Sometimes You Need Six More Inches!

Take that Turtle Man!

Welcome back to the international community’s first source for all things irrelevant in one certain individual’s day to day life.  Seriously I live my own freaking Truman Show anymore, I just need my own TMZ camera crew to follow me around and my life would be complete right now!  Oh well with popularity (of which I have none) comes notoriety (which I have plenty of these days), so I’ll just be the The Little Engine That Could and keep on chugging along.

Let’s recap the week shall we…..I lost and that is about all I can say about that.  There was no blood exchanged or mortal wounds inflicted, but if you pour your heart and soul into something and come up empty, it sucks.  A system designed to protect children only protects them if you have the financial liberty to keep “playing the game”, I didn’t have the financial resources after all was said and done and throw in some very shady acts that played out like a bad movie script and you end up with nothing more than a huge hole of debt.  One of the few things this past couple of weeks has taught me is I am an expert with a shovel and digging myself a “virtual” hole that will probably end up with me poking my head out in China when all is said and done.

Broke my heart that all her classmates rallied around her and I couldn’t stop it.  As I told every parent that has inquired, I tried my best!

I can’t complain though, the long Thanksgiving weekend was just what the doctor ordered.  Thursday I got to spend with my family (including Sloane) and Miss Madison.  Friday, I was welcomed to Miss Madison’s family dinner and even though the weather around here has been nothing short of depressing, the love of family and friends kept me in high spirits through the weekend.

This sausage stuffing was a hit at two dinners this past week!

I was in charge of the ham, I think I did good!

Pumpkin cheesecake…#winning!

Miss Madison ate her weight as did I!

That was until Saturday when yours truly had the bright idea to install a new range hood in Miss Madison’s kitchen.  I thought what the hell, I did it at my old house and it took something like 20 minutes to accomplish.  Miss Madison even had the audacity to ask me if I could hook up the electric, like she knows me or something!  Her over the stove microwave had long decided to check out to the appliance graveyard and she wanted to replace it with a simplistic hood.  Always looking to score big time boyfriend points I told her “piece of cake” let’s get to work!  While she sunned herself and read a trashy romance novel (I kid because I care) Mr. Skipah got the old microwave uninstalled without much fanfare.  Then the games began!  The framing unit that housed the microwave had screws that were so stripped out even the local gentlemans club employees were calling them skanks!  After using words that would make a football coach blush and a trip to the area Lowe’s I was finally able to liberate the housing unit from the wall.  Quick measurement told me she would need a 36 inch (that’s a yard, three feet, or as we soon learned nonexistent) hood.  Quick check online and they were about as common as pollen in southern Indiana…yeah right!

No that is not a star nut attachment!  Eight of these damn things and I felt like Hercules after I finally got them removed!

Madison, Indiana is a quaint little town in Indiana, not small, but not exactly the bustling suburb from where I hail from.  Since we had already planned on seeing The Hunger Games-MockingJay Part Two we decided to come back to my neck of the woods to hood shop and then catch dinner and movie in New Albany so we didn’t have to relive the Spectre theater experience from a couple of weeks ago.  Our quest for a new hood went as follows:  Menards, H.H. Gregg, Sears (potential but overpriced), Home Depot, Charlie Wilson’s Appliance (local chain), Lowe’s (Clarksville store), Best Buy, and then finally back to Sears only to find out the one potential wasn’t applicable.  All these stores are within in a couple of miles of each other, guess what THIRTY INCHES IS THE NORM!  Skipah’s PSA (that’s a public service announcement Kentuckian) is if you ever have to replace your range hood or stove top microwave and need a 36 inch spec look to Amazon or some other online retailer immediately!

I was able to turn this into……………….

This!  By now Miss Madison was looking up DIY tips on how to hide a body!

The day was not lost though as we had a fabulous dinner and then it was off to see the finale of Katniss and Peeta and the rest of the Hunger Games clan.  My take way too long and very anticlimactic, granted I had never read the books.  Started slow, picked up steam and was great for an hour, and then….what in the hell was that!  For all the greatness that was the first two movies the last two left me with a little something to be desired.  I thought after seeing Mockingjay-Part One they had it set up on a tee for the finale to be awesome (again I never read the books), it was passable but the never ending loop of not finishing the movie had me yawning by the end.  Miss Madison somewhat agreed, but she had read the books and knew how things ended.  I guess Hollywood pretty much stuck to the script on a book adaptation for once, much to my dismay!

Ouch, coming up shortly Skipah’s tutorial on how to smuggle edibles and liquids into the movie theater…..Psst….ask for a large coat for Christmas!

In other news, my favorite new “bro” friend Effinex was winning the Clark Handicap at Churchill Downs last Friday!  I don’t play the ponies very much, but a friend of mine informed me that the Breeders Cup Classic runner up was racing this Friday.  Granted he didn’t go off at nearly the odds he did for the Classic but he held off the competition to get me the win!  Effinex will always get a bet from yours truly no matter if he is racing horses, turtles, or in a Special Olympics wheelchair race.  He and I will always have a bond!

Now if only I could win the lottery!

About it for tonight, after Indiana’s beat down of Purdue in the Old Oaken Bucket game there is a good chance we are going to a bowl game (yes I know there is way too many of them) so I’m checking flight tickets to Butte, Montana for the potential bid to the Broan 30 inch (not 36) Range Hood Bowl sponsored by Sears, Hammy had a great weekend himself throwing all his rubles on the University of Louisville against their arch enemy the University of Kentucky (that was an epic collapse), and through everything I’m still smiling!  I received a major setback, but short of my TMZ camera crew catching me milking goats in the nude I’m going to be fine!

Colts fans, Andrew Luck doesn’t have a lacerated kidney, he’s checking up on his illegimate son working the Kroger in Madison, Indiana!