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John the Author



Last Updated: 11/3/2009

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Gender: Male
Status: Divorced
Age: 49
Sign: Leo

City: KENDALLVILLE
State: INDIANA
Country: US

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Sunday, November 08, 2009 

Current mood:  satisfied
Category: Automotive
At 6:00 Saturday morning, I met a woman on Facebook for an I-M chat.  She was a former East Noble High School classmate of mine.  We chatted for about 30 minutes before she suddenly disappeared off-line without warning.  I waited on Facebook for 20 more minutes in the hope she'd ring back in.  No such luck.  I was hoping she would; she revealed earlier that she'd had a crush on me back in the day and was more than obvious about wanting to meet me again in person.  But she disappeared before plans could be made.  [*sigh*]

So I logged off my computer at 7:30am and watched some TV.  Tanya Memme on Sell This House is one helluva bosomy fox!  During the two hours of watching Tanya's devine D-cups, I stewed about JH and why she had disappeared.  Internet failure?  Had I offended her?  Hubby (ex or otherwise) discover her and get jealous?  I didn't know.  Nor did I know who she was!  She gave me her maiden name and I looked her up in the 1976 copy of East Noble's yearbook showing us as freshman.  There were two chicks with her maiden name in our class, but none had her first name; the only chick in the class of 1979 with her first name had a last name of Ramsey.  I dislike being mystified so I decided to do something about it!  I got dressed, hopped in my minivan and went to the Kendallville Library.

Once there, I dug up newer copies of East Noble's yearbooks; I only have the 1976 yearbook.  I looked through the indexes of the 1977-78-79 yearbooks for her first- and maiden names and scored nada.  Then I expanded my search to the 1980-81-82-83-84 yearbooks and still scored nada!  It was like she hadn't gone to school with me.  But she said she had --- JH even gave me the names of three of her pals from back then and I found those in my yearbook.  It was most puzzling.  I headed back to my minivan.

Outside, I noticed it was a rather balmy, if breezy, day for being early November.  I had been meaning to snatch my convertible away from Jim for awhile to snap some pictures.  So I thought what the hell and headed for his place.  His step-daughter Jessica said he wasn't out of bed yet and I gave her the key to the Montana before taking off with the convertible.  Jim had no reason to protest; it's my convertible and on semi-indefinite loan to him out of the goodness of my wee 'lil heart.  I fired it up, waited for it to warm up and took off.

Within 250 feet of driving westbound on Williams Street away from Jim's house, I thought, "what the hell is going on here?!"

The previous owner said my convertible was cold-blooded --- but I had no idea he really meant it!  The 2.2-liter Four was rough, growling, stumbling and just unhappy in general.  Maybe I hadn't let her warm up enough?  At the stoplight at Williams and Main, I coaxed her through a right turn and headed toward US 6.  She was gradually smoothing out but she still wasn't happy.  It wasn't even happy once we got to my place; the convertible should've been fully warmed up during the two-point-two-mile drive!  Anyway, I parked on the smooth and level expanse of grass between US 6 and my apartment complex, leaving it idle while I took my pictures.  You can see those pictures in my Photo Gallery if you like.  The pics came out great with the exception of one that was poorly timed; it looks like a pickup truck is parked on my convertible top!  Oops.  Then I decided to head out for a drive and headed west on US 6 from Sawyer Road.

Man!  This thing is gutless, rough and snarly, and it shakes and shimmies and rattles down the road!  I'm wondering what the fuckin' hell is going on with this thing --- until I realize something.

It's twenty-six years old!

Of course then it made perfect sense.  I hadn't driven a carburated car since October 2000 when I sold my 1958 Edsel Pacer two-door hardtop; everything else since then had been modern cars and trucks equipped with computer-controlled fuel injection and electronically-shifted transmissions.  My cute little 1983 Dodge 400 convertible has the 2.2-liter Four cylinder engine equipped with a carburator and a TorqueFlite three-speed FWD transaxle.  There is no engine management computer in the car!  Fuel is metered by the carburator which is sensitive to engine- and outside tempritures, and the transaxle is controlled and shifted by manual carb- and shift linkages and internal transmission fluid pressures.

In sum --- modern vehicles have spoiled me!

I think nothing of jumping into my minivan, or my dearly departed Sable before it, firing it up and taking off without any drama.  The engine management computer makes it run smooth as butter no matter how cold it is!  But transitioning back into an old car with the arcaic carburator required me to get back in touch with the classic car reality I'd forgotten in nine-plus years.  That explains why it seemed so unhappy driving down the road; I was simply accustomed to driving vehicles that do my thinking for me.  As for the shaking, shimmying and rattling --- any convertible is going to do that since it doesn't have a solid roof to help brace the body against what is called "cowl shake."  Some convertibles are plagued with cowl shake and some are pretty solid --- but all droptops have at least a little.  And the rattling is just a poorly fitting exhaust that Jim told me about within the first week of buying it.

I got back to Williams Street and Jim was still sacked out, so I got my minivan key back from Jessica and took off for home.  My 2000 Pontiac Montana minivan was as smooth as glass and motored down the street with nary a burp.  That short wheelbase soccer mom mobile didn't quiver or quake, and it felt like I was driving a bank vault down the road.  What a difference seventeen years of improving technonogy can make, eh?

In all, I'm pleased with my convertible and I'm looking forward to some top-down cruising with it this spring.  I hopeful some tune-up work can make it more peppy and responsive; Jim says it has a bit of a vacuum leak and that could be throwing off the air / fuel signal the carburator needs to work right.  I would have put the top down today if it hadn't been for the fact Jim has the console out for some repair.  Care to guess where the power top switch is?  You got it --- on the console!  Still and all, it was a nice nine-mile drive and I got a wake-up call on what classic cars need to be happy.

Now if only the mystery of my former ENHS classmate JH could be solved so easily!

Cheers!

www.johnwadamsjr.com
6:59 AM 
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Tuesday, November 03, 2009 

Current mood:  busy
Category: Life
I got to watch what I say on my blogs now.  Why, you ask?  It's because the ex-wife has created a MySpace profile and has subscribed to your humble author's blogs.  That could be a yikes of disasterous proportions, if you know what I mean!

Anyway, you might wonder why I'm at home blogging instead of slinging plastic bottles at work.  That's because the boss asked for volunteers to go home.  The publisher of my fifth book Two Roads to Reunion has really fucked up the galley and I'm plenty pissed off about it.  I have to go through it and note each and every little fuck-up and report it to them for correction.  I mean, sheez!  What were those assholes thinking??  It didn't look like that in the manuscript I sent them, so why did they think it was supposed to be like that in the galley??  Anyway, I'm supposed to be going through the galley and putting bandages on the wounds inflicted on my baby by the heartless, mean and cruel publisher.  If you're a parent and have tried to keep from weeping while you pick glass shards out of your crying child's knee, you know what I'm feeling now.

Moving on...

Jim reported to me that something broke in the right-rear wheel area of my convertible.  He put her up on jackstands and tore it down for a look.  It turns out that a brake shoe return spring broke and rubbed against the inside of the drum and hub, thus cutting a nice and deep groove all the way around it.  The drum can be replaced at a car parts store easily enough.  But the hub has to be separated from the drum, the groove filled with new metal via welding and machined down to return it to factory specs.  While I was happily asnooze in my wee little bed, Jim was walking all over Kendallville since the convertible is laid up!  He walked from his house on Williams Street to Advance Auto and back, then down to a machine shop near Kraft Foods and back, then walked back to Advance Auto to return the brake drum because the machine shop said he wouldn't need it.  Then the machine shop called and said they had to break the drum to separate it from the hub for machining, so he walked BACK to Advance Auto to buy back the brake drum he had just returned!  Come Tuesday morning, Jim will walk back to the machine shop near Kraft Foods to fetch the repaired hub.  Says Jim in his cheerful voice --- "At least I'm getting the exercise my doctor says I need."  My attitude would've been "fuck this shit!  I'm going to steal a car!"

Yes, I'm kidding.

In the house quest department, a co-worker gave me a thought that seems quite logical and worth pursuing.  The two houses I'm interested in purchasing over in Ligonier are both foreclosures --- as in bank-owned foreclosures.  Now what do banks do for a living, bunky?  They provide checking- and savings accounts, money management accounts, 401-K accounts and make car- and mortgage loans.  I was lamenting at work about my seeming inability to score financing because of my Chapter Seven when Bill said, "hey dipshit, banks make loans.  Maybe you could simply sign a contract saying you will take over the payments the previous owners defaulted upon."  Man, that was brilliant.  Why didn't I think of that?  The reason is probably something like not being able to see the forest because all the trees are in the way.  Banks don't want to own real estate; if they did, they would own apartment buildings and shopping centers and they would only know three chords.  ((That's a Cheech and Chong reference there, by the way.))  At any rate, I'll give Remax Rita a call in the morning to see if that is something I can do.  If she says it can be done, I'll have to decide if I want the large house with the small price or the tiny house with the larger price but a lot of land to build upon since it's only 4/10 of a mile from where I work.

Did you get all that?

In the romance department --- you didn't know I had one of those departments, did you? --- a former East Noble classmate hinted at me through Facebook that she would've called me over the weekend if she'd had my number.  That kinda makes me want to go "hmmmm..." you know?  I have tried to find her in the only copy of the yearbook I have, but I forgot what she said her maiden name was!  That's an oops on my part.  I know from experience with the previous women in my life that it is unhealthy for a man to say, "would you mind repeating that?  I wasn't listening."  That sort of thing can get a man vaporized with a single glare!

All right.  I can't avoid it anymore.  It's time to post this and go tend to my wounded manuscript.  The poor thing; she's hurting really bad.

Hang on, sweetie.  Daddy is coming.

Cheers.

www.johnwadamsjr.com
9:22 AM 
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Saturday, October 31, 2009 

Current mood:  pensive
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes
After work Friday morning, I made boogie over to Goshen to talk to the manager of the CitiFinancial branch where the College Street house mortgage is located.  My realtor Rita at Remax in Syracuse suggested I try them first since I have an established history with them.  I talked to Linda and told her what was what, as well as what I wanted to do.  She was all ears and sympathetic, but she said that anybody who goes through a bankruptcy that involves their company is pretty much untouchable for ten years.  It doesn't matter if I can prove I was scammed into Chapter Seven by Credit Solutions, and it doesn't matter if I have perfect credit with my apartment rental or my storage locker rental company.  It also doesn't matter if moving back to Ligonier will reduce my commute from 36 miles to two, thus saving costs, and it doesn't matter if the new mortgage will reduce my living expenses from $575 a month in rent to $289 a month for my mortgage payment.  In sum --- if you poop in their end zone, even by accident or by unforeseeable circumstances, you can't play football on their team anymore.  Okay, fine.

However, all is not lost.  There are still a couple of properties with For Rent signs out front, and there are a couple more with For Sale By Owner signs.  Not the best way to go, but it is still an option.

That third option is a tax foreclosure property.  We are just a few hours from the dawn of November and I can presume that homeowners have gotten their latest installment invoices.  That means the county's tax assessors will soon be requesting the local newspapers to print out and publish their lists of tax delinquent properties.  Your humble author could bid on one of them and score his new digs that way.  My uncle in Alaska has gone through that buying process a time or two, so I can get some pointers from him about what to do and what to avoid.

Downside A on that is having to rent my apartment for another year while the property owners try to redeem their humble abode or move out.  Upside A is that it'll be owned free-and-clear if my bid is successful.  That means no mortgage payment.  Downside B is that it might be in horrible condition upon taking delivery.  Upside B is that I can have it renovated to my tastes and preferences; perhaps if I actually owned the thing instead of seeking to buy it, a mortgage lender might relax his deathgrip chokehold on the checkbook.  Another plus to Upside B is that I could stay in my apartment while the renovations are going on because, after all, it's owned free-and-clear and won't have a monthly payment.  Or I might just decide to occupy the living room, kitchen and bathroom while I redo the house a room at a time.  There are any number of things I could do.

So the Home Team has taken a minor hit and the quarterback is feeling the sting.  But it's still the first quarter.  You don't go for a touchdown in the first opening minutes --- you patiently play out a strategy and wait for an opening.  Sooner or later, the other team is going to fumble.  When that happens, I'll be there to pounce and run it in for a goal.

'Tis the season for football metaphors, huh?

I'm on my weekend this Saturday morning, but I'm slated for some overtime for Sunday.  While doing the garage sale routine last July in my quest for items to resell on eBay, I saw a place down on Pontiac Street that had a For Sale By Owner / Land Contract sign out front.  It will surely be worth my while to go cruise the streets in that area of Ligonier to see if the place is still available after I get off work Sunday morning.  I didn't check on it then because my lease here doesn't run out until April 1, 2010.  Now, however, the time is drawing nearer.

Now if you'll excuse me, I got to go polish my cleats.  Stay tuned.

Cheers.

www.johnwadamsjr.com
8:27 AM 
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Sunday, October 25, 2009 

Current mood:  hopeful
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes
Since my Dad died this past January, I have had the little thought nibbling in the back of my brain that it might be time to move back to Ligonier.  I only moved over to Kendallville after the separation from Nancy to be closer to Dad and Jim; Dad was one-point-six miles away, and Jim was two-point-two miles away.  Now, however, Dad is gone and Jim is preparing for a life without his own wife.  What a nest of snakes that has become!  But that's another blog for another time.  Anyway, he has been unemployed since May and has feelers out on Monster.com and other such job search websites.  He could end up taking a job in Minnesota or Oklahoma City --- he has mentioned both as possibilities in previous discussions.  So if Jim might move out of state and I don't have a loving woman to keep me rooted here in Kendallville, the question becomes "why do I have to stay here and drive 36 miles a day to commute to work?"

And the answer is --- "I don't."

I stopped at the convenience store at US 6 and Indiana 9 North on my way home from work Saturday morning to buy a bag of ice and a couple doughnuts.  They were out of doughnuts but they did have something a lot more pleasing --- a northeastern Indiana real estate guide.  No, dipstick, I'm not going to eat the real estate guide in place of the doughnuts!  I snatched one of the free guides and headed home.  Once there, I made a glass of iced tea, put on my lounge-around-the-apartment clothes, got cozy with the guide and scanned the listings for Noble County.  It was in that guide that I discovered a new-to-me website for foreclosed houses.  That website's address is www.inrepo.net if you want to have a look.

Curious, I fired up the computer and logged into it.  It took me a bit of fiddling to figure out how to get to where I needed to go, but I got there.  There were seven listings for foreclosed houses in Ligonier alone ranging in price from $29,670 to $130,500.  One address jumped out at me as being quite familiar; it was just one block north and five properties west of the house Nancy and I still co-own despite being divorced nearly three years.  Not only that, I had seen that property listed in those freebie real estate guides before!  I thought it was too much of a coincidence and I thought I had an old copy of that guide laying around here somewhere.  So I started to look through my admittedly cluttered apartment for that guide.

Fifteen minutes later --- BINGO! 

I found it and turned to the Noble County listings in that guide.  That guide was nine months old, by the way, and kept to use as padding for shipping my eBay sales stuff, thank you very many.  I found it in my stash of boxes.  Anyway, the address listed on the repossession website is the same one listed in the old guide!  The asking price in the old guide was "reduced to $80,000" and the website shows the asking price as about $45,000.  In sum --- the previous owners knew they were heading for trouble and tried to sell out before it was foreclosed.  But they didn't make it.  Now, their mortgage holder is listing it for just the balance due in the hopes of getting it off their books and out of their hair.  Banks and lenders want to make loans and charge interest, not own real estate.

It stands to reason that if the old real estate guide says "reduced to $80,000" that it appraised for more than that.  Even if it appraised right at eighty thousand, the asking price on the website is just a bit more than half of the appraised value.  That builds a cool $35,000 worth of equity into the house just by signing on the dotted line.  More importantly for me at this point in time, it gives me a favorably low monthly mortgage payment.

Now pay attention, class.  If John is paying $575 a month in apartment rent, $40 a month for storage locker rent and commutes 210 miles a week to work --- how much money can John save by buying this house, doing away with the storage locker completely (because the house has a garage) and commuting only 50 miles a week?

And the answer is --- A BUNCH!

Using the mortgage payment calculator on another website, I figure my monthly payment at about $340 or so.  The storage locker payment disappears completely since everything in it is car guy garage stuff.  As I said, the house has a garage.  The fifty miles of driving a week includes a trip to Kendallville or Goshen to do my weekly grocery shopping at Wal-Mart.  The actual go-to-work commute will be something like three-point-five miles for a round trip.  Two bills will be added to my budget --- a water/sewer/trash bill charged by the city, and a gas bill.  Nevertheless, my outlay still ends up being smaller than it is now, I have more than double the square footage I enjoy at present, and I'm building even more equity in something I will actually own instead of rent.

Now of course there is a sticking point; I came though Chapter Seven bankruptcy earlier this year.  But that might not be as big a problem as it sounds.  I can prove I was scammed by a credit consolidation company called Credit Solutions in Richland, Texas by presenting all the printed-out e-mails between them and me.  That proof isn't strong enough to stand up in court, but it will prove that my Chapter Seven was caused by them and not my own financial carelessness.  Moreover, I can prove the property will have about $35,000 of built-in equity by appraising for $80,000 and selling for $45,000.  I can prove that I'm doing just peachy in money management as things stand now, and will be doing even better once the deal is closed.  Not only that, the modern bankruptcy laws require a person to take a two-hour class (which I did and passed) and I can't file again for seven more years.  My credit score was good enough in September 2007 to get me into an $85,000 place --- before Credit Solutions fucked me over --- but I didn't qualify since I am still a co-owner of the College Street house.  I still had responsibility to it despite the fact I didn't live there.  But ah ha!  The Chapter Seven absolves me any responsibility for that house!  The one thing that kept me from buying a place two years ago has been removed.

So maybe the Chapter Seven isn't as hulking a beast as it might seem.

Since it was a Saturday morning when all this was discovered, I wasn't able to call the realtor to see what is what.  But you can bet your bippy I will on Monday morning after work!  My apartment lease expires on April 1 and real estate deals move glacially slow, so maybe my closing date and lease expiration can be engineered to intersect each other.  My credit obligations have been cleansed by the Chapter Seven, yes --- but I still have a perfect payment record with the Nelson Estates and the storage locker people, as well as my cellular-, electric- and cable TV companies.

So who knows?  That dog might hunt after all!

I'll keep you posted.

Cheers!

www.johnwadamsjr.com
8:27 AM 
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Saturday, October 17, 2009 

Current mood:  satisfied
Category: Automotive
This past Sunday, October 11, your humble author (that's me) bought a two-owner / one-family 1983 Dodge 400 convertible.  Jim found it on eBay and it was located in Waterloo, about 18 miles away; I had the PayPal balance and he needed a car.  The idea was that I would buy it, register, insure and plate it and he'd borrow it on a semi-indefinite basis until he got a job.  Then he could pay off the $900 repair tab on his own convertible (a 1996 Chrysler Sebring, if you were wondering) and return my convertible to me.  The upside for me is that he will do and pay for whatever work it needs while it is in his care and custody.  It's just your basic win-win scenario.

So --- about the car itself.  It's a coppery-looking brown with a tan leather interior and top.  It has 116,227 miles and is in remarkably terrific condition.  The son of the original owner said his father, now deceased, was a car guy and took care of his stuff.  It shows; Mopars of that era rusted easily if they weren't cared for, and my convertible has very little rust.  Just a couple of small spots here and there.  The interior was a bit dirty but really nice.  It has four new tires and a new $600 convertible top.  Equipment includes the standard 2.2 liter Four cylinder engine, automatic transmission, power steering, power brakes and power top, cruise control, leather interior, bucket seats and console (standard on the convertible), AM-FM-cassette and stylized wheels.  According to The Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1976-1999, there were only 4,889 copies of my baby built in 1983.  That makes me smile because such a low production figure means it is quite rare now!  Resale should be a breeze if and when I decide to move it on down the road.

Anyway, I got it insured, plated and all that jazz on Monday.  Initial inspection the day before showed it had a sticking left-rear brake shoe and the speedometer didn't work.  The seller reduced the price for these and I didn't quibble.  Why should I quibble --- Jim is going to be doing the work, not me!  Ever try to change a speedometer cable?!  That's a muthafucker of a job!  You get to stand on your head under the dashboard, swim around under the car on the cold and recently rain-dampened driveway, try not to kick your supportive and helpful girlfriend in the chops as you try to get in and out without damaging anything else or yourself... yeah, Jim can do the job with my blessings!  Anyway, I bought a Haynes service manual and a speedo cable on Tuesday.  That'll be $41, thank you very much, please come again.  Jim put the cable in on Thursday and found out why it needed replaced.

It seems there was a bit of hatchet mechanical work done on the car.  The exhaust system is missing the catalytic converter, and the speedometer cable looked like it had been burned by a torch when the cat-con was removed.  Great.  When the exhaust system needs replaced (which it HAS to be for legal reasons before it's sold again), the whole bloody thing has to be done from end to end.  The cat-con by itself is about $160 or so --- in your hand, that is, not installed.  A complete full-length exhaust system will run me about $400.

Jim also discovered the probable reason why it seems so cold-blooded.  There is a vacuum tube that runs from the cat-con to the smog pump.  It was blocked off at the converter end by "a big hairy bolt" according to Jim, and the drive belt was removed from the smog pump.  Back in the early-to-mid 1980s, you could still get leaded gasoline and it was several cents a gallon cheaper than the unleaded stuff.  Somebody was obviously running the cheaper gas in it, and had removed the cat-con to avoid poisoning it and plugging it up.  I can't really get upset at the previous owners for this as I used to do the very same thing myself back then.

Jim replaced the speedometer cable and reports that it works fine now.  He also used Windex on the gauge cluster lenses, cleaned up the interior and vacuumed the carpets.  "Despite the exhaust system issues, you got a killer deal," Jim said on the phone earlier this evening.  "It runs great once it's warmed up, is surprisingly quick for being just a two-point-two liter engine, it's solid and in mighty nice condition overall."  He's put nearly 100 miles on it in the week it's been in his custody and hasn't run across anything else worthy of notation.

Cool!  I can't wait until he returns it to me so I can drive it myself!

Cheers!

www.johnwadamsjr.com
5:15 PM 
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Sunday, October 11, 2009 

Current mood:  lonely
Category: Life
You all know from my earlier blog titled Repossession Sucks that my 2001 Mercury Sable sedan got repo'ed by Ford Motor Credit back in August.  Yeah, it was snatched away from me at the height of its cutehood to be sold to somebody who doesn't care for it like I did.  On the plus side, however, I am no longer liable for making the payment or making room for it in my monthly budget.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I got a letter from Ford Motor Credit.  I took it up to my pad (or "crib" to those who are younger than this fuddy's 49 years) and opened it.  Lo!  And behold!  It was not only a letter, it was a check!  The statement said the loan balance was X, the removal and storage fees due to the repo company were Y, and the fee to refurbish the car --- clean out my stuff, re-key the ignition, trunk and doors, program new remotes, defeat, remove and replace the locking gas cap, etc. --- were Z.  On the plus side, they sold my beloved Sable for $3300 and the combined total of X,Y and Z equalled $3118.47.  That means I got a check for the $181.53 overage and I no longer have a balance with Ford.  Yay me!

But I can't help but wonder if Ford used a loophole in the law to skirt the my bankruptcy proceedings and take my car legally.  They stopped sending me monthly statements during my Chapter Seven, made it impossible to make a check-by-phone or on-line payment by having their computers say my account number was invalid, and took my car sixty days after my debts was officially discharged by the court.  It's just one of those things that kinda want to make you go "hmmmmm..." you know?

Come Sunday morning, in about six hours as I type this, Jim and I was going to make boogie over to Waterloo (just 18 miles away) to see a car listed on eBay.  I have the job and PayPal balance, and he's been without wheels since I commandeered my minivan back from him when the Sable disappeared.  The idea is that I will buy the car in Waterloo, title / plate / insure it in my name and let him borrow it until he gets a job.  He will use it and attend whatever maintenance it needs out of his own pocket as a kind of "user fee," for want of a better phrase  When he finds work and gets the $900 repair bill balance taken care of for his own car, my second car will come back to me.  I'm being mum about the car itself as I don't want some Pervy Smurf to say, "hey, I've been looking for one of those for awhile" and outbid me, or just outbid me out of meanness.  The auction doesn't end until Wednesday the 14th.

Did you know I'm on Facebook now?  Yup, I am.  At the 30-year high school reunion last month, I found out many of my school chums from the Stone Age --- or the 1970s if you prefer --- are on there.  In fact, more are on there than are on the Classmates website.  So I set up a page on there as well.  The four pictures of my grandsons recently uploaded to MySpace were posted on Facebook as well.  Everybody is posting stuff on my Wall about the supreme cuteness of Corey, Juan and Jorge --- or The Three Amigos as I call them.

My employer has had everybody called back since mid-September and has started accepting applications again.  There is even word that the whole place might step back up to a six / two schedule.  This is cool because for two weeks of the seven-week rotation cycle, the six work days line up with the pay period cut offs and we get a 48-hour check without working overtime!  The union says anybody who works Sunday gets time-and-a-half whether it's a regularly scheduled day or not.  So a typical 40-hour check is really a 32-and-8-hour check.  That adds about $40 to the bring home and a six-day check typically adds about $90.  Anyway, I took Jim over to Ligonier to put in his application; he's been out of work since May and I had to loan him $100 the other day to keep his lights on.  He's sick of the whole draw unemployment thing and I can't say as I blame him.  While we were in town, we stopped by the College Street house so I could snap the pictures of The Three Amigos mentioned previously.

Yeah.  Life isn't bad.  It's not great since I don't have a loving woman in my life --- but it's not bad.

Cheers.

www.johnwadamsjr.com
8:27 AM 
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Saturday, October 10, 2009 

Current mood:Clueless
Category: Romance and Relationships
All you readers of my blogs know that I've been without a woman in my life since August 26, 2007.  That was the last time that I saw my (now ex) eHarmony girlfriend from Tennessee, the one who gets all up tight, nasty and pissed off when I dare to use her name in my blogs.  Sure, we exchanged over three dozen phone calls between then and February 2009, and yes she did give me some helpful advice shortly after Dad passed away.  But using her first name once in one blog isn't like I was posting her name, address, Social Secuity number, birthday and such in my blog with an invitation to the millions of MySpace minions to make her life miserable via identity theft!

Dig this --- I posted a blog back in February and mentioned her name once in it.  She called me up at 11:53pm, a few minutes before my Monday shift was due to start.  She snarled at me about the news I had posted was false and that I wasn't to use her name in my blog.  I guess she's never heard of the First Amendment, but that's no matter --- I said I'd take the blog down.  She said "good" and hung up on me!  The call lasted 23 seconds.  Then after my shift started, she called me up five more times for the pure, simple and childish pleasure of hanging up on me.  I figured that if she was going to be my version of Cybill (and she knows what I mean by this), she can screw off and I'll leave the blog posted.  And I did.  You can find it in my older blogs if you know how to do it.  I wish her all happiness and success; she was good for me at a time of my life when I needed it, but ours was a relationship that was best ended.

Anyway, I haven't had a woman in my life since 7:45am on Sunday, August 26, 2007 after our last kiss in the parking lot of the Microtel Inn in Dry Ridge, Kentucky.  Yes, I am funny about remembering dates and times --- get used to it.  I haven't been really aggressive about looking for a new and improved woman, but that's okay.  Things will happen when they happen.

So lately, I have had reason to wonder about a woman at work.  She is just shy of sixteen years younger than me --- I was born in August 1960 and she was born in May 1976 --- and is quite friendly and outgoing since she was bumped to my shift and department about six weeks ago.  But she has this strange habit.  She addresses me by both my first and last names.

Now Nancy used to call me "Mister Adams" while we were still married, but only when she was annoyed at me or trying to playact like she was annoyed.  A girl in high school used both of my names like that about five percent of the time, and another hottie in college did likewise about ten percent of the time.  But this woman at work (I'll call her Patty) addresses me as "John Adams" at least ninety percent of the time!

So what's up with that?  I am the only employee with the last name of Adams out of the nearly 700 souls who work there, and I'm one of just five men in the whole place with that first name.  So why use both?  Is she trying my surname on for size?  Is she trying to hint at me that she likes the idea of John and Patty Adams?  Patty is something of a jokester; when I watch her bosomy self go trotting by my station, she'll turn toward me and hold up an imaginary telescope and look at me through it as she goes by.  With my nearly nine years of seniority, it's a well known fact that I'm a girlwatcher.  One time she playfully kicked imaginary dirt onto my shoes like a baseball player who was pissed off about an umpire's call.  I trotted after her with the intention of plucking her hairnet off her head, but she darted a look over her shoulder, saw me coming and accelerated into a jog.  I got her back later, though --- Patty was standing at the drinking fountain and reading something posted on the bulletin board.  I came up behind her, pulled her hairnet down and tucked the front edge under her Romanesque nose.  She took a playful swipe at me but I had already departed.  "I'm gonna get you for that, John Adams!" she called after me.

Heh-heh!  Bring it on, sweet cheeks!

So what do you think?  Is this an adult version of a fourth grade crush happening here?

Cheers.

www.johnwadamsjr.com
6:02 AM 
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Sunday, October 04, 2009 

Current mood:  vibrant
Category: Romance and Relationships
A few days ago, I was lurking through the blogs here on MySpace and I came across one by Sheena with the title of "Penis Size."  It's always fun to read the varying opinions women have regarding their preferences so I clicked in for a look.  It was pretty much a question thrown to the wind asking other women about their ideal size.

Normally, I don't comment on blogs like that since I'm not an expert on penis size.  My old pal Rodney does what he does and that's all there is to it.  Oh, you're giggling about the name I gave him, are you?  Well, guys have names for theirs whether they admit it or not.  Some like Piston or Flounder or Rapid Jacker or Passion Pounder are for guys who are insecure about their size; the idea is to tempt a woman into bed so she can see if it's been correctly named.  Anyway, I named mine Rodney because, A) he's shaped like a rod and B) whenever I would flirt with a chick, she'd shove her knee into him!  So you have "rod" plus "knee" and you put them together, and you have Rodney.

It made sense when I was eleven.

So I looked through the comments women were making on Sheena's blog.  One touted the thrills of her man having a small and maneuverable one, and another gushed about her guy having "eight inches of pussy pounding power."  A third said she'd had a man with seven inches and it hurt like hell.  A fourth commented that she liked men with smaller ones because "a well hung guy thinks he just has to plug it in and I'll swoon from multiple orgasms."  I can just imagine he is the sort of man who named his member "The Conquerer" or something.

But then a thought crossed my mind --- wouldn't it be cool if a man had a Convertible Penis?

Think about it.  A man with a convertible penis could adjust his penile size for the pleasure of his woman and what they're wanting to accomplish.  For standard-issue missionary intercourse, adjust its size to be five inches long and four inches around because, after all, women don't want depth of penetration.  They want width of displacement; think soup can not "knitting needle."  It is the wise man who understands this.  Anyway, for doing it doggie style, adjust the length to eight inches long and three inches around so you can still have a decent amount of penetration and thrusting while getting past her buttocks.  A girl I knew in college complained her guy couldn't do a decent job of doggie style since he was just four inches.  Nor could he stay at it for long enough because he had to lean back to achieve insertion, and doing that more than a few minutes made the muscles in the backs of his legs cramp up.  As such, the greater length would be an advantage.

Moving on, a man could adjust his size to four inches long and two inches around to receive oral sex.  Her jaw wouldn't get stretched uncomfortably and the lesser length reduces the liklihood of gagging.  Lastly, if they wanted to attempt anal, he could adjust his penile playtoy to three inches and one-point-five inches around for that.  He can still move as he needs to for his climax and she will be relatively comfortable with him banging around back there.  Still, a condom and plenty of K-Y is a good idea for going in through the out door.

They make pills like Cialis and Viagra to get a guy's Charlie hard; they've been around about ten years now.  So it shouldn't take much of a medical miracle to create a pill to make it the proper size for the function he and his woman want to pursue.  Make it four different pills for the four sexual pursuits I mentioned --- and I have some great trade names in mind for them too!  For the missionary pill, I'd call it Box Bailer in honor of the machine at work that crushes used cardboard down into a much smaller bail for recycling.  It has a gigantic and powerful piston that cannot be stopped until its cycle is done, and the word "box" has sexual connotations as well.  For the doggie style pill, nothing but Flagpole would do!  What else would you call a stiff shaft standing tall in the breeze?!  For the oral sex pill, the trade name would be Pearly White for obvious reasons involving her teeth and the stuff he hopes to shoot.  Lastly, the anal sex pill would have a trade name honoring our current president since he seems to be doing a good job of fucking hardworking Americans up the ass!  Maybe Obamadrill or something?  I don't know.

Yeah!  A convertible penis!  That would be so cool having the right tool for the job.

Cheers!

www.johnwadamsjr.com
8:27 AM 
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Saturday, September 19, 2009 

Current mood:  awake
Category: Romance and Relationships
This blog is being written in anticipation of my 30-year high school reunion coming up on September 26, a week from today.  I'm looking forward to this as it is the first reunion since my divorce became final back on January 30, 2007.  My best female friend from back then, LVN, told me quite often that "you have four or five girls crushing on you, if you'd just open your eyes and look."  I didn't believe it then for reasons I won't go into (it's old history and only relevent to me) but there's a chance one or more of them are likewise divorced or maybe widowed.  So be warned, random MySpace blog lurker --- if you don't give two figs and a fart about what makes me tick, back-click out of here now.

Bye!

Now then, first and foremost is that I'm the most loyal person you'll ever meet.  I take it to extremes and I could teach loyalty to dogs!  It is very difficult to earn my loyalty --- but when it is earned, it belongs to you forever.  My "Favorite Foursome" from back then, LVN, DLM, JW and ST (don't ask, they know who they are) fall into this catagory.  It is because of this loyalty that I won't date more than one woman at a time.  While I could physically do it, I'd feel like I was cheating on my "main" woman and I couldn't enjoy myself.  On the other side of that coin, somebody who possesses my loyalty has to really work hard to destroy it --- but when it is destroyed, it's gone forever and nothing will ever get it back.  McClellan, Duty, Skaggs, Hulwick and Hicks (again don't ask because they know who they are) are examples of those who fall into this catagory.  A former classmate of mine reading this blog through the link on my website will know the folks I'm talking about, and no one else needs to.

I'm the kind of guy who says what he means and means what he says.  I used to go around and around with chicks about this in high school!  They were told "I don't dance.  I don't know how and have no interest in learning" but they promptly decided that I meant I wanted them to offer to teach me how to dance.  No, that's not what I said.  So that's not what I meant.  But my stance on dancing has since mellowed over the years; it has been 36 years since the summer of 1973, after all.

So what happened in 1973, you ask.  Her name was Beverly and she gave me nine days of Heaven that summer.  She had all the best elements of my Favorite Foursome rolled into one.  She was an interesting, outgoing, easy to talk to beautiful, blue-eyed blonde like LVN.  She was compact, petite and always impeccibly feminine like DLM.  Beverly had a whip-taut kind of sexy slenderness to her like ST, and she was a delightful free spirit with a hair-trigger laugh like JW.  I knew her through the marina where I worked summers on Sylvan Lake; Beverly lived in Decatur but her grandparents had a cottage on the lake, over by Tin Can Island.  Anyway, she invited me to a youth retreat dance at the church between Rome City and Wolcottville along road nine, just up from the Northport Road bridge.  She and I were slow dancing and my male mind got the idea that it was time for us to share our first kiss.  Beverly and I had held hands on several occasions, she sat on my lap once or twice, and she was even my first flash!  So I carefully plotted out my moves as we danced so it could be as special as possible.  I took it slow and gentle so she could absorb everything and react negatively beforehand if she didn't want it to happen.  Hell, a blind cadaver could've seen where I was going!  But Beverly waited until our lips were a half-inch apart before jumping back like I'd suddenly burst into flames and screeching, "Eew, yuck, gross, what are you doing?!" before then inflicting a two-minute-long speech on me about how "we should just be friends."  The other eighteen teenage couples stopped dancing to watch, as did the eight adults chaperoning the event.  No one moved to stop her and my gentle shushing only made her screech louder.  Beverly didn't take her own advice; she was stiff and uncomfortable around me for the remaining three days of her stay at her grandparents.  It was almost a blessing when she went back to Decatur.  I was at a 7th grade gym party three months later and LVN was gently pestering me every thirty seconds "to at least try" to dance.  But the memory of the incident with Beverly was much too fresh.  LVN and Beverly looked a lot alike with their blonde hair, blue eyes and fair complexions, and I didn't want to risk losing her the way I lost Beverly.  It tore me up inside to turn her down over and over again; I knew I would've lost my composure if LVN and I had danced.

Sorry.  I sidetracked.

Anyway, I'm funny about remembering dates and obsolete numbers.  The phone number of our house in Rome City was "--2303", the marina's phone number was "--3331", my grandparents' phone number was "--0323", the license plate of my first car was 57B7077, and I got my first driver's license on Thursday, September 23, 1976.  The license plate on my German teacher's 1972 AMC Hornet sedan during my freshman year was 57A361.  In addition, LVN is three months and three days younger than me and DLM is six months and fifteen days younger than me.  Not counting the 2004 reunion, I haven't seen either of them since November 1976 but I remember their birthdays clearly.  The green-white-black 1958 Edsel Pacer two-door hardtop you can find in my picture gallery here on MySpace --- the serial number of that car is W8RG707945.

Seriously.

My dad taught me how to be a girlwatcher and we honed it to a fine art.  If a lovely woman is coming toward me, I'll admire her until she gets between twelve and fifteen feet away.  Then I'll glance away to keep her from getting or feeling uncomfortable.  I am not a "boob" man, "butt" man or "leg" man --- I am a "whatever I can look at without her hitting me" man.  I tend to get gaga and tongue-tied around stunningly beautiful examples of the natural redhead.  One such lovely did me a kindness at a very low point in my life.  Glenda was a "trifecta" redhead; she had freckled, luminecent skin, hazel eyes and thick brick-red hair flowing down her back.  This was in addition to being as mentally and spiritually beautiful as she was physically beautiful.  I have had an above-average appreciation of them ever since.  But a new woman in my life should not be jealous of those women I admire because, if I'm with her, I'm loyal to my relationship with her.

I am a believer in "organized chaos."  My apartment might look like a cross between a bachelor pad and a shipping depot, but I can find 99% of what I'm looking for within 90 seconds.  Yes, I could do a much better job of keeping this place clean --- have you seen my stove lately?! --- but I'll be the first to admit it!  I put dates on the shower soap, shampoo, air fresheners, icea tea, vitamins and frozen pizzas so I can calculate how long until they run out, or how long they've been there, or so I can use the oldest stuff first.  My car keys do not mingle with the household keys as a means to keep them from breeding.  Don't laugh; this is where all those obsolete keys come from that you don't remember what they go to!  I do my laundry once a week whether it needs it or not, and I get my hair cut and beard mowed the last Friday of every other month.  My self of humor is strange, off-beat and rapid fire.  Denise was known to occasionally shake her head and say "you ain't right" as if feeling sorry for me since I'm such a nut case.  Sometimes she'd say "you're crazy!" and to that I promptly replied, "you're beautiful."  Then she would exclaim, "aw, crap!" because she fell into my trap yet again.  And yes, I can and will toss out verbal traps to snare you in the name of good, clean fun.

Come the reunion next week, I'll have some banners with me to give to whatever single women want them.  These banners are what I pack in with what I sell on eBay so I can direct some traffic to my website and (hopefully) sell a few books.  Instructions will be given to whoever might be interested about how to access the Fellow Scribes area of my website, where the link to this blog can be found.  I told LVN on the phone when I reserved my spot that she "should feel free to play matchmaker to your heart's content" because she indulged in it heavily back then!  She laughed heartily and told me "there'll be a lot of partners to choose from" so I'm hoping she has somebody in mind for your humble author.

Cheers!

www.johnwadamsjr.com
8:27 AM 
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Sunday, September 13, 2009 

Current mood:  working
Category: Romance and Relationships
I miss Stephanie from Nashville, now that she blogs on Blogger.com, and try to find my daily fix of her style of pontification from other people.  One person who seems to be stepping into the vacuum Stephanie left behind is Shelley.  She's good.  I'd prefer that she used the Times New Roman font since it's easier to read, but I'm funny that way.  That doesn't detract from what the lady has to say.

Her latest blog is about a woman getting an anonymous letter of warning, saying that her husband of five years is cheating on her.  This anonymous letter states the time and place her dearest hubby Fred was doing a serious bout on tonsil hockey with a hot chick in a vintage Model A Ford outside an auto service shop.  Sarah showed the letter to her husband and they had a hearty laugh --- the woman Fred was doing the mouth massages with was in fact his lovely wife Sarah!  He was dropping her off at the auto shop to pick up her car after it had gotten serviced and they were smooching like there was no tomorrow simply because they loved each other more than life itself.  To read it for yourself, that blog's title is How She Became The Other Woman.  Go read it and add her to your Preferred List; she's that good.

That blog was a nice, sweet and light read about the depth some people have in their marriages to each other.  Hell, I wish I could've had that deep of a relationship with Nancy when we were still married.  Hopefully there's still time for me to find that kind of relationship with a new woman before I croak.  But Shelley's blog touched on something more sinister; something I don't think she planned on.  That sinister thing is how snarky and evil a busybody can be when they don't have anything else to do.

I added a comment to Shelley's blog by telling her a true story of something that happened to Nancy and me a month before we slipped the Golden Handcuffs onto each other's fingers.  In May 1985, we were on our way to her doctor's office to get the pre-wedding blood tests done.  She was wearing a perky blue sundress and I was dressed nicely.  I wheeled my parents' burgandy 1978 VW Rabbit coupe into the parking lot of where Nancy worked and waited as she went inside to get something from her locker.  The car was left running for the air conditioning while she trotted inside.  I noticed four or five old hatchet-faced crones looking at me and/or the car with disapproval through the banks of windows overlooking the parking lot.  Nancy returned in a few minutes, got in, gave me a little kiss --- which the biddies probably watched --- before I stabbed the clutch, rang up reverse, backed out of the lot and drove away.

Well, we went over to Avilla to her doctor and we each got harpooned with a syringe as big as the carboard tube inside a roll of kitchen paper towels.  You know you're really in love with someone if you're willing to get skewered by a masked stranger who wants at least sixty percent of your blood volume for a pre-marital AIDS test.  After the emptying our viens and my wallet, we hopped in Bunny (my grandmother's name for the VW Rabbit since it was bought new by her) and motored back to her parents' place east of Albion.  All was right with the world as we looked forward to the ceremony coming in twelve more days.

Yeah.  Then we got to her place.

Nancy's mother Roberta met us at the door.  She was pissed!  She said that one of the first shift biddy-bitches who had spied on us through the windows at work had called her up and told her Nancy and I were eloping!   Roberta said the crabby crone told her, "Nancy came in wearing a nice dress, cleaned out her locker and told the plant manager to take her job and shove it!"  She and I calmed her down and explained that we'd gone to her doctor for the blood tests.  Then we showed her the matching band-aids in the crooks of our left elbows to prove it.  Roberta calmed right down and apologized, then said that she should've known better since the dial-happy bitch is well known at work and around Albion as being a gossipy busybody.  "She took two or three scant threads of truth and wove a king-size blanket of lies with them," Roberta said with disgust.  The then-latent author in me was impressed with the hyperbole; it was accurate, biting and quite to-the-point.

So you can imagine the biddy-bitch's surprise a couple of hours later when Robeta and Nancy showed up together for their shift!  They confronted her about the huge eloping lie.  "Well, that's what I heard!" the gossipteer snarled nastily, refusing to apologize.  The source of this was demanded from her but she refused to provide it before she stomped off in an inflated huff.

Maybe the gossipmonger at Nancy's employer and the anonymous letterwriter in Shelley's blog thought they were accomplishing something.  Who can say what is behind their motivations?  Were they mean old widowed cunts who were lonely and miserable, and felt they had to tear down someone else's good thing to feel better about themselves?  That explanation surely works for the biddy in Nancy's and my 1985 scenario; her husband of 36 years left her for a woman 22 years younger than her.  She was a miserable piece of work for the rest of her life!  When she died in 1997, I made the comment to Nancy, "I hope the funeral home guys remembered to remove her heart before the burial so she won't rise up out of her grave at night to wander around the cemetery with the rest of the undead."  She tried unsuccessfully to stifle a giggly laugh and admonished me with her usual, "Dear!  That's not nice!"  Maybe it wasn't, but why did she laugh?

But does the explanation work for the anonymous letterwriter in Shelley's blog?

It's one thing to give someone an actual, bonifide warning if you know what you're talking about.  I don't get the vibe that the anonymous letterwriter had malice on their mind; they were merely jumping to a inaccurate conclusion initiated by Fred and Sarah's uncommonly deep love for one another.  But there is a fine and constantly moving line between a genuine warning of concern and a vicious pack of hurtful lies.

Take care not to cross that line, people.

Cheers.

www.johnwadamsjr.com
4:42 AM 
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