Clearing up the backlog (by not letting it get so logged back)

Cool story bro

I need to get this off my desk and it comes to me ready made so here you go. Copy and paste is your my friend. I can't always be the guy that writes all the good words. Who has time? I don't, at least lately. Battlefield 3 isn't going to play itself, plus dogs to walk, books to read, etc.

Unrelated: The 20th is my birthday. I may be 'celebrating' by traveling on business. If so there's a slim chance that I will have time to stop by and see some of my peeps in my area of business (you know who you are) but right now I don't know. If I go I will have work events in the evening, and my peeps know how much I love going to work events and traveling on my birthday so the less said about all that, the better. If I can see you I will let you know early next week. If you're busy, no bigs. I still love you. Anyway, on to the topic at hand:

This comes nearly unedited from Ze Newbs. Like my friend Big Cheese he has is working on a 'quiver'* of surfboards, even though it's still a fairly new thing and he sucks is not totally rad2themax (at surfing, not at life). I don't know what it is about this thing that gets you guys to buy stuff like this. I would never do something like that. And I certainly wouldn't do it a second time. Er, whatever.

* Lame surf speak. So, so lame.Surf-speak in general is so stupid that it probably deserves another post altogether. No waaaayyyy brah! Siiiiick!! Ugh.

So, the correspondence:
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Subject: Happy V-day to me

Why not? I like me and today is the day to do something nice for the person you like, so... So I bought a surfboard. Sure, I said I was done buying surfboards for a while (full disclosure: I bought my second used one less than a month ago). Sure, it is beyond my ability level to ride it right now. But so what? Counterpoints: it is a brand new board on CL for a used price; it is in perfect condition; it is hand shaped in an old school (or skool if you prefer) style by an old school shaper from SC [ed: Santa Cruz, not San Clemente] who probably isn't going to be making boards that much longer; I have a freaking job; and I wanted it. So suck on that other half of my brain that told me it was a stupid idea.

me: Does the string say "Hand shaped for my friend Jen"? Please say yes. I hope Jen got a deal on it, and that you bought it from her.

ze newbs: 
Believe it. Jen did some artwork for him (Johnny Rice) and he payed in trade with the board that she wanted custom made it a retro fish style. She says she offset with cash too but I doubt that. She never even waxed it, stored it in her sister's garage and either needed the money or needed her sister to stop telling her to get her shit out of her garage. Or both. I had to get the story out of her because it seemed sketchy to have a brand new Johnny Rice fish up on CL for a (relatively) cheap price. We exchanged emails and it didn't smell right initially so I didn't get back to her. When I didn't respond back quickly she emailed me again and told me she was knocking off $100 bucks, that she didn't know the exact dimensions of the board blah blah blah. At that point I thought it was stolen for sure so I didn't want to touch it. Still, I asked her what the story was with the board because, as far as I knew, Johnny Rice had never shaped a board in this style. That is when I got all the back story. I google fact checked some of it and it all came back legit. Then when she offered to drive it to my work I said, fuck it. Why not? After I read the string when she got here I thought, well, it is definitely a legit story. Funny shit. I can't wait to be good enough to ride it.

me: could be a long wait!  HONK!! ahaaaa i kid. My actual response was a query about when he was going to start buying something cool, like motorcycles. What? It's a fair question.

Much love to Ze Newbs and Big Cheese for making themselves available for the space.
Thanks for reading. Happy President's Day.