My dad was 1st Cav in Vietnam and is an overall good guy. But a story from my sister in laws perspective was that since my dad retired he loves to go to Colorado and Wyoming and go hunting random animals such as Elk and Antelope and stuff. So he went on a week long trip and then combined that with a trip to my brothers house to see their kids. He shows up and my sister is buried with housework and getting dinner ready for everyone as at the time both my brother and his wife worked full time. My dad walks in, dumps his suitcase out and asks my sister in law, "hey can you throw all this in the washing machine and bring it upstairs when you are finished folding it when it's done?" My sister just glared at him and then did it. She still brings that story up. Overall my dad is great but is kind of self centered. He would travel across country on his Harley from California to Oklahoma City to visit a Vietnam vet he served with but almost every time, the extra 90 miles to come see me was just too much as he needed to get started heading back to California. Ridiculous.
I had no idea I needed rappers mixed with Thomas theme music in my life. Thanks for starting this thread, GoodForAnother
This thread started strong but went Rivals pretty fast thanks to alpha/beta shit. Totally unrelated, but... My FIL is a good guy. Never knew his dad, his mom is batshit crazy, and my wife is probably his favorite child (aka most like him). Hard worker, never was involved a lot at home, does most things very well. Tends to pay for things as a way of showing love, which is great since my wife's masters had no scholarships, so we ended school with my debt (~$40k from UG and grad) and hers ($40k just from grad). He paid it off when we had our first kid, without which we'd be in big trouble. Also very nice and when we were away for 2 weeks last month, edged and mowed the front lawn when I forgot about it. It's small and took maybe 30 min, but I still appreciate that. Always is nice to me, even though we have about 0% in common and I think he (as a Bammer) is secretly bitter that his program was turned around by a West Virginian. Honestly, my only issues are mostly from them not really preparing my wife for kids, etc. She was totally cool before kids, but now after she often acts dramatic and lazy in turns about stupid shit (e.g., being way too permissive with the kids' behavior, etc.) and he won't say much about it since he wasn't around much when she was a kid. MIL is nice but doesn't believe in putting kids to work. This, combined with the fact that my wife picked a career that requires a lot of self-advertising, but is uncomfortable "talking to new people", means there are some definite marital issues that they could easily put a stop to (as my parents have occasionally with me) by just telling me to pump the brakes. Was dating a girl before my wife whose parents I loved. Dude would wash and wax his Cobalt (boat) every season. Was like a 1983 model and looked brand new. Same with their "nice car": probably spent $60k in today's money on it, but wouldn't let anything touch that. At the same time, lived in a maybe 1500sqft house, while their weekend place is probably now a $750k property. Weird, but cool people especially if you liked cars, etc.
I've enjoyed reading this thread, but it just shows how old we've grown. We're no longer discussing strange, but FILs.
Dads thread, pickling things, chickens, gardening, just a bunch of old ass domesticated motherfuckers.
Just thought of another one from the FIL. My wife's family has vacationed in the Western Carolina area going back to when she was like 12. Eventually they bought a little shack. It is literally a cinder block shack with no heat/air, but does have running water. It's fine for a short get away for a few people, but it usually ends up being like 10+ people and I just pitch a tent down by the creek. The house sits on top of a hill that is steep as shit. They brought in 10 dump trucks of dirt to try and level it out some but it's still steep as all get out. They bought the place because he wanted the lot since it had a creek, but he never uses it or does anything with the creek. The creek is pretty good size and has a decent amount of water flowing down it. Some small rapids and such. He wanted to "change" the flow of the creek so he rearranged some of the medium sized rocks in it, which pissed off the locals since it disrupted the flow of the creek, so he had to undo it. Now they have no good access to the creek, because an area has not been maintained and the flow of the creek has eroded the bank creating about a 5 foot drop off from the lot to the creek. The neighbors next door have a nice area to get in the creek, and allow us to use it so he has the mentality of why bother doing anything with ours? He always wants to trim tree limbs, and shit when he goes there yet he has no idea what he is doing. So a few years ago he's trimming some branches off a small tree/large bush right on the bank with a handsaw. The bank collapses under one of his feet, so he slides down the bank into the creek ... saw in hand. He thinks I'm there so he's hollering at me for help, but I'm up the hill refreshing my beer and never hear him. I look down the hill a moment later and I see the saw flying through the air. He chucked it up from the creek so he could climb out. The saw landed about 2 feet from one of the brother in law's tents.
Just remembered a funny story about my FIL. So his son, my brother in law (BIL), got a license to grow medical marijuana and had started to grow it in a greenhouse behind his barn. It was legit, someone from the state would come out every so often and check it out to make sure everything was on the up and up. My wife and I knew because he told us about it but he didn't tell my FIL or MIL because of their archaic beliefs about weed. Well my MIL is over at their house one day watching BIL's kids and walks behind the barn and finds the greenhouse. She calls FIL who doesn't pick up and leaves a message about what she found. Then she calls my BIL who laughs and explains to her it's all legit, if she wants to see the papers on it its in his desk and she can see its sanctioned by the state. FIL gets the voicemail, doesn't call MIL back and drives straight to BIL's house and without talking to anyone grabs a weed eater and cuts down all the marijuana. MIL hears something going on out by the barn and comes out yelling for him to stop but it was too late. He had already cut it all down, dragged it out of the greenhouse, and was proceeding to drive over it with a riding lawnmower when my MIL got there. BIL owed the state something like $12,000.00 in fees. So that turned into a whole thing.
FIL is a piece of work. He is a tool & die maker at Chrysler, and makes good money, and works all kinds of overtime and holidays, and pulls in about $100K a year. He'd be living a pretty good life if not for the fact that he owns a ton of property in the ghettos of Toledo. He swears it's going to be prime real estate one day, and is holding out for that. In the mean time he rents these shitholes out to the types of people who are looking to rent a shithole. He spends all of his spare money and free time dealing with and fixing his properties. He's also never seen a good deal he can say no to. If a house near him goes up for sale he will buy it, regardless of his current financial situation, how much work the house needs, etc. His grand plan 20 years ago when he started buying these properties was this: buy a bunch of properties and put them in LLC's in each of his 3 kids' names. the kids are 49% owners of the LLC and he is 51%. Each kid's LLC has 4 or 5 properties. In 15 years all of them will be paid off and the kids can either sell them for a handsome profit, or continue to rent them out for a handsome profit. what really happened: he continued to refinance property after property in order to fund his continuing property purchases and/or the renovations/repairs needed to the properties. 20 years later he owes more than the original mortgage on almost every single property he owns, and has backed taxes up the ass, his credit is garbage, he owes tons of money to banks, water companies, gas companies, etc. And every so often his kids would get a bill from the IRS for 49% of the amount he owed. That would range from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand. Any discussion of any of this would result in screaming and the kids crying and leaving. In his mind he was doing all of this for them, and they were ungrateful and didn't see the big picture. In their mind they were being billed for profits they never saw and his plan was severely flawed and unsuccessful and they wanted nothing to do with it. Ultimately my wife demanded that she be removed from any of the LLC's.
thats sad. it would crush my spirit if i worked my ass off to leave something for my kids and ended up with nothing but debt & hard feelings. would probably have a nice chunk of cash for all of them if he just would have put it all in a retirement account
if he sold all of his shit tomorrow he'd be better off, but really he can;t becasue he could never sell it for what he owes. We've been telling him for years to sell everything, but he's holding onto this crazy idea that one day, someday, it will all pay off. It's right on the river, and the city has a plan to revive this entire area, and some investor just bought a bunch of property and he is going to build some shit, and then this property is going to be worth 5 times what I paid for it! A single guy making $100K a year for 20 years can do pretty well for himself. We've always wondered where the hell all that money goes. We don't think it can possibly ALL go into the properties, but he's always broke. He has a better relationship with his kids now, but then he will do something crazy, like send his kids a text message - hey, I got married Wednesday!
I can tell you with absolute certainty that there's not a Bammer on earth who cares where Nick Saban comes from
I've been in a fantasy football league with the same guys for a decade. I get killed every year because I watch too much college football and almost no NFL these days. My father in law is retired and plans his week around the NFL. On Sunday, I asked if he had a league or would want to help with mine. He's now my GM. Our draft is Saturday night. I think he'll have put 40 hours into research by tomorrow afternoon. He called my wife today with a personnel question. I told her not to give my work number.
My FIL and SIL once had this conversation on the phone: FIL: I bought a bobcat () SIL: what? A bobcat??? () yea why??? I have some work to do on the properties aaaaand you bought a bobcat for that???? yea why??? well that's what they are made for Dad.....a BOBCAT?? yea, why are you freaking out? I don't understand why you'd buy a bobcat for that I have to tier the back yards by the river and a bobcat can do that? YES. Are you even allowed to have a bobcat? well you have to get permits to do the work, but yea you can have them Is it even safe??? Yea, you have to know what you are doing, but it's safe where are you keeping this thing??? I cleared out some room in the garage I dont even know what to say.... she then calls my wife - did you know dad bought a bobcat????? yea, I was over there yesterday .....and you are ok with this? uh...yea a bobcat????? you know what a bobcat is, right? yea, a fucking wild animal or a little tractor thing .....what? HAHAHAHAHAHA
My FIL just sent me an email invite to an NFL weekly pick'em league... I'm concerned I'm heading down the same path as you. On a related note, not my FIL, but my wife's grandfather had never known how to use a computer until about three years ago when he got one for Christmas. He's an ex rodeo guy and spent his whole life running the federal crop insurance office in the small West Texas town he lived in. He had no use for learning about computers or dealing with any form of technology past approximately 1990. He didn't use the computer for about 6 months outside of occasional email, until a friend invited him to a fantasy football league. Thus commenced me sinking about 15 hours of telephone time over the next two weeks walking a computer illiterate 75-year-old through a fantasy football mock draft, then a fantasy football draft (he insisted on doing a mock draft), and finally a few weeks of getting the hang of setting a weekly line-up. I will never again take for granted the nuances of navigating a webpage. Fast forward to today, and now he has a facebook account, a brand new iMac, and an iPhone. He cracks me up.
Went to my kid's soccer game with my father in law this morning. He wants to know who approved Ohio State wearing black uniforms tonight. There will be hell to pay. He's probably on hold with the AD right now, mumbling about his tax dollars paying your salary to some unpaid intern who answered the phone.
Every time I hang out with my future father-in-law, our relationship gets better. Going to the Nebraska game next weekend and will be sitting next to him. Had a great time w/him at the first game of the season. Nice that his football/sports opinions don't suck.
Was at the in-laws over the weekend and got a kick out of this: Apparently the garbage men provided by the city (free of charge) do not do a good job of putting the cans back with the wheel side to the curb. Therefore my FIL has called the department of public works and requested that their house be skipped henceforth. He now drives 25 mins away to the dump every week to dispose of his trash.
My father in law and I built a still over Christmas break. I now talk to him more than my best friend does.
I'm now living with the in laws while our house is being built. I could post here every day. MiL has a honey do list of shit that is about 15 years old. I offer to help while I'm there but cautiously because he likes things done his way (never gets done). She asks me to replace door knobs on two doors. What she bought would work but they are really old doors and I just needed to drill a little more into the door to make it work. He has every tool but not a working drill. I ask him about it and he won't tell me if he has one. Then tells me the handles won't fit. Then tells me that he is going to take a day off of work to help me but we have to take the doors off the hinges to drill it properly. I literally could have been done in 15 minutes if he just had a working drill.
My FIL recently spent $400 to have bees shipped to his house from Spain. Half the shipment was lost along the way because the people at the Atlanta post office didn't handle them properly.
My in-laws live in the country. They have a group of turkeys that roost near their house. FIL started feeding them handfuls of corn specifically to make it easier for me and my son and brothers in law to hunt them for meat purposes but in the process got attached to them. One BIL went out and shot one with a shotgun as was the purpose in the first place but scared a bunch of the flock away. My FIL is sad that they're gone and doesn't want us hunting them anymore. He misses his pet turkeys.
One more quick one. They have a small driveway that any time you have more than 2 cars someone has to drive over part of the grass because of an addition to their front porch years ago took away some space. I offer to have my builder give him a quote to expand it as he wants to do because they will have all the equipment and everything right down the block when building. He says "No thank you...I have customers of mine I will give the business too". I just laugh sometimes. I said ok....it will be so much cheaper though. He has all these "clients" where he works and he is big into the community. He rarely ever gets a good deal on stuff but still goes to these people because they are clients. Such a waste of money.
Mine inherited one and then the next thing I know, he bought another one that had been tuned up by Choo Choo Customs because it was a "good deal". Why do people have a fleet of el caminos?
The dude connected with non-human creatures and now because he isn't a psychopath doesn't want them killed for no real reason. Seems like a pretty reasonable stance.