomes an import you will se a slow but steady decline in overall health of our general public. Obesity is a primary concern right now, but don't worry pretty soon that won't even be a consideration. With a sharp rise in cancer, McDonalds will be pretty happy, cause they won't have to tell you how many calories are in a Big Mac anymore. Nobody will care, everybody will be screaming for cures to cancer and a myriad of other conditions that will begin to creep into our hospitals.

This is what happens when we allow government to decide what is best for us at every turn. Right, Left it doesn't matter. This is about our lives, not just our livelihood. Wake up and realize that pretty soon, we are going to be nothing more than slaves to not only a foreign country but to our own government.

You decide, is this fish really more important than entire communities of people trying to live and raise their families. How do they get the chance to realize their American dream, if Uncle Sam is the one responsible for taking it away?

Ok, so I used to have MySpace, cause my son does it, and I want to know what he's up to. I got pulled right in and loved all the stuff we could do on there. Video, Audio, Pics, you name it. Then for us 40 something people it sorta got a little too fast paced and irritating. So what could we do?

Well enter Facebook. The new and improved MySpace. You only deal with people you want to deal with. It's much easier to keep in touch on Facebook. Reconnecting with friends from high school, or college, or the military. Of course don't forget all the Cool apps that are available.

Oh yeah all the cool apps, and of course the not so cool apps. Farmtown, Farmville, Barn Buddies, Vampires, Mafia Wars, the list goes on and on and on. It started out really relaxing and extremely entertaining, but then..................It just became another irritating MySpace. I still use facebook, but those God awful apps have become an addiction that is just sooooo hard to let go of.

I find myself taking a few minutes more each day to keep up, and I'm dumb enough to keep grabbing up more apps, as they continue to pour them on. So what's the answer? Well I guess I could stop using Facebook, or I could limit my time on the puter, but I know that's not gonna happen. So I came up with a better idea. I decided to make a blog so that I can waste even more time complaining about the time I'm wasting on Facebook.....

I love the technological advances we have made in our lifetime, but sometimes I wish for the good ol' fashioned days of 3 channels on tv, 4 radio stations that played everything, and the only video game around was this new deal called pong.