It’s Derby Time here in the land of beautiful women, fast horses, and strong whiskey.  While Kentucky has grown on me over the years, I can’t say I’m a fan of “The Fastest Two Minutes In Racing”, or the foofora that leads up to it.  The only benefit I see is that this is the only time of year that the city fathers actually do anything to clean up our roadways.  Kind of like your mother spitshining the house because Grandma is coming to visit.

Anyway, the following was originally posted in 2009.  Enjoy!

Whoopty Freaking Doo!

It’s Thunder Over Louisville this weekend, and I have never been happier to live on the other end of town.

I’ve been to three of these collective insanity episodes. What a great idea. Let’s get a couple hundred thousand strangers together, throw in sun, liquor, and explosives, and then try to get them out of downtown Louisville all at the same time. Hopefully a race riot doesn’t break out in the middle of it. This year I think they’re trying to set a new record for obnoxious twits getting on camera flashing gang signs while some poor reporter tries to put a good spin on the whole thing.

Here’s how a day at Thunder goes:

You get up at 6 AM to throw some food down your neck and load the car. The kids are still sleepy, so they move in slow motion. By the time you back out of the driveway, you can feel the throbbing starting in your temporal lobe.

When you get either downtown or across the river to watch it from Indiana, you park about 2 miles away from the event. All of the things that you didn’t want to bring but were deemed necessary by your spouse are then strapped to your back and you trudge to the waterfront.

If you’re there with family or friends, it’s a fun afternoon. The two times we’ve done it with the Irish Woman’s family, the kids have really enjoyed playing with the cousins. The family will usually rent a few camper spaces in a lot over in Indiana, and it makes the day much better if you have a place to relax that’s not crowded and actually has a flush toilet.

If, on the other hand, you try to do this alone, you’re continually either allowing your kids to run off with strangers or you spend the day trying to not end up on an Amber Alert interview.

While you’re enjoying your afternoon, the air show is going on. Sometimes you look up and a neat military or civilian aircraft is going overhead. A lot of times you look up and a bunch of nutballs are flying way too fast, way too close, way too loud, and way too low.

Then you get hungry. You discover that all of the food you brought is gone, so you end up satisfying your hunger with a deep fried Snickers, a funnel cake, and steak on a stick. Wash all of that down with a $5 Pepsi.

Now you’re broke. And the nearest port-a-potty is half a mile away, which isn’t that bad because that’s how long the line for it is.

Then it gets dark. You’re shivering because your sunburn is bleeding off the heat from your body. You and your kids and family watch 20 minutes of fireworks that are pretty impressive. Hopefully the wind is blowing away from you, or you get to inhale the smoke from all of those fireworks to add to your later case of black lung that you get just from living in IndiUcky.

Then you begin the death march back to your car. If you’re lucky, you don’t get mugged or lose a kid in the crowd. Extra points if your kids are so tired and worn out from running around all day that you end up carrying one or more of them, along with all of the things that your wife wanted taken along, but never got unpacked. Last time, I wondered if it would be better to just strap Little Bear and Girlie Bear to my backpack with bungie cords rather than have to pull them along.

Once you get to your car, you strap the semi-conscious kids and wife in, re-pack the car, and spend an hour getting out of the parking lot. On at least 3 occasions you will be scolded for your language by the wife.

You then spend 2 hours trying to get to the interstate to get home. If you parked in Indiana, welcome to a 4 hour ride home, since it makes no sense to let people just come over the river on the bridge that leads directly to Louisville. No, the powers that be will make you drive 25 miles west, then get on a bypass, then get on the interstate that leads you home.

If you parked in Kentucky, welcome to a road company remake of Road Warrior, in which you get to watch nuns cut people off and then threaten their lives. It still takes 4 hours to get home, but at least you have a show to enjoy on the way. The city always has some Rube Goldberg plan for getting people out of downtown without World War III breaking out, but I’m pretty sure they’re actually trying to reduce the population using car accidents, shootings, and starvation.

If you’re lucky, you arrive home in that sweet spot where you’ve caffeinated yourself enough after a 16 hour day that you make it home without falling asleep and killing your entire family, but you’re not so wired that you can’t fall asleep for 4 hours after you get home. Good luck on that balancing act.

Congratulations, you smell of old beer, sweat, and SPF 200 sunblock, and you’ve survived another Thunder over Louisville. OK, your kids will sleep all day Sunday, and you and the wife won’t speak to each other for a couple of days, but wasn’t it grand to spend quality time together?

No thanks. I’ll stay home tomorrow, maybe cook out, but definitely stay away from all things Thundery. If I’m feeling froggy, I might go to the range and make my own Thunder.

From the “No Kidding” Department:

• People who swim after eating may get cramps.  
• People who live in the desert tend to get suntans.  
• Wild dogs tend to like raw meat.

A study in Texas suggests that people who join gangs are much more likely to be a victim of crime.  What?  Hanging out with criminals makes you more susceptible to having a crime perpetrated upon you?  If you frequent a “social group” whose main claim to fame is how many asses they’ve busted caps in might get you shot, beaten, or robbed?  By the way, that little triptic is known as the “Detroit Three Way”.

In related news, a study done by the University of Minnesota has found that people with small children have a different diet and a higher risk of being overweight than people without children.  Really?  People who are lower on money, sleep, and time tend to eat differently, exercise less, and be heavier than their childless brethren?  You mean a sleep deprived young father may not take the time to make a nice salad, slow-roasted lamb shanks, baby potatoes, and asparagus when the only thing your kid will eat is chicken nuggets, ketchup, and strawberry yogurt, washed down with milk and apple juice?  Who would have thought that a young mother might not get to the gym as much when she’s trying to juggle job, pediatrician, day care, and potty training?

Did we actually pay for this research?

An area of Fort Worth, Texas, is having a lot of trouble with feral hogs.  Animal control and the police are pointing at each other when it comes to finding who should be taking care of the issue. 

Why don’t the good residents of River Bend Estate take care of the problem themselves? 

Local laws ban the shooting of wild hogs within the city limits, the neighbors said.

So these people, who live in  a pretty gun and hunter friendly state, are restrained by applying a little bit of copper and lead travelling at a few hundred feet per second or even a pointy carbon fiber tube and making a little bacon because hunting within city limits is frowned upon.

My solution:  Change the law.  You are responsible for where your bullet or arrow goes and what it hits, but nothing can stop you from using whatever reasonable means you want to in order to kill off the feral hogs that are digging up your begonias. 

Areas up north have the same problem with  deer.  Due to city laws, they aren’t hunted, and because we’ve gotten rid of their natural predators, they have no checks on their population that’s not powered by an internal combustion engine.  Some have tried birth control in food, or poisoning. When the animals still remain a problem, eventually someone has had the bright idea of letting people pay to correct the issue using bows and/or crossbows.  Amazingly, people will actually purchase permission slips in the form of deer tags to have a chance at bringing down the number of suburban deer.

I say change the law and declare open season on Porky the Barbarian.   My guess is that the hogs will find somewhere not quite so pointy and noisy to live, and once they’re outside of city limits, it’s a free fire zone on hogs.

Scene 1 – A doctor’s office in Minot,  1977

Pediatrician – “Mrs. Bear, you might consider having your son’s tonsils out.  They’re huge!”

Scene 2 – Military Hospital in Germany – 1993

Physician’s Assistant – “Wow, Sergeant Bear, you’ve got some pretty large tonsils there.  Too bad you still have them.  When things slow down, you ought to make an appointment with the EENT and have those taken out.  You’ll have to find a month where there’s nothing going on to get through the surgery and recovery.”

Scene 3 – Doctor’s Office, Louisville Kentucky – 2005

DaddyBear – “Doctor, how do my tonsils look?  I’ve been advised to remove them in the past, but what do you think?”
Doctor – “Wow, those are huge!  Do you snore?  Let’s get you into the sleep center and see if you have apnea.  Do you know what a CPAP machine is?”

Scene 4 – Same Doctor’s Office, Louisville Kentucky – 2011

Doctor – “Gosh, your tonsils are huge!  I thought we did something about that.  Go get another sleep study so we can justify surgery to get them taken out and may be a few other things to get rid of that snoring.”

So here we are.  Sometime in the next couple of months I will be going under the knife to have my tonsils and other parts of the back of my throat removed.  Hopefully my snoring and continual coughing due to throat issues will be alleviated.  I’ve alerted my boss that I will be taking two weeks off, and I plan on putting my feet up the entire two weeks.  No trips with the family, no working from home. I will be eating soft comfort food, taking good pain relievers, and watching a whole bunch of cartoons in between naps.

I’ll keep y’all updated in case posting here suddenly stops or gets really weird, like a conservative Jim Morrison poetry slam.

Apparently alcohol and it’s effect on the brain may have some positive impact on learning.  While it can make you forgetful and clumsy, it also gives the brain a little positive feedback about what you’re doing while you’re drinking.

When I was in Russian school, I was known to imbibe a ‘few’ adult beverages while practicing my conjugation and chatting up the female members of my class in “speech practice”.  All of this was after class of course.  Maybe the ethanol lubrication assisted me in learning my verbs.  It certainly made DLI a lot more fun.

Today is Boo’s 3rd birthday!  He is growing up fast, and the worst of the terrible two’s seems to be behind us.

I have a song picked out for each of my kids, and this is the one I think I’ve settled on for BooBoo.