a day

A day in the life....

September,

A day in the life....

Me and Linda feel like we've gotten to be friends with so many of you that I thought I would drop you a line and let ya know what's been goin on around here lately. Some of you have noticed that our daughter Carolyn has been answering more of the phone calls around here lately. We're breaking her in a little at a time and we appreciate the patience that you've showed with her, she's doing a fine job but still has a lot to learn. Speaking of Carolyn, she came home a couple of weeks ago with her new boyfriend/one more person livin in my friggin house! He showed up with a dog, I call the dog dumbass, I call the boyfriend Earl. I'm not sure which one has more fleas, anyone who is a parent can appreciate what I'm saying.

My son Michael has been helping us out for a while now. Mikey typically wakes up at 10 o'clock and punches in....then goes back to bed for a while. He's been helping me out in the shop, he likes to take stuff apart. I have all kinds of stuff apart, there are things apart in the shop that I didn't know I had. Last week, him and my future son-in-law dumbass....oops, sorry, thats the dog, i mean earl, took my 30 year old Craftsman lawnmower which cut the grass beautifully, and put harley bars on it, a harley seat, and modified the exhaust and carb. I had to go out the other day and buy another lawnmower, now i can cut my grass again. I've got a lot of bikes in the shop but i'm pretty sure one of them is missing handelbars, and a seat.

Linda likes to get up early, she used to be a nurse and is usually at the warehouse and back by the time i get up. When she gets out here in the morning she'll notice that dumbass has chewed all the stuffing out of the couch and scattered it about the store. Yep, she's gonna be mad. Me, well, I'm a night person. Like to get out here around noon and then work till 3-4 in the morning.

Business has been good and we thank all of you for that. We're having fun and doing our best to provide you with the service you've come to expect from us. With nearly 1500 ebay transactions this last year our positive response rating is 99.7%, and we are awful proud of that. We get some of the most heartfelt responses and we truly feel appreciated, and that's worth more than money any day! In closing, we just want to say thank you again.

God bless you all ....Mark, Linda, Carolyn, Mikey, Earl and dumbass

October,

"a day in the life part "deux""

Hi folks, pop here. Thought i would drop you all a line and let ya know what's
been going on around here. By the way "deux" is french and means two. At least
according to linda, linda was in france as a teenager for 6 days and knows ALL
about france, just ask her. Me and linda have been together since we were
teenagers, she's a fine hillbilly women, i wonder if they cook "vittels" in
france? i'll ask linda tommorow.

Linda as some of you know was a nurse for many years, and as some of you also
know i've been under the weather for the last month. Found out the other day
that i'm a little diabetic. so i got me one of those meters and the little prick
thing that makes ya bleed. Now linda, bein a nurse, knows all about this little
prick machine and proceded to load the needle and try to shove it into my
finger, but she didn't have the little cap on which provides the "gentle" prick,
so a fight insued. when all was said and done my hand looked like a pin cushion,
i'm still bleeding, as are our cats, my son, and most of our walk in customers.
linda feels it's her duty to check the sugar level of anything that moves, and
that she can catch.

As for dumbass (the dog that moved in with my future son-in-law) and earl (the
son-in-law) they have moved back out. we just couldn't get rid of the fleas! we
tried everything, we gave them flea baths, flea powder, flea collers, finally i
put dumbass in a big sack and threw a flea bomb in there with him. anyway, the
dog shit green for a week and his eyes bled a little, but it didn't seem to kill
the fleas. when earl refused to get in the sack i had to ask them both to
leave.

we decided to put a new roof on the front part of our building, i figured i pay
mikey (my son, who i still dream will take over m&m some day) and earl (who i
just like to keep my eye on) to stand around all day, how bad could they do? now
this particular part of the building is about the size of a two car garage, and
the roof isn't much higher. a roofing company could probably do it in a day, two
tops. we're on our third week, earl hung 5 shingles today, mikey was taking a
nap. i hope to have my roof on before the snow falls, i here it's going to be an
early winter. there are so many shingles and nails on the ground that when you
walk between the shop and the house your shoes grow in size and weight, by the
time you get to the house you feel like your wearing snow shoes.

my daughter carolyn is back at college 4 days a week. this is her third year and
she's taking accounting. yes, she's an educated girl. who better to have to
close your books down at night, pay the bills, take care of the checking
account, do payroll for herself, mikey and earl? she's been doing it for a
couple of months now, yes, who better? long story short, i am now closing my
books down at night, paying the bills, taking care of the checking account and
doing payroll for carolyn, mikey and earl. seems they don't tell the accounting
class the difference between red ink and black ink untill the 4th year of
accounting.

so, i certainly hope all of you are doing well. you know we appreciate the
business, you folks provide for our very living, and we thank you and ask God to
bless you all as he has us. but, i gotta go, need to change the bandages on my
hand. pop

May 12th,

We have made so many friends, around the world, and many of you have asked me to update our "day in the life" series that i thought i would take a few minutes and update you all on what's been going on around here. I guess it has been a while, since November it look's like. Well, in no particular order:

My son Mikey has been and continues to be the light of my life (read that thorn in my ass)! lol, honestly, his help around here is greatly appreciated. Mikey has kept himself busy over the winter months by keeping the store clean, painting, learning to wrench on bikes, and oh yea, wrecking our truck.

We bought a brand new truck back in November, first new thing we've bought in years. Nice truck, nothing special, but a darn nice truck. I drove it home from the dealership, about three miles down the road. The day after we bought it the mail lady backed into it. Caused $2500.00 worth of damage. No big deal I guess, we got it fixed and life went back to normal, well, normal for us. I drove it home from the dealership, it's about three miles down the road.

Now Mikey hasn't had a car in a while, his last car was an old sheriffs car. A black and white, big motor, cop shocks, you know the car. It quickly became the talk of the town, and the local police. I was gettin two calls a week from the local cops asking me to please tell mikey to stop squealing his tires in town. Their so nice around here, they really are. That car lasted three weeks, blew the motor in it, threw the rod right out the bottom of the motor. Like any good hillbilly family, we pushed it out back and shot it full of holes. Some of the local police participated as well, they don't have shootin cars in town.

Anyway, back to the truck. Mikey being 20 needs to have transportation and he asked very nicely if he could borrow the truck one night. Well one night turned into every night. A few weeks had passed and Mikey woke me in the morning telling me he had a small accident with the truck, actually, if i remember right, the first words out of his mouth were "it wasn't my fault", then i threw up, then he told me about the accident.

When i walked out to see the "no fault" accident i realized that the entire left side of the truck bed was crushed in by a phone poll. Now, there was only him and the pole involved in the accident, but still, not his fault? Mikey will go to his grave swearing it wasn't his fault. It takes a lot to get me riled up, more then that anyway, life goes on. But, when i got in the truck, all of a sudden it had 12,000 miles on it! I couldn't believe it, 12k miles in a couple of weeks, I freaked! I had driven the truck twice! 6 miles, my head was spinning. Wrecked twice....6 miles! The insurance took care of the repairs, almost 4 Grand. The truck was fixed to look like new, the dealership did a fine job, cleaned the truck inside and out, even smelled new again. Life went back to normal.....that was in March. I drove the truck home from the dealership, it's right down the road, about three miles.

Now after the accident i was a little more careful with the truck. I let Mikey use it a couple of times a week, I was being stern, no more every night with the truck. So now comes April, and as is typical in Northern Ohio, we got some freezing rain. I remember telling Mikey to be careful, words that haunt me to this day. Long story short, $12,000 dollars worth of damage. 14 cars involved in the accident, Mikey was cited, though he swears it wasn't his fault. Thank God nobody was hurt. We traded it in, the truck had 18,000 miles on it. I drove our new truck (same as the old truck) home from the dealership, their about three miles down the road.

August,

It's true what they say. The older you get, the faster time goes. It seems like summer just started, and it's already at an end! Sturgis has come and gone and soon the leaves will be turning, i look forward to fall, if nothing else it'll be a little cooler!

I haven't talked about Carolyn in a while, guess she's due. Since her earl/dumbass episode, she's gone through a handful of jobs, and boyfriends. Carolyn would have done well in one of those "Sadie Hawkins catch a man and marry him" weekend festivals that they used to have. yep, bag of fried chicken in her left hand, a hook in her right, she'd a caught herself a man! never seen a girl so anxious to get hooked! scares the hell out of me! this latest one, i call him George, i really don't know his name, everyones told me, maybe a dozen times, i just like calling him George, makes him feel a little uncomfortable i think and i like that. George is quiet, least he doesn't talk much to me, and i like that as well, long hair, drives a vw rabbit convertible, kind of a hippie, i guess all in all this one ain't so bad. Sooner or later she'll hook one, and that will be that.

As for mikey, he has decided to go into the nursing industry. He took himself a class on being a nurses aide, cost him (=me) $340.00 and he got a certificate. Got a job paying 10 bucks an hour a week later. Worked for 3 days..... I don't know if i can really say anymore then that due to the ongoing investigation. I know lives were involved. Anyway, if you know of anyone hiring in the health care industry, let mikey know will ya?

"Youth is waisted on the young"

As for linda and me, we celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversary on the 7th. I can't believe how fast time has gone by. Seems like only yesterday that we met. I was the kid from the city on a roadtrip through the hills. She was the shy young hillbilly girl with the picnic basket under her arm.

July

" and so it is"

wow! hard to believe its been so long since i have updated this, i was updating my web here and noticed it had been a while since i wrote here. sooooooooooooooooooooo much has happened since i wrote you last.

First off, my little girl is getting married! Yep, she set the hook a few weeks back. She's been with...well, i still call him george, (real name unknown) for a while now, they seem happy. the wedding should be a real humdinger! Its not a shotgun wedding, though i do expect some gunplay to be involved..... and that is all i have to say about that. (linda is lookin over my shoulder as i am writing here, so as not to to create issues in a otherwise happy marriage i am leaving the subject of the wedding, reception, and all details related to the above mentioned out of this letter, please remember she still carries the little prick machine mentioned earlier, only now it is taped to a small piece of wood and she calls it a ..."shiv"?? something to do with her time behind bars i think)

Carolyn is doing well (read that head up her a$%) , all she talks about is the wedding plans etc. I would prefer her to talk less and work more, but i digress, this is her time, we'll all get through it i'm sure. its hard to believe, time flies, it seems only yesterday she was playing baseball and fighting with her brother. now she's marrying george (real name unknown). i am hoping this wedding will not be too expensive. i gave her a budget of $250.00 but she has already blown that on a dress, i think i will have to get more involved in all these plans!??

as for my son michael. i could not be more proud if i tried. he has turned into a fine young man. mickey still lives at home. he tells me daily that he will never leave and is happy at home. course, what i hear is " i ain;t ever leavin....you can't make me....and when your dead the house is mine!" as he takes after his mother quite a bit, and is a nurse's aide, and knows about the diabetes prick machine, i keep an eye out to see if he has a "shiv" in his hand. i have always been a snorer, so the doctor gave me a breathin machine to help me sleep. (you know your livin high off the hog when you have a machine that breathes for you. mikey , bein a nurses aide, likes to be put the machine on me at night, he even tucks me in. for some reason he keeps trying to pour water into the sleepin machine, he says it will help me sleep........i think he's in a bit of a hurry to get the house. i would be lost without mikey, who else would tuck me in at night. linda stopped tucking me in years ago. when mikey isn;t busy at the old folks home, he is busy working for us.

as for my lovely wife (still looking over my shoulder), linda is doing well.....as well! lol, linda handles all of the international shipments and stays very busy. she likes to get up at 4 in the morning and get an early start. ( i usually don;t start till around 8 or 9. i wake up around 7 but it takes me a while to get that breathin machine hose from around my neck. mikey says its supposed to be tied in a knot around my neck, but i think he just wants the house. ) its a lot of work to bag, tag, and muscle around these boxes. i think linda is tougher then me, she has a butterfly tattoo on her upper arm, i think its gang related, maybe thats why she knows about those "shivs"????........linda scares me a little.

as for me, i could not be happier if i tried. i have a wife who loves me (shiv?) a son who tucks me in at night (so i can't move?) and a daughter who's getting married (to george, real name unknown). business is good and keeps us all very busy. i try not to work on the weekends anymore, i'm too old to be working 7 days a week. but i still find myself putting a couple of hours in on saturday and sunday answerin emails ands so on. other then that i spend the weekends thinking of the wedding and pollishing my gun, you know what they say, don;t bring a knife (read that shiv) to a gun fight.

its the 4Th of july, which makes me think of my friend kurt. we have been friends since the 1st grade. kurt is a chemist, has been for as long i can rememeber. i still rememeber as kids watching him make his own fireworks while the rest of us were shooting bb's into his moms sack of potatoes. i'll never forget his dad yellin "son of a bi^%$ later that week as he had chipped yet another tooth on the mashed potatoes....................ahhhhh... good times. anyway, i'll try and update this a little more often, again, we thank you for keepin us all busy, God bless, pop.

God bless,

mark, linda, carolyn and mikey