DA anatomy of a blog entry

 I ALWAYS revert back to Ms. Kautz' class in 1985 and start with a rough draft of ideas that I have pondered, usually during my 'moment of Zen' AKA 'PICKING ROCKS'! HA!!!! Some have the bottle, a pipe or a TV to 'veg out' in front of to cope with things we alllllllll have to deal with; an @$$ clown at work, AHHH H@LL anything there, relationships, money, choices... The list goes on. I have ROCKS! I just throw on some old clothes, work gloves, knee pads and put my iTouch to 'shuffle'. I then pick rocks that I can use for one of the many projects I have going on at casa de McBride1. Being that I really don’t have a deadline per se, I work on the topic, adding stuff, grammatically fixing for weeks, months, sometimes even years!!! I look at it like a virtual diary that the nurses at the old folks home can go to and put me in front of so I can reminisce about stuff I use to do. I forgot about this until BUBBY, a GUY I work with, sent me his wife's blog. I think a blog is about YOU and your interests and thoughts. Kelly blogs about some stuff I really don't care too much about BUT that's OKIE DOKIE with me because it's HIS blog DANG NABBIT!!!! Anyways, I then send it to a proof reader, FYI I’m on my third one! My first was Steph and she would ‘suggest’ I add stuff that made me think “who would EVER think I actually said that?” Then there was Amanda who went M.I.A on me, rumor has it that she went on one of her ‘EVERYONE NEEDS TO BREAST FEED’ tangents and has never come back. HA!!!!!! My old friend the MS. KATE in Portland, OR does it for me. I send it to her via email, she looks it over and highlights punctuation errors and misspellings. Sure there might be something’s that you will look at and say, “That soooooooooo doesn’t look right” BUT you can see me saying something like that and that’s what I am ALWAYS going for. Through the years my mother has even volunteered to be a proofreader, “THANKS but I am good mom”. There are quite a few items that I have written where I can see her saying “Andrew?  Is that something you really need to tell people?” HA!!!! Her rules would be: 1. DON’T say anything that MIGHT embarrass ME or someone in our family. 2. Don’t be mean. 3. DID I MENTION, DON’T say anything that might embarrass me or someone in our family. Well that's happened A LOT soooooooooooo I think we are TOOOOOOOOOOO late!!! My favorite line EVVVVVVVER was when she said, "ANDREW, I can't believe you wrote that, I can ONLY image what your great uncle Bernie thinks." Between you and me, I think he laughs and like most people just shakes his head. In the past, I have published an entry BEFORE a project I have been working on is completed BUT I really don't like doing that. I feel I am TEASING you like a prom date!!!! I want the job to be complete before I blabber to you about it. When this happens, I always have a back up entry ready to go if needed. I think of it as my PLAN 'B'!! FYI, I LOVE 'back up' plans! OH and in case you were wondering, these are just a couple of the projects that I have used all the gravel I have picked in my ZEN MOMENT!

Sorry this post is short, but I didn't do too much to casa de McBride due to having to deal with some crazy stuff happening at work and it raining A LOT!! I have thoughts on this BUT I will keep them to myself because the last time I checked, CHICKS like guys with a job and NOT laying on their couch watching daytime TV.

OH and don't think you are the first, NOR will you be the last person that is PI$$ed at me for NOT playing your mind games!!! Been there, done that and I got the T-shirt....  

1. This is an old picture because the digital camera I used for these kind of shots died and I am soooooooooooooooooooooo too cheap to buy another one! HA!!!

Update, thoughts and....

Other stuff that are on my mind that I think the 5 people that read this might like to know...

• Health-wise I have my good and bad days, and I know I need to go to Duke Medical and have another neurologist look me over and NOT try to charge me 12k for blood work! YEAP!!! 12 thousand EFFING DOLLARS! Needless to say, I almost had a heart attack in my kitchen when I opened the bill!!! I will soooooooooooooo tell ya the story if ya want to hear it.....Oh, and for you people that only spew out sounds bites from your political party, the Affordable Care Act AKA OBAMACARE would NOT have changed that. Where was I, OH YEAH, an old A-TOWER, DEEE LITE (the girl on the right)

         had some brain surgery up there and gave me all the info of who to see... Also, I feel VERY comfortable when Mrs. Boike comes with me, she is like a pit bull and asks and DEMANDS all the questions her and I ask to the doctor are answered. I love that the Dr. will say something and she will look at me, if I have a 'puzzled' look, she will say, "you need to explain that again because Andy didn't understand what you said." She has got A LOT on her plate with a husband dealing with brain cancer, so I told her that I can wait... Not all days I have are good, sometimes run into stuff and I DREAD going down some stairs BUT I manage and I just take my time doing stuff. Speaking of that, I will NEVER forget being at the airport like 15 years ago and witnessing a guy fall down a flight. After he stopped tumbling, he was all bloodied and had the 'I CAN'T believe that just happened to me' look... That STILL haunts me today. For the people that DON'T KNOW than READ THIS!

• Been thinking since last summer of not going to BEER-PA-LOOZA. I personally feel that it has 'run its course'. NO WAIT, I think I will still go up to A-Town and other stops BUT I don't think I will go to BEER-PA-LOOZA and instead of just taking 2 1/2 weeks off to go up there, I will take a week in June and then make another trip up there in August.

• WOW!!! This is my birthday month!!!! I will be celebrating 20 years of not needing my fake I.D to purchase UMMMMMMMMMMM 'adult beverages'!!! WOO HOO!!!! BEHOLD the actual receipt from my first purchase of beer!! 

         FYI- I NEVER looked back after this!!!! BEER and B@@BIES RULE!! Speaking of that.......

• Ode to B@@B!  Yep, you read that right. using the SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET compass I used in Mr. Rickle's (R.I.P) drafting class in 1992, I designed a patio and a fire pit in ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm the shape of, well, you know. We had to make a few 'alterations' to the design of the patio due to the proximity of the septic tank and leach bed but the FIRE PIT looks AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWESOME!!!!

This is just PART of the many things I am doing to the back yard so it doesn't look NASTY! I may not be the fastest at doing stuff but DANG NABBIT it will get done... Let's go back in time shall we? The year was 2009 and I inherited a sorry @$$ deck when I bought the house....

You couldn't even walk on it with your bare feet because it was it such bad shape, CAN YOU SAY 'SPLINTERVILLE'? So I and a friend showed it who was boss- ME!!!

 Getting back to the fire pit, it is the best representation of the part of the female body that I think is pretty darn cool! I'm pretty sure guys AND some girls, will 'appreciate' seeing it when they are flying in or out of Charlotte. I'm also sure Agent 2112 of the NSA will LOVE seeing it when he is operating the SPYONEVERYBODY SR2000 satellite. Here ya go!! Those geeks at Google haven't updated it BUT it will be RIGHT here and here is a 'ground level' shot.

          I ALWAYS had a fire pit

but last summer I started thinking of ‘upgrading’ it due to seeing mama and papa Gaughn’s one that we all sat around at BUCKOFEST in July.

• As you can see in the picture above, the hair is long enough and will be coming off Monday 6/30, along with K-DAWG (Kylee Kiener), 

       

        we will be visiting Kara, an old friend from A-TOWN who is a hair dresser and will cut it for us

        and then we will donate it to WIGS FOR KIDS! 

That's all I got for ya this month, REMEMBER to fly low and beat the radar...... It's a phrase I learned in the 80's and came from one of the best shows EVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVER!

When it rains, IT POURS!!!! HA!!!

This happened a few years ago when we had a really, really, really bad rain storm. I had a freakin' RIVER in my front yard. Pretty much, when it rains, it happens so I did something about it.

With a weed barrier that I got when my Grandpa McBride passed away in 2008 (I think he and my grandma bought this back in the 70's)

.....And rocks that I have collected over the years from Boike's former farm, the old athletic field in A-Towm (Allegany, NY), my grandpa and grandma Cawley's house, and other places up and down the east coast, I made a gully for the water to flow and to look GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD doing it...

SON OF A!!! That's one SMART dog because I did run out of rocks so I guess I will need to get more when I am on my 'WORLD TOUR' this summer...... This is what I have done so far....

In other news at casa de McBride: We had a BIG @$$ snow/ice storm AKA SNOW-APOCALYPSE 2014, and they say it was as big as the one we had in 2004. HA! I totally remember my cousin Laura and I trying to get out of Charlotte to go up to N.Y for my grandma Cawley's funeral.....

 OH MAN!!!! This new iTouch mom gave me for Christmas takes panoramic pictures!!!! SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!!!

Sure I didn't have power for a little bit and I couldn't drive anywhere because the roads were such a mess, that's all stuff I can deal with- BUT the fact I ran out of beer is something that I deemed life threatening!!!! GOOD GOLLY MS. MOLLY!!!

OH AND I DECIDED TO BE A BIGGER CAPITALISTIC PIG so read on.... This is dedicated to, WELL I really don’t know BUT I thought I would start out my paragraph with that little nugget of information! HA!!! Seriously, I have been toying with this idea ever since the fateful day at casa de mama and papa McBride when my mother, who had just gotten back from seeing her sister down in Florida, showed me some pictures her and Cece, my aunt, took to CVS of some old photos my Grandma Cawley had. Needless to say, it was NOT very pretty!!! DEBACLE comes to mind! As God as my witness, I started that day scanning pictures and putting them on the internet. FYI- It’s a VERY complicated process which involves space age polymers, a cold fusion engine and a crew of Oompa Loompa’s from Willy Wonka… KIDDING!! I just sit in my back room with my Grandpa McBride’s space heater, a computer, scanner (I got from POPS when it stopped printing for him), a beer or two and my iTouch with 1900+ songs on ‘shuffle’ and I just scan pictures…….

 Here are a few pictures I have done, my thoughts on doing this:

• I’m NOT looking to become a HUGE success story with this so I am just going to put this on here and NOT blabber it on DA BOOK AKA FaceBook, but the extra cash is ALWAYS appreciated at casa de McBride.

Pricing:

500 or less .25cents per scan

501-1000 .24cents per scan

1001 OR MORE .22cents per scan

• FYI- You would be AMAZED at how many pictures you have that you want scanned, KRIPES, I just scanned pictures of me that my mom gave me and I am up to 700 and I am NOT done!

• I will do your pictures (depends on how many ya got) in a month or sooner. ONE FAMILY’S PICTURES AT A TIME! I’m a guy, I CAN’T multi task!

• I will NOT chew off more than I can handle. It’s an easy process, You email me that you want me to scan your family pictures and I will reply with a month what works best for me and my address you can ship them to.

• I will scan it AND label it if it’s marked. If not then I will scan the picture without labeling it and you and the rest of your family can guess where the picture was taken and who is in it. OH AND I might have to email you a time or two asking you to specify some writing because I can’t read it.

• I will create an account on FLICKR for you with all of your pictures. It’s NUTS how many pictures you can post on it, 1 TG! I will make it ‘PUBLIC’ so everyone in your family can see them if you just give them the link…. I will send you the username and password of your account so if I misspelled someone’s name or the date is wrong, you can go in and edit it.

Before I go, I want to give you your moment of ZEN! HIPPIES crying over a tree!!! ENJOY!!!!

P.S.S. I'm not the only McBride that loves CAPITALISM, My cousin Shelley does too!!!
She is the blond with the blue (that's the color right) blazer in the first row to the right. She didn't want me to tell y'all this BUT it was her 26th birthday too!!!! WIN/WIN BAAAAAAABY!!

GOOD LORD!!!! P.S.S.S. Remember to make sure the first thing you say to me when you see me is "I LOOOOOOOOOVE YOUR BLOG!!!" when you have never actually read it......

I'm an art collector!!!

KISS THE RING SIMPLETONS!!!

Truth be told, I am the farthest thing from someone that likes art, unless it's porn, then I am sooooooooooo cool with it! HA!!! I just put that in there to cause my mom and other family member's to shake their heads and say "Oh Andy, where did I go wrong?" Let's get back on track shall we? I would like to introduce you to Mrs. Anne Conroy-Baiter!

She and Melissa Hanzsek-Brill are the only two women I TRUST with hyphenated names. Call me old-fashioned, I'm 'Kool and the Gang' with it. Anne was born and raised in A-Town (Allegany) and I will not divulge what the year was, BUT graduated with my brother. She was ALWAYS cool to me, even when I was an annoying little 13-year-old!! Thanks to DA BOOK (F/B) we reconnected and I am soooooooooooo thankful we did because she does LIKE TOTALLY RAD paintings. Now I have NO IDEA what type/style of painting she does. TRUST ME, I ain't that sophisticated to know!!!! All I know is that she has ALWAYS been a COOL person to me, and she paints places I know are from A-TOWN.

To me, she is an artist not like the guy who freakin' nailed his balls to the road to protest something! For what I have NO IDEA!!! FREAK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ANYWAYS, she also helps me with ideas I have like: A few years ago I thought it would be cool if I had some paintings that represent different stages of my life. When I was up in A-TOWN, I went over to her house and we threw around some ideas, HA! While her girls were watching cartoons on the TV, she suggested 9 pictures and she would do 3 at a time, and when I had ideas for another 3 she would paint them. I WILL NEVER forget her asking "what is the price range you are looking at?" and I threw out a number because I really didn't know. She said, "I can't do it for that."....... I STILL feel like I insulted her, but again in my defense, I had no EARTHLY idea what was a good number!!!!

As you can see, the paintings are сладко, that's 'SWEET' in Russian my comrades.

        1.   Is of the old scoreboard at the 'athletic field' in Allegany. The 'Blue Devils', A-TOWN's old
              mascot, use to play ALL their sports up there and as a kid, I always LOVED it when the
              scoreboard was lit up for a game. Weird huh???? I KNOW but it reminds me of my
              childhood.

        2.   That is Joe Walker, Mike Carbonara and I at one of our first jobs, STP car wash in 1992.

              AHHHHHH The fun we had!!! I tried to write about it in a post so I can have the nurses at

              the old folks home go to it for me so I can reminisce.... 

        3.  THE LAKE HOUSE AKA DA BEER HOUSE/LOVE SHACK, I will NOT divulge anymore,

             all I will say is that it was a great place to go in my 'high school' years!

        4.  I used to be someone, HA!! Yours truly was the on-site promotion manager for 106.5 'The

             End' or as one of the DJs would say, the V.P of van operations. Don't believe me? FINE!!!
             Here is proof.

          Believe me now? ANYWAYS, I helped put on an ALL DAY concert, much like Lollapalooza. 

          It was called the 106.5 'Weenie Roast' and this is the stage getting set up in 1997.

          DARE I SAY, the BEST job I ever had....

      5.  It's WYLIE! The 'pupper' a former girlfriend and I had when I lived in WI. I will ALWAYS
           remember being sooooooo upset that I would never see her again when I moved back to

           NC.. I could only image having a child and feeling like that!

     6.  DUUUUUH! It's my house or as I like to refer to it 'CASA DE MCBRIDE'!.....

     7.  This is me on a tractor up at my best friend's former land. I'm pretty sure this was taken

          the first time I was up there in 2002.

     8. I am the proud owner of a Mustang that my Grandma McBride got in 65. In a future post, I  
         will write all about it so stay tuned!

     9. This is the front porch of Lisa and Mike Kiener's house. I like chilling out there with either

         coffee or a cold one when I am up in N.Y..

I myself, can't even draw a straight line but I have relatives on both sides that were/are pretty d@mn good artists.

My cousin Jeff,

who I get 95% of my comedy material from, is an art teacher and asked me what picture I wanted. He would do it in his class so he could teach the kids a lesson on it each week. I just picked this picture of the old Vandalia bridge in A-Town. No rhyme or reason, I just liked the picture.

Another one he did is of a Buddhist Temple in Hawaii that my boss Jamie (ONE OF THE COOLEST BOSSES I'VE EVVVVVVVVVVVER HAD, Keith Brownlee was the other) took when he was there for a 'business' trip..... 

Getting back to the lovely Anne, do yourself a favor and check out her site and if you tell her you know me, she will paint anything for you except for dogs playing poker, and send you a 6 pack of PBR!!!! WOO HOO!!!! KIDDING!!! http://www.anneconroybaiter.com/ Oh, and her girls have a pretty funny blog you should check out too. http://crossthecreek.weebly.com/index.html . CARB!! You will be happy to know that I fixed the toilet and I put a new shower head on too for the next time you come down...

 Now I wonder what you will WHINE about now?

Finally

######WINTER STORM 2014#######

Now most of you in the north will laugh at this and mutter "MY GOD! That's just a dusting!" BUT remember, there are none or few plow trucks and people drive like idiots down here. It's best to just not go out of the house and RISK tearing up your car because of the conditions of the road or being hit by some EFFing driver who is driving too fast. So stay in and do stuff inside for the day, KRIPES, I did this that day and I have more to scan.

Have a great month and remember that as soon as you realize that you are a peon just like all of us, the better off we will ALL be......

ODE to 'Catholic Kate' AKA my mom!

Because without her pushing out 8.5 lbs. of me in front of a bunch medical students, I would NOT be here to entertain, pi$$ off, delight you- and it's her birthday!!! SERIOUSLY! She was born 1/1. Anyways, these are pictures she had in the attic AND FYI, you usually can find me there on Sundays when I am at casa de mama and papa McBride eating yummy dinner and drinking my 3 beers.

 

Kate Cawley 1947

Mary Catherine Cawley 6 months (1947)

 Kate and Cece Cawley

Katie 1961

Katie and Tom Cawley 1965
NO! They didn't go together! THEY AIN'T FROM WEST VIRGINIA!
 

Cece and Katie at Lake Michigan

New Years 1950 at Joe's. Katie's birthday, Jo, Mary and mom

Mary Catherine Cawley

Katie Cawley

Sherry, Mary Lou, Steve, Katie, Charlotte, Bonnie, George.

Bonnie Brinnie, Charlotte Church, Katie Cawley

Katie, Suzanne, Jennifer

Kevin, Tom, Pat and Katie Christmas 1969

Winter 1952 

Cece, Mary Kay, Ellen Shaner, Annie Hogan And Phyllis Cole. Taken at Betty Shaner's.

Katie McBride, Cece Root, Mary Cawley

Katie and Cece Cawley 1960

Katie and Alex Christmas 1979

Cece and Katie 1948

Katie and Ron McBride

\
Katie + Marty, Clara Stilson

Katie and Ron McBride 1983

Katie 1962-63 school year

Catherine + Katie 1976 Dean St.

Charlotte and Bob Mead's wedding 1967

Katie + Norene

Katie + Ron McBride

Kate McBride at Mike McBride's house 8-2000

Katie McBride 'Boston on way to PLAYBOY CLUB' 1972
(AS GOD AS MY WITNESS, THAT IS WHAT IT SAYS ON THE BACK OF THE PICTURE!)

Katie and Jackie Fagaeri (SP)

Katie, Norene, Suzanne Shannon, Monica Crowley

Katie 1967

Cece, Katie and Tom 1951

Grandma Parmeter with Cece and Katie 1950

Katie, Norene, Tom Ferris, Tom Ford 1962

Katie's graduation party 1965
Becky Cawley, Caroline Cawley, Tom Cawley, Joe Wolcott, Kevin Cawley, Jo Richardson (IN CHAIR), Mary Cawley, Katie Cawley, Brian Jordan, Jim Cawley

 Katie Cawley, Brian Jordan, Debbie Dunsmore.
Baptismal Day 4-1966

Katie and Ron McBride 1/88

Katie, Cece, Tom? 1949

Ron + Katie Kamp 5-78

 Happy Katie!!!!!

Cece + Katie 1960

Party at Geo (SP) and Connie Bradley's 1971

Katie 1960

Cecelia Anne, Mary Catherine, Thomas Joseph, Nancy Kearne THE CAWLEY KIDS 1953

Ron and Katie McBride 1988

4-94

Katie and Pat Cawley (Charlotte Church's wedding 1967)

Katie Cawley showing of the EXCITING products that Hysol was introducing in 1968.
J. Carl Burke Studio 91 Willow Breeze Rd. Kenmore, N.Y.. Sorry kids but it's no longer there, I 'GOOGLED' it.

Mom, Katie and Kevin 1960

Kevin, Mary + Bob Cawley, Katie, Brian Jordan, Faye Slaven, Suzanne Torre
Katie's graduation party 6-1965

David Erickson 1986

Katie 4-1990

Katie and Rachel Pfeiffer on Lynda Kockler's back porch 7-92

The Katie Cawley photo shoot for Hysol in 1968