Greyhounds or Hell Hounds

If anyone is interested in adopting a greyhound be prepared to go through a lot of unexpected shit including a good old fashioned screwing doggy style. I love animals but these greyhound interrogators (which is what I call them) put you through a bunch of doogy doo just to get to the point of them letting you test the dog out in your house . This still does not guarantee that you will get the dog but it is a good chance that you will continue getting screwed doggy-style by some rather fanatical inquisitors.

First you have to go visit the dog you like at a foster home. Once you fall in love with "that" dog, they then go through your records at your vets of owned animals to make sure they are vaccinated up to date. They also ask for references like family and neighbors. They then bend them over too, questioning them as if they were the FBI. I am truly shocked they did not ask if we had criminal records.

Then the blessed home visit to make sure your house is terrorist proof. This is the step we just completed today and we passed, I think. Although my confidence is slightly shaken as I am married to the #1 computer terrorist of all time malicious intent. (Help me. Someone save me. The esposa won't let me leave the damn house.) You learn fun words while working with immigrants from Peru and Mexico. I have the feeling any dog we get will have an American Latin name for whatever means "doggy style or screwed over." I 'll ask the guys at work. They are always saying something about me and laughing.

So anyhow I must go grocery shopping with esposa to help her with the ninos. Wish me luck because God knows I will need it. Until next time, hasta la vista baby!

Painting, it ain't all that.

Ahh! The world of painting; the stereotyping, secrets, shortcuts, physicality and mental fatigue behind it all.

As you have guessed, I make my living as a commercial painter. Very few people love what they do and I am no exception. For all of you folks out there who look at me with my paint splattered (once) white painter clothes on and say to me "You must love to paint", come try it for a week and then tell me what you think.

For example painting steel supports on a staircase eighty feet in the air on a boom lift with a harness on while it is 1oo degrees out and facility has no air conditioning because it is not installed yet. Or how about painting pipes in a sanitation pumping house (pretty picture eh?) Better yet a nursing home that constantly smells like shit, with old people walking around saying things to me like "kill me" and trying to grab you while your working.

I do not paint with an artists brush or just paint trim which I think many are mislead to believe that is all we do. Try rolling with an 18 inch roller (any of you even ever seen an 18 inch roller?) spraying forty foot block walls on a lift with block filler, or rolling ceilings all day for a week straight. (And needing neck surgery while looking up all day long.) Are you still having fun suit and tie guy or gal? Did I mention the protective tyvek suits and respirators and spray socks we have to wear while in that heat in addition to our regular clothes?

Now on to the stereotyping of painters which to be fair, describes about eighty percent of my field and gives hard working guys like me a bad rap. I think I have seen it all in the painting business from poor quality work to hard drugs on the job. I have seen such crap as guys smashing up pills on break and snorting them like they are cocaine. Drinking beer on the job... every day. Falling asleep in closets or bathroom stalls because they are so hung over or strung out from the night before, or even from lunch time. Even drug deals going down on the job is a regular occurrence.

Last year was a new one. I saw two drywall workers screwing a hooker at seven o'clock in the morning in some new construction (which means no walls) thus, everyone could see. I say painting is not fun but it is a shady lifestyle and I am trying to survive it to provide for my family the best I can. It is actually hard to be the "good guy" on a work site. So I challenge those who say painting is fun to come work with me for one week and then tell me how much fun you had Picasso.

Plus, once it is all done and said for the day, I have to come home to my wife M.I. Save me!