thank dios i'm a muchacho del país

i have the pleasure of working near sports legends at camden yards, which has an exterior sound system that for some reason alternates between playing old sports casts and playing the john denver song "thank god i'm a country boy." seriously, like every third time i walk by, the song is playing.

was walking by today, and the damn song was playing again. but what i enjoyed was that a group of spanish-speaking construction workers were doing a hoedown to the song as i was walking by. anyone who says this isn't a multicultural city can besa mi culo.

another fick sucker

well shee-itt, i guess that flu shot i got in november was just for giggles, coz i've been dealing with mucus, aches and fever since about wednesday. springtime is NOT flu time, thanks. i guess my immune system did not get the memo. a handful of tylenol seems to keep the fever and stuff at bay during the day, but i'm getting pretty tired of this. with my luck this is tha avian flu; hey, maybe i can sell my body to johns hopkins. meh.

giant pink bunny attacks city

i've only lived in baltimore for three years, so i don't know how long this mega bunny has been around,

but i do know that as far a giant roadside attractions go, this one is way classier than a gorilla or weird windy guy that they have outside of car dealerships. this bunny is directly related to the product, and the product is great... mmm... mary sue easter eggs...

anyways we had the opportunity to bask in his pink bunny hugeness yesterday at the baltimore zoo... wish the light had been a little better...

below is how he normally looks in situ. this photo was taken from a moving car going south on jfx while dodging people who were attempting to both talk on their cellphones and navigate thier s.u.v.s. thus the 'artistic' framing.

let's hear it for the mary sue easter egg giant pink bunny, y'alls...

i don't see nothing wrong with a little stump and grind...

in the spring of 2004, we (read: my friend paul, while i assisted) cut down the bad punky tree that was dropping dead branches and gunk onto our house, gutters, and lawn.

the tree was more than twelve inches in diameter and left a pretty formidable stump in the ground, which incidentally was our garden space.


once the tree was gone, the garden grew pretty nicely, but the stump was an eyesore that also became a nice rat house during this past winter. we made the rat go away. but we still wanted the stump to go away too.


after a minimum of three unsuccessful attempts to rent a stump grinder from home despot™, we said 'fuhgeddaboudit' and persued alternate venues. we found a rental place out in catonsville that had the midrange-size stump grinder we wanted...

needless to say, the thing looked like a monster. compared to the home despot™ model, this was a sherman tank. 25 horse power, hydraulic, self-propelled... hooh haaaah! we had to to tow it behind the truck.


once i got over my fears of the thing's size, it operated pretty smoothly. the real challange was getting the thing down a substantial slope to our yard, and at a 48" wide wheel base, it just made it, even though the ground was a bit swampy. needless to say, this thing chewed up hiney like nobody's business. you had to basically hone down about 1/2" at a time to keep the engine from stalling out. but it had lots of torque to spare, and as you can see, carved out curvilinear swaths no problem.




the task took maybe three hours? for the main stump... happily the previous owner had buried some romex about 3" below our turf, so we found that hidden treasure... hmm, is this lawn 110 or 220 volts?




all in all, i was extremely satisfied with the performance of this stump grinding juggernaut. nothing like turning a tree stump into evenly-dispersed confetti [/caveman grunt].