Depending on the day of the week and my mood it may depend on which story I want to tell you about my mother.  Some days I will tell you that the only mother I know is married to my father.  Other days I may just avoid the question all together and say something along the lines that she is dead.  (A great conversation ender and makes it easier to change the subject).  Bottom line, my biological mother is alive and lives in Arizona.  Other than her repeatable failure to being insensitive and rambling on about nothing like, what she is cooking for dinner while you are in the midst of a mid-life crisis, she is not a bad person.  It’s the company she keeps.

Rather more than a decade ago she met her now husband, Brian.  I would give my left nut to see this guy torn limb from limb by a swarm of radioactive squirrels.  Hate, isn’t strong enough to describe the emotion I have for this guy.  Hearing his voice in the background while talking to my mother compels me to hang up on her.  The fact that my mother ignored everyone and married him anyway is probably the biggest thing I dislike about her.

Bottom line, I don’t talk to my mother, don’t care too, and she knows it.

I got a call from my step mother yesterday, asking me for a favor.  Her sister and husband decided they would come to Syracuse and “have fun”.  Sometime during their visit, they got pulled over and arrested for possession of drugs.  Since I live in Syracuse and she couldn’t get off work, she called me to go pick them up.

To the extend of my knowledge, my family has been pretty good about saying “no” when it comes to drugs.  I experimented in my younger years while in high school, but quickly realized when I got out that it was hard to be responsible enough to hold a job and everything and I quickly lost interest.

Until yesterday I have heard the occasional marijuana smoker make his comments about “rolling” or “smoking” but nothing that really stands out.  These people I ran into yesterday should be the new poster child for doing drugs.  Not only are they missing half of there teeth, but they smell like dog shit, and were acting like a nervous shaky wreck cause they had been in jail all night and the police kept there cigarettes.

On top of the visual imparities I am guessing that it has mentally imparred them as well.  For starters, nothing, not a damn thing, was their fault yesterday. I have never heard so many excuses in my entire life. I had to sit and listen to it for 2-3 hours waiting for the rest of them to get out of jail.

I realize that I may not be the best husband in the world, and lost all eligibility for that title the very second I told my wife to ask her parents to leave our house.  Of all dumb mistakes in my life, that one ranks pretty high on my top ten list.  In a matter of seconds, a muttered phrased shouted in anger, may of changed my life forever.

I thought I patched things up with my wife, before she went to San Francisco.  I guess I was wrong.  The day after Father’s day the postman knocked on my door to serve me divorce papers.

A lot of people have asked me lately how I am able to know about new cache’s so quickly.  I don’t live in front of the computer watching my e-mail.  Instead I have it setup so that the notifications go directly to my cell phone.  Since no matter where I go I always have my cell phone I always get new notifications instantly.  I rarely get text messages, and don’t get any e-mail sent to my phone with the exception of these notifications so if my phone chimes 99.9% chance its a new geocache being published.

The other nice thing about this method is when using your regular e-mail client it either only checks for new mail when you refresh the page manually, or if you are using a software program like MS Outlook it only checks every 5-30 minutes depending on what you have it set for.  Either way, for most people it doesn’t alert you and you have to be sitting in front of the computer or check it regularly in order to receive the notification.  With a cell phone, its almost instant.  If I have new mail on my phone, it is chiming instantly.  I immediately transfer the coordinates to my GPS, print the cache page with clue decrypted, grab the pre-packed bag by the door, and off I go.

For you to setup these notifications here is what you do.  (Premiere members only)

If you don’t have a plan or option with your cell carrier to receive text messages you may receive an additional charge for each and every text you receive.  It is always best to check with your cell company first if you are the slightest bit unsure before attempting this process.

Obviously I only have service with one of these companies so its possible I could be wrong with one or more of the other ones.  If I am wrong let me know so I can update this list for everyone else.  (Check with your phone company first they are better technicians than me, and getting paid to help you).