"Well, its good to be back,
the Old Man is typing again,
the feeling of leaving a hobby you love and coming back to it again"

Allright, so I totally bit that from Blue Scholars' "Joe Metro" and just made it fit.  But, its good to be back on this journal and writing, and since I don't get on myspace all that often, I thought this was a good way to communicate the happenings of my life as of recent.

What has the Old Man been up to lately?  Way too much, and yet not enough.  I joined a couple of organizations in my area.  One is HACER, Hispanic Alliance for Culture, Education, and Recognition, a small group whose focus is promoting higher education in Tulare.  We also have an end of the year dinner/dance that raises money to give these High School Students Scholarships.  The other is SHPE, South Central Valley Chapter.  I had an opportunity to work with about 90 high school students in San Diego, with a group called Leadership Concepts Inc., over two days; and gave them tools to make it to college, and become leaders in their community ... especially in the Engineering, Math, and Science Fields. 

Work has been a mad rush lately with all the numerous projects and cramped deadlines.  Luckily, I had the opportunity to be assigned to a project in T-town.  The project is a 3 mile stretch of pipe line that needs to be replaced and designed for future Dairy Waste flows.  The amazing thing about this project is that it travels through portions of Tulare that called my neighborhood.  We're working on streets that I used to ride my bike through as a kid, that I used to travel through to get to the carneceria.  Nothing like that feeling of working on a project that will be improving the stomping grounds you affectionately call home. 

The Machados are doing great, and a huge announcement is in order!  No, not me, but my brother Miggie Smalls and his wife Michelle gave birth to an amazing little boy in March, named Israel Jordan.  And, I get to be the Godfather.  Thats two Godchildren for the Old Meezy ... incase anyone is keeping count

Personal Life:  Most Excellent!!!  I've been with my current girlfriend for about 6 months now, and we've got a place in Visalia; next door to Tulare.  She's an amazing woman, beautiful, brilliant, hilarious!!, caring, artistic, articulate, politically minded, independent thinker, community oriented, loves hip-hop, and was holding it down like an Anchor at the Blue Scholars show we went to.  My family likes her a lot, and her family thinks I'm pretty cool too . 

Oh yeah, I was also diagnosed with High Blood Pressure, (hyper-tension I believe), which resulted in "Enlarged Ventricles".

I gotta get back to work, but yeah, those are the updates for now.  Talk to everybody soon.

Peace, Love, Respect,
Old Man

10 at 10

1,2,3,4,5 … Pause … 6,7,8,9,10

10 at 10

10 … breaks down into 7 and 3

3 … Officer White, Lionel, Me …

3… flashlights surveying

3… number of homes that could have been pierced

7 … sounds like 11

11 … breaks down into 7 and 4

11 … breaks down into 4 & 7

47 on the come bAcK

10 … breaks down into a series of 2's

2 cars

4 people become targets

2 victims

4 year old in the car

10 casings found

10 sleepless nights to follow

My neighborhood used to be a decent place to live; now I worry for the safety of my nieces & nephews.  Long gone are the days of playing football in the street till 10 pm.