The Frozen Poo Edition…

So It's late on a Thursday night, my personal goal is to have ONLY 12 photos in this month's journal... it's gonna be hard!

I have 143 photos (and five movies) in the January folder...
I have twenty-five photos already picked-out for this month, and there was SO much going on.

I'm in the middle of packing; tomorrow we depart for the warmth of the desert - thank GOD.

I'm naked, Heather is sleeping, both Battlestar Galactica (the cheesy eighties version) and playboy's Sexcetera is playing... Picture In Picture don't you know.
I'm multitasking like a fiend... typing, sorting photos, cleaning, watching this ridiculously primitive TV show, and organizing DVDs so I can put stuff in storage.

Did you kids know that Starbuck was a man baby?

Let's begin.

There is a word I learned long, long ago. One of my personal favorites... HUBRIS. I always define it as "overwhelming pride, pride before even the gods". I like to consider it when 'man', or a man, believes he has vanquished nature. Would it surprise you to discover that I am often tripped up by my own hubris? I had so much fun last time making the photo montage that I have made another... I'll label this one "my futile preparations against winter"... see that delicate brushing of snow on the ground?

 

My futile preparations for winter

I actually bragged last journal about how it only took an afternoon to get secure and prepared for winter... but winter is a determined and harsh mistress. A few days later the temperature crashed... and I had forgotten to plug in all of the crafty electrical heating cords that are designed to keep the hoses from freezing. For a day-and -a-half we had NO water or sewer... then we had water, sewer, but no HOT water...

But wait... remember that series of repairs I have been doing (and attempting to do) since the end of Georgia? My leaky black-water system? As a recap; 900 dollars in Florida, 700 dollars and a replaced tank in Ohio, three months of struggling to get the parts in and have the whole system replaced in NC (oh, BTW, the parts came in on Wednesday, to the shop in NC)? Yeah, that tank problem. Well that problem once again reared its stinky brown head. There was a slow leak which froze up, built up, and then solidified. Somewhere in there the sewer-line froze, then shattered. I removed it, and the next morning the rather irate park manager whose opening salutation to the just awakened Tortuga was: "You have a hell of a mess out there."

Counterclockwise from the upper left: The huge poopsicle, this brown-and-stinky monster was over two feet long! [Uh... there's a dark, blood-red splotch in the middle there - you might want to have a doctor take a look at that. - AB]   Next you can see the frozen and shattered poo-hose, Poor little Jazmine was struggling to find non-snowed ground to make her little "peeps and poops" as my honey describes it. And finally, after everything was done, MORE winterizing, in the snow, in the pee-puddles... I have politely SPARED my readers the indignity of seeing the real messes.

 

Winter laughs, and throws poopsicles at me

We're staying somewhere WARM next winter.

The photo doesn't show that I had to have another repair guy come out... he spent a few hours only to determine he couldn't fix the problem... all he could do was help me create a work around, (that I later had to heat wrap... ) He DID show me how to defrost the hot-water problem... I spent a half hour under the coach with Heather's monstrous, breaker-popping hair-dryer. How ironic!
In the end, labor and parts for the new sewer line cost another 275 smackers!
Even that didn't really help, just before I left for Vegas, leaving my Delicate Flower of the Orient to withstand the lows of SEVEN FREAKIN' DEGREES! I noticed that the repairman had actually caused a bigger leak... a leak which caused the valve to freeze shut and prevented my poor little angel from showering for a few days.

But I get ahead of myself.

Following fast on New Year's is Heather's birthday. Last year, I was largely shut out of the preparations - They were handled by best-friend Ann - and I rather foolishly assumed she was taking care of things again.

Oops!

We punted, and the four of us had a really fine dinner at Heather's favorite sushi restaurant. I'm impressed with Bob and Ann. They are such wonderful people! And cool, fun, great drinking buddies, artistic and funny too. We came to KC to re-connect with Heather's friends and family... but the only folks we have spent any time with (and it has been a lot) are Bob and Ann.

Eating has been a big theme for our time here in KC... KC barbecue, Dim Sum, pizza; I'm porking out here. Couple that with the fact that winter is kicking my ass... and I have hours ahead of me in the gym but winter does provide some beautiful images.

Finally, off to Vegas. Our plan was to seek out a distributor for our DVDs, maybe find some one to sign us as our producer. This didn't quite work out. We spent OOOOOOOODLES of dollars on our booth. But the whole trip was money (lots of money) well spent.
We had a very impressive base of operations (pat-on-the-back, Jef), and we had lots of meetings, some serious, some weird, and some just hot!

I should mention that the convention was in Mandalay Bay, where we also stayed... don't ask me how, or why, but for some reason, all three Tortugas touched their naked weenies on the huge glass window... though of course, I was the only one who requested to be photographed at it.

 

Some lovely winter imagery almost makes it worth it

Our base of operations

That's my weenie on the glass!

The room was great, the show was enlightening, and there were stars everywhere! Here is a list I compiled - I met or spoke to:

And from My Name is Earl:

I walked by, or saw:

The cast of Heroes was there... but we didn't run into them.

I did take this one photo... because a lot of folks have said that we look alike. After I shot this photo with Pauly, I showed it to the boys... who said I DO resemble him... fuck you boys!  [Yah, they don't know what they're talking about. You look like Fisher Stevens - AB]

There was drinking, and partying involved... at one point I stumbled against a display window which seemed to say it all... when it opened I considered it an invitation.

 

We do NOT look alike

There was some drinking involved "Everything you need... and more"

Brothers help each other

There was team work... I decided my hair was too unruly, and asked (repeatedly) of Jef to do up my pony-tail... there were parties, night clubs, and lots of business meetings... there is an entire industry in Vegas just to make moolah off of conventions like this. And an entire population who live off the convention teat. One sure way to attract attention to your booth is to hire pretty girls to stand around: booth bunnies. They get bored too, and sometimes they wander round to promote stuff, or look at stuff. Every time I stepped away from the booth and came back again it was filled by the hotties hired by Bodog.net.

We hit most of the major clubs too, forty-deuce, the new playboy club (WOW!) but we also did a lot of networking, made meetings, learned a new focus for our videos, found out what the market was buying... and how to sell. It was expensive, but so very instructive... and we cannot afford to do something like this for a while!

 

Look at the legs on that girl

Did we mention the Playboy club?

But I was so ready to go the hell home...

Another non-stop, long flight to KC and my ever-loving baby's arms... and the dead of winter.

Last year was mild, this year started mild... and then came roaring in. Look at the hood of my truck! But finally with all of the various heat-taped jerry-rigged hoses working, we were surviving.

London didn't like the snow much (I took photos, but in the interest of appeasing ANDY, our grumpy webmaster, I didn't include them).  [You can always add extra pix of Heather, cute animals, or cute girls - I'm just tired of looking at your ugly mug - AB]

And, in the category of not being able to get a break, there was a string of break-ins at the storage caverns where our stuff is kept... and they cut off our lock and rifled through our stuff. The bastards stole little weird shit, including Heather's Grandmother's jewelry box, and her rare, glass Christmas ornaments... fuckers!

 

That is a lot of freakin snow!

Our fancy-schmancy dinner

 

Our bonus pic

On a positive note: since Kansas City is known for it's meat... so I decided to take Heather and Ann an Bob to the nicest Steak house in town... Here's us after polishing off our steaks, mine was a 16 ounce KC strip... YUMMY! Not bad for a former vegetarian.

Well, that about wraps it up. It is 12:32am on the day we're supposed to be leaving. I haven't really done any packing, and I have to get cracking. It is off to AZ for us, but next week I fly of to do our one and only weekend in Florida.

I'm going to spell check this, and send it off to Andy and be done, and once again up to date.

Did I mention that we shot a piece for The Tonight Show??

Finally, just to aggravate Andy, and to mess up his fine, symmetrical lay out I'm including one last bonus photo of poor little red daughter - making brown and yellow snow.

See ya next month!