I haven't even begun to brag about my brand new aluminum iMac and then today I bought an magic touchpad and have almost achieved Nirvana. That thing that looks like a small clipboard, (without the clip?) That sucker does everything that you can do with a mouse and some that you can't.

I use the mouse every once in awhile but I expect once I get the hang of it, the mouse is going in a drawer. I can't wait to use it making graphics.. I believe it will pay for it's self many times over.

Visit the website **Magic Touchpad** and read it for yourself. If you don't have a Mac.. what are you waiting for? -Ric

Went to the mall in Tacoma today, thinking, I was going to find a software store and buy some Alien Skin software to compliment my CS5. Boy was my thinking off base a bit. It seems you can't buy most stuff, (like this) in actual stores anymore. Online, yes. Store.... no.

So it turns out my wife and I braved a Friday afternoon, in a monsoon of a rains storm, (which by the way those lying, @#$%@##&&% weather men said was going to be the best day) with some of the worst drivers I have seen in a long time.. Put up with an idiot supposed Mac expert at Best Buy, (trust me when I tell you my cat is more of an expert than that punk thought he was.) He was a rude, dismissive little asshole and I will be emailing complaining.

On the other hand, the guy at the Apple Store was a real help and was the reason I found out, (with out a doubt) I couldn't do this with out doing it online.

20 miles there, 20 miles back, (4 buck a gallon gas and 4 bucks for the bridge toll) only to find out I should have stayed home and ordered online.

What a trip! Progress blows some times.

My life took a turn for the worse with an on the job injury at the age of 44. I had a minor sprain of the neck but because my employers refused to pay for any treatment I was forced to keep on working, (construction) and hope it healed it's self.. It didn't. I got to the point where I couldn't brush my own hair, couldn't raise my arm above my shoulder.

Now we throw in a little, shoddy, medical treatment in the form of epidural steroid injections to the base of my neck directly into my spine. It was shoddy on their part because they never asked my medical history and when I voiced my fear of the steroids I was threatened with the with holding of my L&I benefits. It turns out the steroids were rejected by my body which led to me contracting the disease, Osteonecrisis, (bone death.)

I had my hip amputated in 1999 because of the disease, (right total hip at age 47.) Next a knee operation and last a lifetime of chronic pain and depression. Not being a stranger to pain in my younger days I had no idea of the amount of pain that was waiting for me, later in life. I have daily pain that on most days can be called intense but on those special days when it is really, really bad there isn't a word to describe it. Sitting or laying doesn't really offer an relief. It is a female dog, let me tell you.

I've been in daily pain now for over 12 years,(1998) and I don't see any real relief in sight. I have a script for pain meds but they really only take the edge off and the fear of becoming an addict out weighs the pain.. So I don't take it every day.

The pain makes me a better artist.

My brush with death, (one of them) was in 1978.. July 3rd, (my mothers birthday.) My cousin came by my house to show me his new Jeep. A CJ7 Renegade. Instead of a canvas top his had one made of aluminum, no roll bar. Shiny and fire engine red with tan leather seats and door panels. It was really sharp and he was very proud. He need to go to the next town, to do some business and asked me if I wanted to ride along.

I thought it a pretty good opportunity to shop for my mother a birthday present so I agreed to go. Little did I know Mr. Brink had hitched a ride that day.

Nice warm summer day and after his business we stopped at Bob's Bigboy for a couple of large sodas for the road. The highway back to town was at this time 4 lanes, two going each direction with a dirt median in between with an occasional stop light thrown in. As we were sitting in a long line of pre holiday traffic, (at a red light) this idiot, too much in a hurry, passed the line of cars, (us included) on the right hand shoulder of the road, (in the dirt.)

As he went by us my cousin just came unglued! I mean it made him rabid and he began cussing this person saying what a jackass he was and how he wasn't letting him get away with it so when the light turned green my cousin set about catching up to the offender. I'm thinking, "Ohh boy! A fist fight on my mother's birthday... she is going to be soooo pleased with us." If only it had just turned out to be a fist fight.

We finally caught up with the fellow as he was waiting in the turn lane at another traffic light and as we passed by my cousin leaned out his window and tossed his large cup of coke out the window splashing the contents across this guys window. Of course this enraged him, he pulled back into traffic and the chase was on. Suddenly we are racing down the highway, weaving in and out of semi-heavy traffic with this maniac hot on our bumper. Suddenly he pulls next to us, (my side of the car) and tosses a liter sized glass bottle, (back in those days sodas came in glass bottles) out his window and it hit the windshield in front of my face shattering it, and he pulled ahead.

If my cousin wasn't mad before he was completely crazy now... His brand new Jeep's window was shattered and he had the taste of blood lust in his heart.

Our speed reached 100 mph as we raced to catch up and when we did my cousin swerved his jeep, trying to hit the other guy's car which in turn caused the other guy to do the same. We raced along for at least a mile like this. Him swerving, us swerving back until he swerved the last time and managed to clip the front of the Jeep a glancing blow. At 100 mph it was enough. Suddenly we were sliding sideways, heading for the median. As the Jeeps wheels slid into the dirt the Jeep stood up on it's rear wheels and all I could see out the windshield was blue sky. I remember it like yesterday. My cousin said, "this is it.."

You know, you hear those stories about how time kind of goes into slow motion? This was exactly like that. I closed my eyes and felt the Jeep become air born and like a tilt a whirl, it spun around in the air.. Then we touched down and the noise was like a hundred freight trains sitting on my lap. I opened my eyes and I could see pieces of glass floating in the air.. everything in the Jeep was floating like it was weightless. Just as suddenly we were air born again, twisting around and around. I figured this was it. I was going to die on my mother's birthday and I closed my eyes again so as not to see my death.

Impact then total quiet.

I might mention at this point in the story.. neither my cousin or I were wearing our seat belts and I came to I was squatting over my cousins head. We were both in the back seat area of the Jeep. I looked into his eyes, and he into mine at which point he yelled something about smelling gas and we better get out. I stood straight up. Lucky for me the side windows were no longer there or I would have bashed my brains out on the glass. I stood up, looked around and realized we were in the middle of this cow pasture a good 200 feet from the freeway. These cars were all stopped and people were climbing the fence and running across the field towards us.

My cousin yells again about the gasoline so I put my hands on either side of the window frame and pushed my body up. I then realized the ring finger on my right hand was broken, the pain was intense, I lost my grip, dropped back down and my feet landed on my cousin's head. I jumped up again and by this time a fellow had climbed up onto the Jeep and helped me out and down to the ground. They pulled my cousin out through the back hatch.

We sat in the dirt, in the middle of this field full of cows looking at one another with the realization we were alive. Off in the distance I could hear the wail of the paramedics as they made their way through traffic on their way to take care of us.

I had a broken finger and a knot on my head. My cousin had some road rash on his back where he skidded along the pavement inside of the Jeep during one of our short touch downs during the flight of the Jeep. We were alive and we hadn't been wearing seat belts.

The cops came, asking for witness statements and then we learned how close we came to death, with the cops and everybody concerned wondering how in the hell we were still breathing at all. The story of our flight was thus: Witnesses saw us sliding sideways at a high rate of speed and in order to keep the carnage low, two people in two separate cars made a rolling slow down, keeping the other cars back out of harms way. The witnesses said our Jeep stood straight up on it's rear wheels where we slid along for about 50 feet until the Jeeps knobby tires dug into the dirt flipping us end over end , through the air completely over two lanes of traffic without touching the ground one time. Once we were over the roadway the Jeep touched down, skidding on it's side briefly then it got air born again, rolling over twice before coming to rest in the cow pasture.

Everybody who witnessed it thought we were dead and I will never forget the look on that one guys face when I popped my head up out of the wreckage and looked him in the eyes. It was like he was seeing a ghost, and maybe he was or at least should have been.

They helped us back over the fence and took us to the hospital where I called my wife.. She called my mother and pretty quick I was surrounded by angry females telling me and my cousin what total idiots they thought we were.

The person that clipped us and caused our near death? Well he did the right thing, (surprise.. surprise..) he stopped, waited for the cops and turned himself in. He was beside himself with grief thinking he had killed us sure. I remember how happy he was to see us climb that fence and realizing he hadn't killed us after all.

It was a birthday my mother never forgot, (me neither for that matter.)

New things are on the horizon... stay tuned. -Ric