• Girlie Bear went with her JROTC class to clean up Churchill Downs after the Oaks and Kentucky Derby.
  • Talk about scared straight.  After cleaning up the detritus of a few thousand drunk, rowdy, over-fed, and over-sexed bluntskulls may have turned her off of partying for life.
  • She wasn’t half as excited to go on Sunday morning as she was on Friday night.
• Moving half a ton of concrete and limestone is easier if you do it a hundred pounds at a time, but you’re still sore and tired afterward.
• Of course it was raining all weekend.  Doesn’t everyone build garden beds and retaining walls in the rain?
• It’s the first week of May, and I’m still heating up the house using the fireplace.
• Apparently my bet on the brown horse in the Derby won again.  I really ought to actually put down some money one of these years.
• I think Irish Woman has it figured out.  She points me to a product she wants, I go to Amazon and order it, and it magically appears on her front step in two days.
• It must be love.  I turned my back on Irish Woman while she was using a shovel and was annoyed with me, and I never feared for my life.
• I can’t wait for the NRA convention next year.  I miss my tribe, and it sounds like everyone is having a grand time handling hardware, meeting new people, and laughing at hippies.
• Louisville people:  There is no reason to drive in either a suicidal or homicidal manner just because the sky gods chose to bless us with rain for the past day or so.
• I like living in the future.
  • I can upgrade Irish Woman’s iMac from 1gb to 4gb of ram (quadruple what she has).
  • If I wait until my warranty is up in December, I can upgrade my Macbook from 2gb to 8gb of RAM, and if I upgrade the OS, to 16gb.
  • Irish Woman’s move from 4gb will cost $80, a move to 8gb on my Macbook will cost $62, and the 16gb upgrade will cost between $150 and $200.
  • For someone whose first SERVER had 128mb of RAM, which was an upgrade from 64mb that cost my employer an extra $5000, this is head spinning information.

This an excerpt from “Ghosts of the Ostfront”, a series of podcasts by Dan Carlin.

If someone pointed a gun, figuratively or literally, at the head of your child, would you be able to stand up and say “No, I won’t put those people on trains!”?  As much as people say we have to role play defensive violence in our minds so that we know what we are morally and psychologically capable of when we need to defend ourselves or our loved ones, we also need to mentally role play our reactions to creeping totalitarianism or how we would react to societal threats to our loved ones if we don’t get in line.

Like Mr. Carlin, I’d like to think that I would have the ability to stand up for what’s right, but no-one’s pointing a Tokarev or a Luger at Girlie Bear’s head right now.  I think the correct answer is to not let things get to that point in the first place, because the only way to win that particular game is to not play at all.

• A problem I worked on today can be best discussed this way:
  • Help!  My hair is on fire!
    • Wow, OK, let me call an ambulance for you and I’ll help you put it out.
  • Well, actually, I have such a bad migraine that I think I’m having a stroke
    • Really?  OK, you need to lie down, and I think I’ll still call an ambulance.
  • Well, you know, I could just have a sinus headache
    • Well, that’s not as bad as you made it sound originally, but let me get you something for that.
  • Actually, I had a slight dizzy sensation last night.
    • OK.  You’re better now, right?
  • OK, it’s just that my eye had this weird twitch last night, while I was asleep, but you need to look into it.
    • You hate me don’t you?
• It’s a bad sign when you feel guilty for taking 10 minutes to work on what you need to get done today while what cropped up and bit you on the butt first thing in the morning is calmed down, at least for a moment.
• Out of about 15 seniors in Girlie Bear’s JROTC program, 3 have been accepted to a service academy.
• Survival note for military recruiters – When the retired full colonel Airborne Ranger Vietnam Veteran JROTC instructor tells you that you shouldn’t talk to his cadets without first talking to him and their parents, you probably shouldn’t take the opportunity of being present at the end-of-year  awards ceremony to hand out cards to the students.
• The retiring  instructor (not the Colonel) has, between active duty and JROTC work, over half a century under his belt.
• It occurred to me tonight that the Tet Offensive (1968) is as far back in time now as the Battle of the Bulge (1944) was when I was in high school.
• The area for parking chartered jets at the airport was about half full when I drove past it tonight.  Either a lot of people are coming in for the Kentucky Oaks and Kentucky Derby later this evening, or the economy has hit the rich and fabulous harder than I thought.
• Can anyone explain to me how keeping people from bringing in cameras with removable lenses is going to improve security at Churchill Downs?

• You know, I was  glad to hear that we would be trying to cut down on the “I know you weren’t scheduled to work this weekend, but something’s come up.” style of project planning at work.
  • A lot of my co-workers, on the other hand, seem distressed that they’re going to be asked to actually, you know, plan their work and tell people about it ahead of time.
• You know the water table is high when you don’t have to add water to the concrete you pour into a post hole  to get it to set.
• Note to self – do not get concrete dust in your eyes.
• I may have a changeling in the house.  Boo announced tonight that he does not like Irish Woman’s meatloaf.  No way he got that from me.
• Looks like I’m going to miss Oddball’s blogshoot in June.  It’s the same weekend as the yearly Hoosier Roundup, and as much as I would love to go shooting for a weekend, family calls.
  • Unless, of course, I can get the Hoosiers to move the family reunion from southern Indiana to southern Kentucky.
  • Hmmmmm
• I’m wavering between upgrading the AR-15 lower I have with a new stock and trigger so that it will fit better with the 20 inch heavy barrel upper I’m building, or just build a whole new lower  so that I have two rifles, a carbine and a longer-range rifle.
  • Decisions, decisions.