The musings of a madman...

       I know it feels like I talk about this a lot lately, but by the time the two of you read this, I will be within 20 ounces of the lowest I have weighed since I discovered food and alcohol as a combination. Even that low-water mark was the result of a bad accident that led to a broken jaw and me off of solid foods for eight weeks in 2003.      Covid season created a world wherein I was ABSOLUTELY not social outside of what could be attained from my phone or one of my computers. I was work/eat/sleep/work/drink/sleep/work, week in and week out and the weight that had been yo-yo’ing between 245 and 270 was firmly at 265. I felt like shit and decided to do something about it. July 2022, I decided to take out the running shoes I’d already acquired and hit the pavement. Three weeks later, I ended my (then-) 26-year relationship with alcohol. The first few pounds slid right off no problem. Nothing noticeable, not on a “go buy new clothes” level, but the scale was telling it for

       Despite roughly a year of shooting my shot, I am unfortunately still not rich…      The closest I have come was with my crypto bets, which if I had trusted more at the time, would have been more lucrative.  Who can forget when I was curb serving the city all the available Plan B back at Valentine's Day?  Beyond that, my lawn hustle is doing me pretty well. Live and learn, I know. I have been accosted by several police officers over the course of the ‘Rona year and I can only be thankful that the wife person was around to talk me out of an arrest or – more likely – roadside execution.      It’s been fun though.   I have been places (sort of) and met people (from six feet away) and somehow have come off with more money than I might have under other conditions.   Wait…   “somehow”?   There is no mystery involved.   I work from home, I am buying literally a third of the gas I would otherwise and I literally can’t go spending on outside the house things as I would if

       I have been contiguously employed since a week after my 16 th birthday and can count on one hand the number of times I have called in sick. I lost a whole-ass week of work (and True Story©) last week due to a damned misunderstanding behind my apparent myriad of side hustles and get-money schemes. Wait…      Y’all remember a few months ago when I tried to collect manholes and get the money for recycling?   If not, go read and come back. [ link ] Welcome back…      Now that we have established that it is absolutely NOT beneath me to employ crackhead labor to save a few bucks and/or maintain my own convenience in a situation, we can talk about what I have been up to.   This all started back when my stimmy checks finally started to hit (I was late AF filing my taxes) .   Following a surprise two-week hospital stay three years ago this past Monday, I was not in physical shape to continue to maintain my own lawn.   Coinciding with the fact that my own mower had just died, i

     Times these days are tougher than a $2 steak cooked well done. When “times” don’t allow me much time to go out into the world without my wife in tow, my misadventures become considerably more difficult.   The long and short is that I cannot include her in my little hustles unless she is a willing participant.  With school back in, I get enough free time when she has to go to the school for meetings and such. Some years ago I encountered a video where a dude used some plaster of paris and sand to make a small foundry in a bucket for smelting metal in your back yard for casting on a smaller level or, one might infer, scrap metal recycling.   Some metals can scare up to a couple of bucks a pound, whereas silver and gold can scare up a ton more than that.   The issue at hand is that recycling centers have upped the security bar and questions they ask of you approach with a ton of copper piping and don’t have a professional (and licensed) reason to have it in your posses