- It’s the most wonderful time of the year, with ice pellets falling and customers calling and WAKING UP AT 5 AM TO GET ON A 6 AM CONFERENCE CALL ONLY TO BE TOLD THAT THEY INVITED ME BY MISTAKE!
- I was invited to the follow-up meeting the following morning AND ONLY SAID 3 WORDS THE ENTIRE HOUR!
- Some days I think I should have listened to my mother and gotten a job as the piano player in a whorehouse.
- One problem with not being a Christmas person is that it falls to Irish Woman to decorate the house. Most years, it’s Whoville and my sanity and electric bill both have issues.
- This year, due to most of our Christmas junk still tucked away in stacks of identical cardboard boxes, it’s more minimalist. By more minimalist, I mean that only about 50% of the surfaces in our home have something seasonal laid upon or tacked to them.
- I have hope that my requests to not purchase more yuletide dreck will be granted. It’s a forlorn hope, but a hope nonetheless. Maybe there’ll be a Christmas miracle or something.
- It would appear that the best way to meet the new new neighbors is to just wait for them to bring Moonshine or Derby home after they’ve decided to do some unscheduled, unaccompanied exploring.
- Another hit seems to be when the neighbors come out on a frosty morning to see why a strange man in bear-print pajama pants, an old tee shirt, and no shoes, is jogging a couple of yards behind a labrador retriever at 7 in the morning on a Sunday.
All posts by daddybear71
Musings
Posted by daddybear71 on December 18, 2020
https://daddybearsden.com/2020/12/18/musings-356/
Today’s Earworm
Fine. ‘Tis the season and all that
Posted by daddybear71 on December 14, 2020
https://daddybearsden.com/2020/12/14/todays-earworm-739/
Musings
- If you answer “I’m free most nights and weekends” when I ask when you can meet with a vendor, please don’t be surprised when I schedule a meeting with the vendor for 7 PM on Tuesday.
- Note to Self – If we want to survive until the end of this year, the words “Brown lumps in gray sauce or gray lumps in brown sauce?” should not go through our lips when entering the kitchen and smelling dinner.
- I took my semi-annual look at my retirement account, and if things keep going well for the stock market, adjusting for inflation, I should be able to retire sometime in my mid-80’s.
- When I hit the milestones that allow me to retire from the current day job, I think I’m going to explore a new career as a reprobate. That seems to pay well, at least for those reprobates with titles like ‘Senator’ and “Congressman’.
- My 401K grew by about 25% this year due to the, IMHO, overheated stock market. The feeling I have in my gut right now is the same as I have when I’m in the first car on the rollercoaster and we’re approaching the crest of the first big hill.
- As the holidays approach at breakneck speed, we are all thinking of what to give our loved ones. This year, be practical – give those you cherish ammunition, magazines, and booze.
- I’m not saying things look bad when I look into my magic 8 ball, but I’m considering cutting a piece off of an old flag and putting it into my wallet, just in case.
- Irish Woman and I had our annual “Please don’t buy me anything for Christmas”…. ‘discussion’ the other night. I took a different tack this year by listing all of the things she and the kids have bought me for Christmas over the decades that met their fates at Goodwill or the bottom of a dumpster when we moved this year. I’m hoping that this message convinced her that there is absolutely nothing I need nor want and that a good breakfast and some quiet music is all I ask for on Christmas morning.
- It’s a forlorn hope, I know, but maybe one year I’ll wake up to a hug, a hot cup of coffee, and nothing more waiting for me.
- Irish Woman tried to convince me to just buy her a bottle of the shampoo she loved back in the 80’s for Christmas, and I laughed in her face. I don’t have much to live for, but I’m not going down like that.
- Might as well watch her unwrap a set of steak knives and then go take a nap.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 13, 2020
https://daddybearsden.com/2020/12/13/musings-355/
MacBiden IV
MACBIDEN
Wherefore was that cry?
PELOSI
The republic, my lord, is dead.
MACBETH
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and… something,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to… you know, the thing
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And Cornpop shows all his homies
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a dog faced pony solder, a poor player
That drools and stumbles his way through a speech
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, kept in his basement,
Accomplishing nothing.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 12, 2020
https://daddybearsden.com/2020/12/12/macbiden-iv/
MacBiden III
A dark-Web Cave. In the middle, a Caldron boiling. Thunder.
Enter the three Witches.
FIRST WITCH
Thrice the journo rat hath chewed.
SECOND WITCH
Thrice and once, the pollster whin’d.
THIRD WITCH
Karen cries:—’tis time! ’tis time!
FIRST WITCH
Round about the cheating go;
In the poison’d data throw.—
RINO, that on Congress’ throne,
Years and years has thirty-one;
Sputter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the biased pot!
ALL
Double, double to Trump give trouble;
Cities burn and turn to rubble.
SECOND WITCH
Fillet of a swampy snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
CIA, and FBI,
Shred your honor, to FISA fly,
White House mole, and unfair judge,
Flay the nation, hold a grudge,
Four long years of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
ALL
Double, double to Trump give trouble;
Cities burn and turn to rubble.
THIRD WITCH
Tax returns, Russian ho’s
Nancy prattles; on and on she goes
From the Twitter mob, hate and snark;
Plots with Facebook made i’ the dark;
Rivers of libelous content, too;
Loads of dung, flung at you,
Shaped by the talking heads’ lips;
Border walls, and YouTube clips;
Interview with an old porn star,
Film of riots from afar,—
Make the gruel thick like tar:
Rake the muck with high dudgeon,
For the ingrediants of our caldron.
ALL
Double, double to Trump give trouble;
Cities burn and turn to rubble.
SECOND WITCH
Cool it with a buffoon’s blood,
Someone at FOX will make it good.
Enter HILLARY to the other three Witches
HILLARY
O well done! I commend your pains;
And every one shall share i’ the gains;
And now about the cauldron sing,
Live SJW’s in a ring,
Enchanting all that you put in.
HILLARY retires
SECOND WITCH
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something vapid this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks!
Enter MACBIDEN
Posted by daddybear71 on December 8, 2020
https://daddybearsden.com/2020/12/08/macbiden-iii/
Attention to Orders
Seaman First Class James R. Ward, for his conduct during the attack on Pearl Harbor, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor
For conspicuous devotion to duty, extraordinary courage, and complete disregard of his life, above and beyond the call of duty, during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces on 7 December 1941. When it was seen that the U.S.S. Oklahoma was going to capsize and the order was given to abandon ship, Ward remained in a turret holding a flashlight so the remainder of the turret crew could see to escape, thereby sacrificing his own life.
20 years old, barely more than a year after enlisting, and he willingly gave his life to give his shipmates a chance to live.
Where do we find such men?
Posted by daddybear71 on December 8, 2020
https://daddybearsden.com/2020/12/08/attention-to-orders-16/
MacBiden II
FIRST WITCH
Where shall we three meet anon?
In Atlanta, or Phoenix, or in Philly town?
SECOND WITCH
When the hurly-burly’s done,
When the election’s lost and won.
THIRD WITCH
That won’t be ere the set of sun.
FIRST WITCH
Where the place?
SECOND WITCH
Upon the courts.
THIRD WITCH
There to meet with Dem cohorts.
FIRST WITCH
I come, Atlanta.
SECOND WITCH
Phoenix calls.
THIRD WITCH
Anon.
THREE WITCHES
Fair is foul, and foul is fair,
Make all the votes say “Biden” there.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 7, 2020
https://daddybearsden.com/2020/12/07/macbiden-ii/
Musings
- Note to self – Never trust a labrador retriever with cranberry nut bread on his breath.
- Corollary – Always buy twice as much seasonal baking supplies as you think you will need.
- Note to self – Never try to do business with the bank where you set a very hard to remember password before you’ve had at least one pot of coffee.
- Note to self – When you find yourself failing the “Prove you’re not a robot by clicking on pictures” test for 10 minutes, it’s time for another pot of coffee.
- Note to self – Shutting off the main water supply valve to the house was probably overkill when replacing the water filter on the “Oh my god, how much did they spend on that?” refrigerator, but it was a heck of a lot easier than trying to move said appliance and find the one right next to the fool thing.
- Mathematical and Budgetary Grumblings:
- The new filter is good for 300 gallons.
- A gallon of water weighs about 10 pounds, or 160 ounces.
- There are 20 8-ounce glasses of water in a gallon.
- 20 glasses of water per gallon times 300 gallons equals 6000 glasses of cold, refreshing, filtered water for your son and wife who can no longer drink water straight from the tap for some reason.
- At $33 per filter, that comes to about half a cent of additional cost per glass of water.
- That, of course, assumes that my time to purchase and replace filters is worth nothing.
- If I had asked to spend half a penny every time I needed to wet my whistle as a child, I would have been smacked upside the head until I got my mind right and went outside to drink from the hose.
- Catching the fencing contractor relieving himself in the neighbor’s tree line makes for some laughter on the job site after the Irish Woman admonishes him.
- Having the neighbor catch said contractor in the tree line leads to DaddyBear baking some treats and a visit to the neighbor’s back porch.
- Moonshine and Derby love the new fenced in back yard. The other dogs in the neighborhood, who are smart enough to be allowed to go out into their own backyards to read the newspaper without triggering a canine Amber Alert, came over to investigate the new thing and new dogs. A good time was had by all, and the new furry friends all went home after ‘marking’ the new fence several times.
- Poor Moonshine then spent the better part of the the morning recycling bowl water to reclaim his fence.
- You know, after 20 years as a couple, you’d think my wife would know the answer before asking “Honey, would you have a problem having bears close to our cabin?”.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 6, 2020
https://daddybearsden.com/2020/12/06/musings-354/
MacBiden
Is this a ballot which I see before me,
The paper toward my hand? Come, let me change thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal ambition, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A ballot of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the Marxist-infiltrated braintrust?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I alter.
Thou marshall’st me the way that I was cheating;
And such an instrument I was to abuse.
Mine minions are made the fools o’ the other parties,
Or else worth votes a hundred thousand or more; I see thee still,
And on thy tally and summation gouts of votes,
Which were not so before. There’s no such thing:
It is the dirty business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o’er the one halfwit
Voters seem dead, and wicked media abuse
The curtain’d sleep; journalism celebrates
Pale Hecate’s offerings, and ignored mischief,
Alarum’d by his sentinel, the mob,
Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his blatant bias.
With Lenin’s ravishing strides, towards his design
Lies like a rug. Thou sure and firm-set cabal,
Hear not my ‘mistakes’, which side they favor, for sure
Thy very stones prate of my misdeeds,
And take the present election from the people,
Which now votes in it. Whiles I cheat, they win:
Votes to the knave of Obama too cold breath gives.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 5, 2020
https://daddybearsden.com/2020/12/05/macbiden/
Book Review – Knowingly Familiar
Alma Boykin’s latest in her Familiar Tales series continues its unique blend of family and magic in Knowingly Familiar.
When Ghosts Walk . . .
Something moves. A Mesopotamian curse sends ripples through the magical community of Riverton. Mages André and Lelia Lestrang find themselves fighting ghosts from their past. The battle draws them closer to Master Saldovado and the clans, closer perhaps than Lelia’s heart dares to go. How long before Patrick Lee and Riverton’s other magic users demand answers about the clans? The Familiars are keeping the secret. For now.
But breaking ancient spells comes easily for shadow mages. Juggling parenthood, budgets, car repairs, school schedules, and a six-year-old daughter’s desire for a pet unicorn? (Or a house dragon, preferably pastel pink.) That’s difficult!
Lelia Chan and her family continue their adventures in life, love, and keeping the forces of ancient evil at bay in Knowingly Familiar.
The story follows the day-to-day happenings in a family that is inextricably intertwined with magic and its impact on the world. They do laundry, meet with teachers, and prepare to defend themselves against the wrath of ancient evil.
Like the rest of the series, this is a narrative driven by the relationship between the unique characters that Ms. Boykin has created and fleshed out. Lelia’s family life includes budgeting, juggling schedules, and teaching her older children about their magical talents. Her relationship with Arthur Saldovado becomes closer with each book in the series, and a very sweet, moving sequence in this book cements his role as her father figure.
Knowingly Familiar is a quick, easy read that will hold onto the reader until its last page. This far into the series, you really ought to start with the first book, but if you’ve enjoyed the other Familiar Tales, you’ll love this one.
Posted by daddybear71 on November 29, 2020
https://daddybearsden.com/2020/11/29/book-review-knowingly-familiar/
DaddyBear
DaddyBear’s Den 